Why This Archive Exists

The central ideas associated with AA - powerlessness, a lifelong identity organized around alcoholism, ongoing meetings, sponsors, and continual participation in a recovery community - did not fit the way I understood myself or the kind of life I wanted to live.

Like thousands of other people I found Rational Recovery through this website, it was an epiphany in my relationship with alcohol, finally I understood clearly the mechanics of addiction. Now it was my choice what to do with it. That was over a decade ago and I am so grateful.

What Jack & Lois Trimpey and Deborah Springborn created with the “Crash Course on AVRT” simple short pages, sequential exercises, checkboxes, pop-ups, and moments where the reader had to stop and actively respond to commit before moving forward. It was elegant and powerful in its simplicity both in the concept and design.

I would recommend the site to many of my friends who wanted to stop drinking without AA. Years later I discovered that Rational.org had disappeared from the public internet. That bothered me deeply. Knowing somewhere, there would be another person like me - someone who knew they needed to change, but who did not connect with AA or a 12-Step approach.

I wanted that person to be able to find what I had found. So I began saving pages of the old site from the Internet Archive, downloaded whatever material I could recover, and started thinking about rebuilding a simple preservation archival copy of the old site.

During my efforts to preserve the site I emailed and called the numbers on the old site to see if I could help rebuild the original site, then unexpectedly, Jack Trimpey called me. He wanted to know who I was, why I was interested in Rational Recovery, and what I intended to do with the material.

That began a series of long conversations. For someone whose work had played such an important role in my own life, the opportunity to speak with Jack directly was extraordinary. He was just as intellectually sharp as one would imagine, independent, combative, curious, and unmistakably himself.

Our conversations eventually expanded beyond simply restoring Rational.org Jack was interested in taking AVRT in new directions, building on his ideas of the bicameral mind. For a period of time, I helped where I could. I assisted with setting up a Substack and other efforts to make his work more accessible.

But I eventually came to understand that I was not the person to carry Jack's new work forward in the direction he wanted to take it. That was not a role I could honestly claim. In 2025 I received my own certification as a chemical dependency counselor and decided to use my position to broaden the awareness of Rational Recovery wherever possible.

In 2026 I decided to build this site as an archive like I originally intended. I was going to surprise Jack with the archive but while digging into the work of the archive I learned of Jack’s passing in Fall of 2025. Now the goal of preserving the site was even more important to maintain the mission of Rational Recovery as an open independent platform for life altering change available to all and without restrictions.

This archive is maintained as an archival tribute project to the transformative work of Rational Recovery. Original Rational Recovery materials are attributed to Jack & Lois Trimpey and Rational Recovery wherever possible.

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