Mutual help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety and others have long been an integral part of recovery from alcohol addiction. Participants frequently cite the fellowship, peer solidarity, community, and camaraderie they experience as part of these groups as the cornerstones of their sobriety.<\/p>\n
As our society conducts more and more of its social interactions online, mutual support for alcohol addiction has begun to take place online, too. AA and other mutual help groups often conduct online meetings to augment in-person ones. Other forums exist independently from these organizations, growing organically from existing social sites.<\/p>\n
r\/StopDrinking (SD) is one such forum. Run by volunteers as a subforum on the online community, Reddit, SD currently boasts over 32,000 registered participants. Untold additional readers view the site without subscribing.<\/p>\n
While not a replacement for face-to-face interaction, online communities can augment treatment and help those who have worked to become sober remain so. Posts on SD cover a range of topics, including boredom (\u201cOn my 7th day – how to handle the boredom?<\/a>), building a new life (Eek! How will I ever socialize without drinking?!<\/a>), and inspiration (What do you do when you lose that initial motivation?<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cI tried everything,\u201d one member of the forum, who goes by the username Cake_Or_Radish and has been sober for more than 560 days, told the Washington Post. \u201cThe support I saw in [StopDrinking] on day one felt like nothing I had experienced in hundreds of AA or SMART meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n r\/StopDrinking offers:<\/p>\n In a recent post on the forum, a new subscriber sought support for her drinking problem and guidance on how the site worked. A user named \u2018mwants\u2019 responded, \u201cTell us what you are having a problem with. We will share our experience, strength, and hope with you. Alcoholics have all dealt with similar issues. You have made a good start. Asking for help is always the hardest part.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mutual help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety and others have long been an integral part of recovery from alcohol addiction. Participants frequently cite the fellowship, peer solidarity, community, and camaraderie they experience as part of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1755,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n