Recovery Groups ???

We want to start recovery groups at our church. A recovery group is a group of people who have suffered a similar addiction or survived a similar abuse. The best known recovery group in America is Alcoholics Anonymous. Why a group? Because a group provides a much more effective healing environment than individual counseling. Alcoholism is a form of insanity. (Actually, any addiction in its latter stages is a form of insanity.) An alcoholic believes that if he stops drinking he will never be happy again. His drinking may have already cost him the loss of every precious thing in his live, yet he will still believe that he can not be happy without alcohol. If you, a nonalcoholic, try to point how insane this is, the alcoholic will just say that you don not understand. And you really do not understand his craving or his insane thinking. But a recovered alcoholic understands both the craving and the insanity. He or she is the best one to minister to the one who stills lives in drunkenness. One of my dear friends who is alcoholic went to an AA meeting expecting a judgmental lecture on the evils of alcohol. Instead he found a bunch of happy, colorful, former drunks having a good time without the mood elevating effects of alcohol. He felt understood instead of condemned, and hope instead of despair. That two and half years ago, and he has not had a drink since. These groups are called "recovery" groups because an addiction always steals life from us, always harms our true self. In a loving, nonjudgmental, spiritual environment we have the opportunity to recovery what has been stolen from us.