Recovering alcoholics grab for the mouse instead of the bottle

After a 20-year love affair with Carlo Rossi wine, Susan Gibbons had to quit or die. Her liver shut down and the internal bleeding nearly killed her in 1998. Gibbons pulled through and kicked her addiction, but withdrawal symptoms kept her awake for weeks at her home in Buffalo, N.Y. She spent her nights at her computer.

Like an increasing number of recovering alcoholics, Gibbons turned to the Internet to help keep herself from drinking. She found an online support group and pounded away at the terminal during her insomnia. E-mailing and chatting with others who faced similar struggles helped Gibbons, a social worker, stay sober for the past seven and a half years.

At her alcoholic peak, Gibbons drank four liters of wine a day, she said. Currently, nearly 17.6 million adult Americans abuse alcohol or are alcoholics, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Most people recover without any formal treatment, largely relying on self-help groups. But for alcoholics without a nearby support group, for those who are too busy, or for those who, like Gibbons, are not inclined to go to the traditional gatherings, a growing number of “virtual” recovery groups has brought 24/7 help.

When a person's willpower weakens, "rather than getting your sponsor on the phone, the way AA works, you can use a mobile Web device to find your online group," said Daniel Squires, a fellow and researcher at the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addictions.

Three months into her recovery, Gibbons recalled, her resolve began to waiver. She typed a desperate posting late one night; a complete stranger replied: “If you can have 90 days like this, you can have 90 years like this. Don’t give up on yourself.” That message, she said, was crucial.

The net-based groups go back to 1991, when six Alcoholics Anonymous members found each other on General Electric’s electronic mail service. They identified themselves on a bulletin board as “friends of Bill W.”-- referring to Bill Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. The group, called Lamplighters, still exists and appears on the directory of over 100 English language meetings listed on the AA Online Intergroup (www.aa-intergroup.org).

Still, virtual meetings are only slowly gaining respectability within AA’s ranks. Dean--who goes only by his first name because of the organization’s tradition of anonymity--runs the AA Intergroup Web site from his home office in Seaside, Calif. The site gets 20,000 to 30,000 visitors a month. Over the years different AA members have told him that an online support group couldn’t possibly work, because it lacks the face-to-face component. “They are forgetting that AA started by reading the Big Book and writing letters,” Dean said.

Members of the online groups say being able to get help instantly from home or work wins out over the traditional meetings. "Cravings and urges only last a few minutes," Gibbons said. "If you can distract those, chances are you will get past it."

Total anonymity is another plus. The risk of running into the same people you fess up to at the supermarket or at your kids’ school is minimal.

Critics have countered that the online environment makes hiding easier. "The computer can become your best friend because no one is looking at you," Gibbons said. "But you have to be very honest with yourself. There is nobody sitting with their eyebrows raised [telling you] 'You're bullshitting me.'"

While all share the ambition to stay sober, chat groups finely tune their message to people with specific interests or lifestyles. The AA-linked groups include one catering to recovering alcoholics with hearing difficulties; another to lesbians; and a third to Muslim women. Alternatives to AA, like the one Gibbons joined, also flourish in the absence of geographical boundaries.

Today, Gibbons, 48, runs the online meeting group for women affiliated with the Secular Organizations for Sobriety (health.groups.yahoo.com/group/SOSWomen). Her branch split from the group’s general Web service five years ago to focus specifically on women. “We’re just wired differently,” she said. “And we get worse when we’re PMS-ing.”

A big ingredient in recovery is a new social network of abstinence-oriented people, according to Squires, the researcher. Though Web-based groups don’t provide that face-to-face connection, individuals who participate in virtual groups do feel part of a larger community, he said.

Debbie, 38, an Atlanta nurse who asked that her last name not be used, calls the online community that has helped keep her sober for the past seven months her lifeline. She reached out to Gibbons’ group of 230 members when she was still drinking in June of last year.

“One morning I was shaking so bad I couldn’t even get into my car to get alcohol, but I could get to my computer,” she said. “I literally withdrew online. I needed to focus to stop shaking. I was vomiting while posting on that Web site.”

Debbie feared telling her family she had relapsed again. She secretly drank at least a pint of vodka every night and almost had a seizure during her first days of detoxification. Support from the women’s group gave her the courage to tell her husband, to call her mother and to have her brother drive her to the emergency room. “They saved my life,” Debbie said.

Most online groups stick with the rules and traditions of their mother organization, even if those have no governing control. AA-ers follow 12 outlined steps and search for a sponsor; in Gibbon’s group, which is a secular organization, no higher power is called upon. But there is little competition between the hundreds of cyberspace entities. “The more the merrier,” Dean said. “The only point is to help people stop drinking.”

If one online group doesn’t suit specific needs, people are urged to simply sign up with another one. “It’s a recovery buffet, not just a pizza place,” Debbie said. “Try everything and use what works.”

E-mail: ecv2105@columbia.edu