Celebrating Three Decades of Impact: SHARE! Then and Now

𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘! 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝟯𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 at 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘!

Marking a momentous 30 years of fostering recovery and community, SHARE! takes a look at “Then and Now.” Scroll down to celebrate milestones such as:

• the launch of SHARE! Collaborative Housing
• spotlighting the effectiveness of self-help support groups
• opening the SHARE! Recovery Retreat in Monterey Park
• training people for the peer workforce
• improving peer supervision and more

EVOLUTION OF THE SHARE! LOGO

SHARE!’s first logo from 1993 depicts a hand catching a falling heart—illustrating SHARE!’s vision to catch people falling through the cracks.

In 2013, SHARE! redesigned the logo to express a beautiful tree blossoming with love–illustrating SHARE!’s mission to help people in Los Angeles pursue personal growth and change.

SHARE! empowers people to change their own lives and provides them a loving, safe, non-judgmental place where they can find community, information and support. One of SHARE!’s foundational concepts is “We love people better.”

LOCATIONS

SHARE! has always been home to self-help support groups

For its 30th Anniversary, SHARE! celebrates the hundreds of thousands of people who have found their recovery paths over the years at SHARE! The self-help center locations have changed, yet the meeting rooms still have the homey living room feel of SHARE!’s very first space.

SHARE! opened in 1993 in a leaky warehouse in Venice. Volunteers donated furniture, built meeting rooms, painted walls, and laid carpet. Talk about grassroots–they mowed the lawn and planted flowers too!

In 1994, SHARE! moved to a Mar Vista warehouse which had five meeting rooms.

SHARE! Mar Vista later relocated to Culver City, to a new building with spacious windows, high ceilings and plenty of room for expansion, which would be much needed for the growth of SHARE! Collaborative Housing.

In addition to inviting meeting rooms, each of these locations had something important to the Los Angeles recovery community–free parking!

In 2009, SHARE! Downtown opened with five meeting rooms in the heart of downtown on Broadway and 4th streets.

SHARE! is here to help. Find a self-help support group meeting to attend at SHARE! Culver City or SHARE! Downtown by following the link in SHARE!’s profile. There is something for everyone. Remember, you are not alone.

SHARE! Self-Help Centers:

MEETING DIRECTORIES:

SHARE!’s meeting directories have helped thousands of people find a wide range of self-help support groups

For 30 years, SHARE! has championed self-help support groups and hosted them at its self-help centers.

SHARE!’s first meeting directory in 1993 listed 10 self-help support group meetings a week, focusing primarily on the needs of trauma survivors and loved ones of addicts/alcoholics, in contrast to Alano clubs which focus on 12-step groups for sobriety such as Alcoholics Anonymous. The listing was a simple paper printout–it was not available online as SHARE! had no website and there was no social media.

Today SHARE! has a searchable online meeting directory for 129 meetings at SHARE! Culver City and SHARE! Downtown in Los Angeles, as well as extensive meeting boards. The meetings, which are in-person, online, and hybrid, address a wide range of issues including substance use, mental health issues and more.

SHARE! is here to help. Find a self-help support group meeting to attend at either of our locations by following the link in SHARE!’s profile. There is something for everyone. Remember you are not alone.

Click here for the online Meeting Directory

ALTERNATIVES 

Self-Help Support Group Alternatives Have Offered a Vital Lifeline Through SHARE!’s Advocacy

For its 30th Anniversary, SHARE! honors alternatives to 12-step groups. When most people think of self-help support groups, they think of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has two million members worldwide. SHARE! has always had a commitment to raising awareness of non-12-step support groups, because it’s different strokes for different folks. People are individuals–and each must find their own recovery path.

