LifeRing Canada’s Executive Director Michael Walsh was featured in a story in the Saanich News, a community newspaper on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. The story, which you can see HERE, discusses the cost of alcohol addiction in terms easily understood — deaths (more than 1,700 a year in B.C.) and dollars (more than $2 billion a year in that province alone). At least in B.C., deaths from drinking will soon surpass deaths from smoking tobacco. The Provincial report on which the article is based speaks of alcoholism as a “chronic disease.” That’s the part Walsh takes issue with: “I’m Michael and I’m more than someone who has struggled with addiction and abuse,” says Walsh, executive director LifeRing Secular Recovery (Society Canada), a registered charity that has nine groups that meet regularly in the Capital Region. “I had to shake that.”
The article goes on to say, “Some of the beliefs imparted on Walsh early in his recovery – being told that alcohol abuse was a disease, that it was hereditary and that the only support was through Alcoholics Anonymous – only complicated the process for him and are not a part of the LifeRing platform, (although members are encouraged to use any additional support systems they find personally helpful).”
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