About Me

My name is Pete Soderman, and I live in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, with my lovely wife, Gethyn. Ajijic is a village of approximately 15,000 people, located on the Northern shore of Lake Chapala, roughly 45 minutes by car south of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. We are retired here, as are many other Americans, Canadians, and Europeans, enjoying a near-perfect climate, low cost of living, and the friendliness of the Mexican people.

That’s where I am, let’s get to who I am, and why I’m writing a book on recovery from alcohol and other drugs. I was born in 1,945, graduated from West Haven High School, in West Haven Connecticut in 1963, and almost immediately joined the Navy. Had my first actual drink, a draft beer, in the Enlisted club at Dam Neck Virginia, the Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Training Center, on November 21st, 1963, my 18th birthday. I remember the date so well because the next day was the day that JFK was assassinated, and we were all bussed to Washington for the entire weekend.

I’m not going to tell my entire story here, there will be snatches throughout the book, suffice to say that even the untimely demise of our President was not enough to dissuade me from nearly twenty-six years of alcohol abuse and dependence. Additionally, I was also addicted to nicotine, having begun smoking Camels when I was about fifteen.

After the Navy, I went to night school studying Electrical Engineering, in a BS program, finally amassing enough credits for a degree, but I was missing a couple of Liberal Arts courses, and as I was traveling quite a bit, never quite got around to completing them. In 1969, I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, MA, in the Engineering department, on the design team for the PDP -11/45. I followed the first few machines to the field, and became a regional troubleshooter, finding and fixing problems with the entire PDP-11 line. I moved into sales with DEC, and held regional sales engineer positions with three companies in the 1970′s and 80′s, selling state-of-the-art realtime systems into the defense/aerospace and process control markets.

In 1990, the whole mini-computer market, which I was in on the beginning of twenty years earlier, collapsed almost overnight, as PC’s, considered toys only a few years before,  took over all the functions the mini’s had performed for so long. When the market collapsed, so did I! My life fell apart even faster then the markets I sold into. I found myself drinking more and more, until I finally couldn’t do it anymore. I went to AA in August of 1990, because I didn’t realize there were any alternatives, and I was one of those who managed to stay sober in spite of the teachings of AA, certainly not because of them. I did other things, rather than work “steps” I saw no purpose for. I went to lots of meetings, but I was one of those who was was truly convinced before I stumbled in that I was through drinking. I think that I probably could have quit on my own, and as it was, I drifted away from AA, and started a secular recovery meeting with some like-minded friends.

After moving to Wilmington, I started a computer networking business, and managed networks for many large and small businesses, including the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce. I also developed and deployed custom data retrieval systems, and data base systems for The Chamber, and several clients in the insurance and Real Estate markets. I wrote instruction manuals for the database systems, and developed and taught courses in their use.

I have taught several general computer courses as an adjunct for Cape Fear Community College, in computer use and maintenance, and developed curriculum’s for new courses in computer maintenance, programming, and use of productivity tools.

A few years later, I started a SMART Recovery meeting in Wilmington, not to maintain my own sobriety, I was far beyond the point where I “needed” to go to meetings, alcohol hadn’t been a part of my life for years, but I wanted to teach a system that made sense, and worked – for most of the people who were exposed to it, as opposed to AA, which works for only a few percent of those who enter the doors.

Along the way, like millions of others, I quit smoking without help of any kind, totally on my own. Nicotine is one of the most powerful addictions there is, and I will prove that in the book. Everyone reading this knows someone who has “kicked the habit” on their own, or has done so themselves. That fact alone should make anyone question “powerlessness,” but for some reason, it doesn’t.

While proceeding on my own path to recovery, inside of AA and out, I have worked with addicts of all types, in all sorts of situations. For many years, I worked with addicts inside the prison systems of both Connecticut and North Carolina. I learned something about addiction from each and every one of the thousands of AA and secular recovery meetings I have attended. I have studied addiction from every conceivable angle, up to and including current peer-reviewed papers in technical journals, as you will see when I present evidence against powerlessness. I have studied the work of others in the field who do not accept the current treatment paradigm, such as the renown Stanton Peele, and others.

I have also studied Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s origins, it’s philosophies, it’s strong points, and it’s weak points. I understand why it works for some and not for others. I understand why it effectively removes, for a short time, the feelings of stress addicts are prone to, and why attendance at an AA meeting can give you that “one more day” of sobriety. AA has a demonstrated 5% efficacy rate, which is, by the way, no better than chance alone, as 75% of addicts recover on their own, and still it is the foundation of most treatment programs. Parts of this site, and the book it is based upon, will seem like direct attacks on AA itself, while actually, they are attacks upon the idea of “powerlessness,” which happens to be one of the fundamentalist Christian concepts upon which AA was founded.

The concept of “powerlessness” has killed far more addicts than it has ever helped, and I will explain why in the chapters that follow. It’s a dangerous idea, and that’s why I address it so strongly.

If you are someone who is beginning to question your drug or alcohol use, if your think it is becoming a problem in your life, this web site could very well have some of the answers you have been seeking. There is no recovery program that I’m aware of  that will work for everyone all the time – it just doesn’t exist! The object of this web site, and the book, is to give you the proper tools and information to make your OWN decision, and design your OWN recovery program based upon your OWN needs and honest assessment of your OWN condition.

Pete Soderman