After that third recovery related cartoon the ideas and my drawings started to flow. Like a mad man on a mission, I started drawing several cartoons every day. I called it my employment hobby, as I drew many of them while at work. It really helped that I was a nurse on a 28-day addiction treatment center where the patients provided a wealth of additional new material for humor. I also noticed that at several points during the 12-Step meetings I attended there would be outbursts of laughter. I focused on what the essence of the humor was that generated the laughter and noted these incidents of humor. Later I would sit down, pen in hand and turn these humorous situations into one-liner cartoons. It felt like I was pioneering new territory, as I had never seen any single-caption, 12-Step related cartoons before. My artwork in the beginning was a little rough, but I felt the humor was still being conveyed.
After a couple years of drawing, I had amassed several hundred cartoons and wasn’t sure what to do with them all. The monthly newsletter couldn’t keep up with me, so I searched for a new venue to present my work. I now had cartoons about every one of the 12 Steps and most of the 12 Traditions, so I decided to categorize the cartoons accordingly. Another dear friend, Hugh M., helped me self-publish my first book entitled Recovery Cartoons, a beautiful hardcover limited edition. The following year my wife, Beth, helped me self-publish the second book entitled Conference Approved and we created this website, www.recoverycartoons.com .
Recovery Cartoons includes a wide range of 12-Step recovery related topics including each of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, codependency, detox, treatment, research, therapy, sponsorship, relationships, sex, literature, courts, and jail. These cartoons use humor to depict the principles embodied in each of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions as adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous. The lives of the main characters are followed through the various stages of recovery in these single-framed, one-liner cartoons.