Ramblings of the mind...

Some thoughts that have been kicking around in my mind...

There's a new magazine that's out called Renew that is aimed at the recovering community. I'm not sure what the distribution of this is, or who the publisher really is. The mast says it comes from Chicago by way of Renew Media LLC in New York state. But, the scuttlebutt is that a well-known treatment and publishing center in the mid-West (a place I cannot mention in my blog because of rules where I work) is the real publisher. It's hard to tell. The magazine has two very large ads for this treatment center and its publishing arm, and they are scattered all over the place at the facility where I work. So, there's a very good chance this is really an in-house promotional piece for recovery masquerading as a real mass-media magazine. Regardless, the magazine has a lot of appeal. Its articles are varied and interesting. It is a combination of old school pop psychology and new age speak about recovery, body balance, and nutrition. Look for it on your local new stand.

There's a new web page called In The Rooms that is also targeting people in recovery. The website offers what they call the world's largest free online social network for the global recovery community. It seems like a safe and secure place to find old friends, make new friends, seek help in recovery, create a group, find a local meeting of a variety of 12 Step programs, listen to speaker tapes, and send instant messages. Apparently there are more than 120,000 members already (I signed up) in over 50 countries. More than 17 fellowships are represented in their various rooms. So, check out www.intherooms.com and see what interests you in recovery.

One of the part of In The Rooms is the speakers tapes section. I found a young man named Alf J there, a Canadian who delivered a short speech to a group in Canada at one time. He makes a lot of sense about what the 12 Steps of recovery mean to someone who has been clean a while - he said he's been sober since 2003. I thought you might want to listen about the spiritual journey this man is on, so I've enclosed a link here to listen to it...takes about 17 minutes.... just copy the following link and past it into your url address bar:  http://www.intherooms.com/library/speaker?filter=aa.

Everything else seems to be going reasonably well today. As they say, a bad day clean is better than any good day using, and that applies to me today.

All the best, Roger W.