At the first SHARE! Recovery Awards in 1995, SHARE! honored James Christopher, founder of Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), which uses a non-12-step approach to abstinence including the Sobriety Priority. In subsequent years the James Christopher Award was given to many non-12-step support groups at the Recovery Awards:

• 1997 Women For Sobriety
• 1999 Project Ten, support groups for LGBTQ youth in the Los Angeles Unified School District
• 2002 SMART Recovery, which addresses substance use, gambling, smoking, disordered eating and more
• 2005 The Go-Go Stroke Club of Beverly Hills
• 2008 NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) which has support groups for family members and people with mental health issues
• 2010 SOS Secular Organizations for Sobriety

Some people find there’s too much religious content in 12-step groups, such as references to God or Higher Power. Some meetings use prayers such as the Serenity Prayer. A common slogan is “Let Go and Let God.” These are examples of religious content that make some people uncomfortable. At the same time, many agnostics and atheists participate in and benefit from 12-step programs. A Hawaiian man who was court-ordered to attend AA sued, saying that it violated his rights by forcing religion on him. He won the case.

One of SHARE!’s advocacy efforts was to educate Los Angeles drug court judges on 12-step alternatives, so that people who are court-ordered into recovery can find the right self-help support group for them. SHARE! informed the judges about alternatives such as SOS, Women For Sobriety, SMART Recovery, Recovery Dharma, Moderation Management, Refuge Recovery, LifeRing and more. No matter the problem, there’s a self-help support group for it.

Click here for the online Meeting Directory

FESTIVAL OF RECOVERY & MARATHON MEETINGS

In addition to hosting and making referrals to self-help support groups, SHARE! has organized special events which invite people to discover the self-help support group that is right for them.

At SHARE!’s annual Festivals of Recovery and marathon meetings, hundreds of people found new paths to recovery, whether from addiction, mental health issues, debt, gambling, sex addiction, divorce, co-dependence or other challenges.

For 30 years, SHARE! has carried the message of hope: “No matter the problem, there’s a self-help support group for it.”

Find a support group meeting to attend at SHARE! Culver City or SHARE! Downtown Los Angeles by following the link in our profile. There is something for everyone. Remember you are not alone.

SELF-HELP SUPPORT GROUPS ARE EVIDENCE-BASED

The Evidence is In: Self-Help Works

• SHARE! has long championed self-help support groups
• Now a National Model Standard per SAMHSA

In 1987, before SHARE! had been dreamed of, US Surgeon General Everett Koop organized a conference on self-help support groups in Los Angeles. “I believe in self-help as an effective way of dealing with problems, stress, hardship and pain,” said Koop.

The California Self-Help Center, which hosted the conference, stated, “An estimated 15 million people nationally are involved in 500,000 support groups and deal with virtually ever human concern: substance use, parenting, violence-related abuse, compulsive behavior, mental and emotional problems, physical illness, bereavement and … lifestyle issues such as aging and divorce.”

In 1994, the California Self-Help Center closed, and donated to SHARE! its self-help support group database. SHARE! became the Los Angeles County self-help clearinghouse—keeping track of all the self-help support groups in Los Angeles and making referrals to them.

For the past 30 years, SHARE! has championed the power of self-help support groups in every way–by attending them, hosting them, referring to them, organizing self-help support group events such as Festivals of Recovery, encouraging research on them and highlighting the science that demonstrates their power. For 30 years, SHARE! has carried the message of hope: “No matter the problem, there’s a self-help support group for it.”

SHARE! is proud to say that in 2023 the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) lists self-help support groups, also called mutual aid groups, as a National Model Standard for Peer Support Certification. SHARE! Chief Program Officer Jason Robison served on SAMHSA’s Technical Expert Panel in devising the standards. Please see this link for an extensive list of the research demonstrating the evidence basis for self-help support groups, which have been shown to:

• Cut the re-hospitalization of mental health consumers by 50%
• Reduce the number of days spent in the hospital by one-third
• Reduce significantly the amount of medication needed to treat mental illness
• Move large numbers of people out of the system into productive lives Empower participants to collaborate with clinical staff resulting in better adherence to medication regimes
• Effects are realized in weeks and sustained for years —
• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse Reduce demands on clinicians’ time
• Increase empowerment
• Provide community support—the suspected reason that people in developing countries recover from schizophrenia at nearly twice the rate that they do in developed countries
• Provide mentoring opportunities that improve the outcomes of both the mentor and the person being mentored
• Reduce criminal behavior
• Increase family resources and reduce family stress
• Increase consumer satisfaction

For more research click here!

SHARE! is proud to have partnered with the self-help support group fellowship, Recovery International (RI) over the past 30 years.

