SOS Sobriety is sure to be controversial. It lays bare the limitations of Alcoholics Anonymous while describing the proven methods of alcohol and drug abstention advocated by James Christopher, founder of Secular Organizations for Sobriety (or "Save Our Selves"), the world's largest non-12-step addiction recovery programme. After answering basic questions about the nature and purpose of SOS, the success of the "sobriety priority" approach is documented through two scientific studies. Included are moving in-depth individual recovery stories, interviews with addiction experts and legal professionals, as well as a critique of "controlled drinking" programmes and the insistence of AA and the liquor industry that alcoholism is a problem of behaviour rather than one rooted in physiology and genetics.
James Christopher is author of Unhooked: Staying Sober and Drug Free and How to Stay Sober: Recovery Without Religion. He is also editor of The SOS Newsletter.
"Christopher exquisitely reminds us of an alternative to traditional 12-step recovery programmes. His is a provocative and thoughful humanist account; another peg in the coffin of the controlled drinking aficionados."
- Kenneth Blum, Ph.D.,
author of Alcohol and the Addictive Brain
"With fascinating biographies and well-documented research, Christopher brings home the point that SOS is a powerful and positive model that works for many people. SOS Sobriety is an important contribution to the addiction field that provides people with much needed choices."
-Charlotte Davis Kasl, Ph.D.,
author of Many Roads, One Journey:
Moving Beyond the Twelve Steps
240 pages paper ISBN 0-87975-726-4