Bridging the Gap

Bridging the Gap Reaches Out on the Internet

Just like Bridging the Gap (BTG) committees throughout the U.S. and Canada, the Bridging the Gap Web site, www.BTGWW.org, describes its mission as providing a means for alcoholic clients in a treatment or hospital facility or inmates in a correctional facility to find a local A.A. contact near their place of release to help them make the transition from the facility to regular A.A. meetings.

The process is simple but effective. The Web site has a drop down box which lists the U.S. states and Canadian provinces where temporary A.A. contacts are available. This list is constantly being updated.

An information form can then be accessed on the Web site and filled out for or by the persons being released. These are then matched with Transition Contacts in the desired area. Special care is taken to protect the anonymity of all persons in this matching process. Once the match is made, the Transition Contacts take responsibility for getting the released persons to meetings and helping them
get settled into the A.A. community.

For many years now, BTG committees have been extending the hand of A.A. to alcoholics leaving treatment or jail. Why is this special service needed? The move from a treatment facility or prison to an outside A.A. group is sometimes confusing. The “slippery” places in the journey to sobriety are between the door of the facility and the nearest meeting. Even making the A.A. contact can seem
threatening to the person who does not know whom to call. Former prison inmates, for example, must move from a controlled and structured environment to one that requires making choices and avoiding the pitfalls that may lead to drinking. One former prison inmate with 51 years’ sobriety recalls that his first action on leaving the institution was to contact A.A. to continue the successful program he’d found in prison. For this long-time member, people who contact A.A. immediately upon release from prison are more likely to stay sober. The same might be said for alcoholics leaving treatment facilities.

For more information contact the BTG Web site or the Denver Area Central Committee of Alcoholics Anonymous Bridging The Gap Committee

SOURCE: BOX 459 Vol. 55, No. 5 / Winter 2009.