Understanding Twelve-Step Programs: A Quick Reference Guide

If you have significant contact with a person involved in a twelve-step program, Understanding Twelve-Step Programs is for you. This book may also be useful if you have been told you could benefit from a twelve-step program, but you have yet to get involved in a group or if you are still new to twelve-step programs. This is not a clinical book; rather, author Bruce Brown presents the material as an experienced insider. Its topics include information on:

• what goes on in meetings
• addiction and withdrawal
• how each step works
• sponsorship, spirituality, and anonymity
• how to help addicts
• recovery for friends and family

Understanding Twelve-Step Programs helps to demystify twelve-step programs so that readers will better understand the nature of recovery.

About the Author
Bruce Brown came into his first twelve-step program in early 1993. Since then, he has attended at least ten different types of twelve-step programs. His recovery has involved meetings in fifteen states covering all regions of the US as well as online meetings. He has sponsored over twenty people and worked intensely with ten sponsors of his own. Bruce has spoken at many gatherings and served his twelve-step fellowships at local, regional, and national levels. As a result, his experience is broad enough to make generalizations about twelve-step programs that go beyond one type of fellowship or one region.

Bruce Brown came into his first twelve-step program in early 1993. Since then, he has attended at least ten different types of twelve-step programs. His recovery has involved meetings in fifteen states covering all regions of the US as well as online meetings. He has sponsored over twenty people and worked intensely with ten sponsors of his own. Bruce has spoken at many gatherings and served his twelve-step fellowships at local, regional, and national levels. As a result, his experience is broad enough to make generalizations about twelve-step programs that go beyond one type of fellowship or one region.