RI meetings use a 4-step method to cope with anger, fear, anxiety, stress, panic and more. Several RI members have served on SHARE!’s Board, and SHARE! has honored a number of members at the Recovery Awards.

SHARE! hosts 12 RI meetings weekly via Zoom with two of the meetings being hybrid (in-person and Zoom) at the SHARE! Culver City location. See the meeting schedule for RI meetings here: https://shareselfhelp.org/meetings-recovery-international/

SOBER DANCES: Libby & Tim are celebrating their 27th Wedding Anniversary (10-05-1996) after meeting at SHARE! in 1993.

SHARE! opened in 1993 on a shoestring budget with income from garage sales, meeting payments, donations from friends. To pay the rent and raise awareness, SHARE! held $3 sober dances every Friday. SHARE! co-founder Libby Hartigan painted some salvaged wood black, and glued on tin foil letters to spell P-A-R-T-Y. Tim was driving by one night, looking for a place to dance that wasn’t part of the bar scene, and he noticed the sign. He became a regular attendee–turned out he was a great dancer!

Libby and Tim fell in love and got married on October 5, 1996. Libby and Tim (pictured at the SHARE! Recovery Awards) found that SHARE! is a place where we learn to love people better. Happy 30th Anniversary, SHARE!, and Happy 27th Wedding Anniversary to Tim and Libby!

SHARE! Collaborative Housing: From a simple request for housing, a countywide solution: SHARE! Collaborative Housing

In 2005, a homeless volunteer asked SHARE! to help her find housing. It was a daunting task in Los Angeles, where affordable housing is scarce. SHARE! applied the wisdom of CEO and Founder Ruth Hollman: “For every problem, there’s an infinite number of solutions, and if I haven’t found one where everyone wins, then I haven’t included enough people yet, or I’ve involved too many.”

SHARE! drew inspiration from Apollo 13, the U.S. spacecraft which suffered an oxygen tank explosion en route to the moon. NASA Mission Control came up with a brilliant solution, saving the astronauts using only the materials existing on the spacecraft.

SHARE! brought together an informed group of individuals affected by homelessness and mental health issues. They designed a program using existing resources with the capacity to house 20,000 mental health consumers over the next five years. Thus, SHARE! Collaborative Housing was launched with a single house called Back to Basics.

Today, SHARE! Collaborative Housing, with 36 houses, is the premier non-abstinence based, housing first recovery housing for people experiencing homelessness and mental health issues. In the past year alone, SHARE! Collaborative Housing housed 531 people. For its 30th Anniversary, SHARE! is grateful for the opportunity to house people then, now and in the future.

Fun Facts:

By removing barriers, SHARE! houses people quickly

• 41% are housed within 24 hours.
• Ninety-six percent of people in SHARE! Collaborative Housing maintain housing over four years
• 49% of residents are seniors (55+)

Residents have high levels of community participation:

• 57% employed
• 75% attend self-help support groups
• 20% pursue education
• 68% volunteer

SHARE! Collaborative Housing is a public-private partnership providing affordable, permanent supportive housing to disabled people in single-family houses throughout Los Angeles County. For immediate housing in Los Angeles, call 1-877-SHARE-49

From grassroots community-building to international thought leadership, SHARE! has come a long way

In the early days of SHARE!, everyone gathered on Sundays for lunch. Ruth brought her famous soups and curries, and everyone broke bread together. Afterward, people worked on whatever needed to be done—moving furniture, mowing the lawn, planting flowers, fixing the roof, cleaning the bathroom, laying carpet, and getting donated chairs, etc. In a photo, Ruth Hollman is on the right, moving a couch with a volunteer at SHARE!‘s first location in Venice.

In 2016, SHARE! CEO and Founder, Ruth Hollman, was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Practice in Community Psychology by the American Psychological Association’s Society for Community Action and Research (SCRA). The award recognized SHARE!’s innovative approaches to housing homeless people, fostering recovery and community.

This September, Ruth was the Keynote Speaker at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, at a conference on Self-help Clearinghouses. From moving couches to becoming an international thought leader, Ruth has come a long way. We celebrate her for SHARE!‘s 30th Anniversary!

 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘!’s vision was laid out by a small group of meeting-goers brainstorming in 1991.