James Ryan is an addict in recovery. His sobriety date is April 6, 2001. Over the past twenty years, he has been a member in multiple Twelve-Step fellowships and been a regular at meetings around the country, from Southern California to New England. He worked as program director and family-care coordinator at a recovery retreat in New Hampshire, where he also taught cohorts of addicts to write moral inventories. James holds a PhD in composition and rhetoric and did his dissertation research on the subject of writing in Twelve-Step recovery.