Rational Recovery (RR) was developed by clinical social worker lack Trimpey and his wife, Lois, as a non-spiritual alternative to the Twelve-Step program of recovery. Trimpey was able to overcome his 21-year addiction to alcohol after his wife demanded that he simply stop drinking altogether. Faced with this challenge, Trimpey quit Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and decided to confront his physical addiction directly. In 1986, Trimpey created a new organization, modeled on AA but emphasizing abstinence through self-reliance and rational thinking. The choice of the name Rational Recovery is a reference to the program's therapeutic foundation in rational emotive therapy (RET; now called rational emotive behavior therapy, REBT), a cognitive behavioral approach developed by Albert Ellis.

RR philosophy agrees with the Twelve-Step approach in the belief that ...

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