A young person was talking about how few of her fellow graduates stayed clean and sober after leaving the state licensed treatment program she went through. While she had recently celebrated three years, she said there was maybe one other contemporary who hadn't relapsed.

Her comment interested me because TLC is a totally peer-driven program. And even though we are a nonprofessional, privately-funded program, I believe our success equals that of many costly treatment programs.

I don't write this to bash treatment programs that use certified counselors and physicians. In fact, I'm a certified counselor. But I believe there are many approaches to helping others get sober. Some get sober in church, in counseling, or because they fall in love. There are many ways to get sober.

I write this because probably I'm reacting to governmental bodies that periodically try to close our program. My reaction is probably emotional. After all, I got sober in a halfway house where I lived for a year working my way back into the community. And I've seen thousands of others get sober in peer-driven situations.

It's a beautiful thing when addicts and alcoholics help each other into sobriety. When this process works it's best, as it does at TLC, it's a low-cost solution to substance abuse. And from one perspective it makes it makes sense. After all, didn't other alcoholics and addicts introduce us to our disease? Not many of us woke up one day and said I think "I'll become an alcoholic." Or "maybe I'll be a drug addict." Many of us were introduced to drugs and alcohol by our families, friends, or schoolmates. It makes sense to me that we could lead each other out of this wilderness of substance abuse.

At this writing we have nearly 600 people in our program. It's refreshing when I go to the houses and see how well they are functioning in sobriety. Many of our staff members have never held a management job or ran a therapy group. Some of them have never sat down in front of a computer. Nor have they handled other people's money.

Yet, to an outsider it would seem like they've been helping others all their lives. Peer-driven recovery is a viable solution that has helped many substance abusers into recovery.