About Bill

Bill Vineyard is a husband, father of four, Kansan, and pseudo-philosopher.

His discovery of faith is based on a lifelong journey of recovery – first working to confront his own personal war against addiction, and then through a life devoted to helping the local suffering alcoholic and addict.

“Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?”
– Soren Kierkegaard. Works of Love. 1847.

From the platform of a family-owned alcohol and drug rehabilitation center, Bill worked for 35 years as a LAC conducting a myriad of group sessions from step work and cognitive activities to the complex nature of role plays and psychodramas. Over that time, he completed more than 30,000 drug and alcohol offense-related evaluations and met with thousands of outpatient and inpatient clients.

The Common Man’s Champion

Bill now works one-on-one as a friend and peer in recovery for those in need, especially those who have nowhere else to turn. He believes that within each of us, below the many masks and scars we acquire throughout our troubled lives, there still remains the core of our true self – our most natural and pure state of God-given talent, spirit, and expression.

Bill is an advocate of traditional 12-step recovery. He cherishes the Big Book and has one of the most complete and dynamic Søren Kierkegaard libraries in the nation. He enjoys front porch musings with his family, down-home organic cooking, and watching the time and the wind blow change across the Kentucky Bluegrass prairie surrounding his home.

“I have found that the process of discovering who I really am begins with knowing who I really don’t want to be.”
–Alcoholics Anonymous

His Pillars of Cool include Elvis Presley, George Jones, Blackbear Bosin, Harley Davidson, and anyone who practices the art of plumbing. When he’s not reading philosophical texts, he morphs into a history buff – a Cliff Clavin of sorts. Some of his favorite areas of study include Greco-Roman spirituality and civilization, the history of the world, psychology, and health solutions based on an organic lifestyle.

The Recovery Effect

The Recovery Effect was designed as an expressive platform for my personal studies, work experience, and spiritual mission. It is my intention to bring honest and faithful guidance to any person starved of the comfort and resolve one finds in living a life of recovery.

But by the grace of God…from my personal “trip” through life and addiction, I’ve grown to understand the alcoholic and addict quite well. I’ve also come to understand the necessity of a devout and loving recovery community. For any of you who are in immediate need, you will certainly find immediate help and love within the walls of an AA or recovery based meeting.

Please take the hatred elsewhere. If the topics presented in this blog offend you in any way, thoughtfully consider why they offend you. I am not here to impose my principles on anyone, or debate them. I merely aim to extend a helping hand to any neighbor in need. With the right mindset, you might just walk away with something useful to chew on.

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think [of himself] more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”
-Romans 12:3