Tom Adams
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I am coming to the end of leading two weekly book discussion groups of A Marriage that Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and the Addiction Recovery Movement. For over three months I’ve been meeting with one group on Sunday morning and another on Monday morning, one in person and one on zoom. As we read Chapters 18 and 19 about Bill and Lois’ final years this past week, I was moved to tears several times.
I got some unexpected gifts from seeing a billboard reminding me that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Today’s post is about those gifts and the challenge of appreciating the mental health challenges we each face with compassion and understanding. I might not...
This week’s post is part of a series aimed at increasing awareness about how families are impacted by addictions and how they recover. Most days I experience painful evidence of alcoholism and other addictions being passed from generation to generation. Learning and writing about the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and Al-Anon Family Groups (Al-Anon) and the addiction recovery movement they spawned is one way to hopefully slow this cycle and pass on awareness of recovery to current and future generations.
Seventy-five years ago tomorrow, April 22, 1951, Lois Wilson hosted a lunch at her Stepping Stones home for the wives of A.A. members from the U.S. and Canada attending the A.A. General Service Conference in NY, her neighbor and friend Anne Bingham and other wives of local and regional members of “wives’ groups”. This little-known meeting was the first step towards a Clearing House, the precursor of the Al-Anon Family Groups, a world-wide Twelve Step fellowship for families and friends of people with drinking problems.
Addictions are America’s most costly and least fully acknowledged health crisis. The direct and indirect costs to the person with the addiction—be it alcohol, drugs, gambling, overeating, technology, or work—and their family are staggering and still not fully quantified in any comprehensive way.
Most people in Akron know that Alcoholics Anonymous was founded here. What we may not fully appreciate is that Akron also helped launch family recovery—and, with it, the broader addiction recovery movement. That legacy is more relevant than ever, in Akron and around the world.
I’ve been focusing on gratitude this month as we head towards Thanksgiving, and in Twelve Step circles, celebrate Gratitude Month.
Gratitude is a popular topic in Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meeting rooms, particularly in November. Most members readily acknowledge thankfulness for the improvements in their lives and their ability to meet their challenges as a result of their Twelve Step recovery.
Readers often ask why I don’t say more about my own recovery journey in my posts. In exploring the Recovery Month theme of “recovery for all”, today’s post tells some of my recovery story and why I think it is important to share. While Recovery Month is ending, I will continue to write regularly on recovery for individuals and families.
It is Recovery Month, 2025. This is my 38th September in Recovery. 39 years ago was an ugly September in my life. The very notion of recovery back then was foreign, threatening and beyond my comprehension, yet here I am, with much to celebrate. One of my reflections this year is on a remarkable book published earlier this year that I had the opportunity to be involved with, A Marriage That Changed the World: Lois and Bill Wilson and the Addiction Recovery Movement. It focuses on how the union of Lois and Bill Wilson evolved into a partnership that has changed everything. This couple modeled recovery and resilience in ways that have rippled across time and transformed the way we heal from addiction on every continent and in every culture. While we live in a world of many pathways of recovery, they have common roots that were nurtured in no small way by their hands ninety years ago.
Tom Adams writes and speaks on topics vital to the intersection of our personal lives with our community and global lives. He has for decades been engaged in and written about nonprofit leadership and transitions, spirituality and spiritual growth, how we each contribute to a more just and equitable world and recovery from addictions and the Twelve Step recovery movement.