As a twentysomething, male cell phone user who indulges in an alcoholic beverage from time to time, it appears I am the target demographic of a new study from the CDC that Mashable has posted about. I thought about conducting my own informal survey to see if it was true that those of us who use cellphones as our primary phone are more prone to sip adult beverages, but I don’t know anyone in my age range that actually uses a land line.
Still, I couldn’t shake this study. And I began to think that if cellphone users are more likely to drink it seems certain they’re also more likely to drink a little too much from time to time. I count myself extremely lucky to have never tangled directly with someone battling with alcoholism, but if you or someone you know is having trouble with it, there are an awful lot of apps available to assist with recovery.
If your primary concern is working on the 12 steps, there are a number of apps to assist you. The 12 Steps AA Companion ($2.99) app offers up The Big Book, packed with over 60 stories dealing with alcoholism and can be read in portrait or landscape. 12 Steps also includes a sobriety calculator, a list of prayers, and a notes page so you can copy and paste from the app text for quick reference later.
Similarly, One Day At A Time ($1.99) also offers up The Big Book, a list of daily meditations, and the ability to keep track of your friends in AA, including a handy listing of their phone numbers so they can be contacted quickly should the need arise. Users of One Day At A Time can also quickly highlight passages in The Big Book in order to quickly find them again at their leisure.
iSponsor ($3.99) is similar to the two first apps I’ve mentioned, but rather than focusing on The Big Book, it focuses on a more personal user experience. It includes a personalized calendar clock noting for how long the user has been sober, as well as user-selected auto-scrolling photos that can be used when you need to think about the best reason not to take a drink. iSponsor also comes with motivational quotes about sobriety and the ability to contact your sponsor quickly.
If you’d prefer just to listen to various Alcoholics Anonymous members talk about their journeys, AA Speakers To Go ($4.99) lets you do just that. Though it’s handy to have motivational audio files ready to go in your iTunes when you need them, one accidental play on shuffle at a party, and the anonymous part of AA becomes a lot harder to maintain. AA Speakers To Go takes care of that problem by housing all of the 400 tapes within the app so you won’t have to worry about clips popping up the next time your iTunes is set to shuffle.
There are also apps that are geared towards simply finding 12-step meetings. Steps Away (free) shows you a map view of search results for nearby meetings and also lists the speakers and readings that will be featured at each meeting.
Dealing with alcoholism isn’t something you should have to do alone, and hopefully, with these apps and the support of trusted friends and loved ones, you won’t have to.
