THE REALITY OF RECOVERY, UNADORNED, ON CABLE

LOS ANGELES -- If you've ever encountered Bob Dey while channel surfing,
you may have had cause to rethink your definition of reality television.
His on-screen world -- one without tribal warfare, $1 million prizes or
more-than-minimal production values -- is about as real as it gets.

Mr. Dey has battled addictions and emotional disorders most of his adult
life. He is not an actor, but, speaking without a script, he manages to
eloquently describe his overwhelming cravings, his delirium tremens, his
depressions -- and the insights he has gained along the path to sobriety.

"My bottom came when I couldn't even make it to work," he says on
"Testimony," an aptly named half-hour series which consists of one person
talking, without visible prompting, about some of the most personal issues
imaginable. "I kept the curtains closed in my bedroom because it hurt to
have the sunlight streaming in. Every now and then I'd peek out through a
crack and take a look at the world outside. I'd think to myself: 'That's
life that's going on out there. And you're missing it.' "

Mr. Dey, along with dozens of other everyday people embroiled in the webs
of substance abuse and emotional disorders, is an on-screen participant in
an unusual, little-seen television entity called the Recovery Network.
Unlike the dramas, comedies and newsmagazines elsewhere on TV, which use
topics like alcoholism, drug use and depression as grace notes in their
depictions of life, the Recovery Network's programming concentrates almost
entirely on the first-person struggles of people like Mr. Dey and their
friends and family members.

"No, watching television isn't a substitute for going to a self-help
meeting," said Mr. Dey, a retired feature writer and handicapper for The
Daily Racing Form, over lunch near his Hollywood-area home recently. "But
there's something about watching a peer-led meeting that's so much more
effective than having a professional tell you what to do. If you see, say,
an alcoholic talking to another alcoholic who's still using and abusing --
and telling him, I know exactly what you're going through because I went
through it too, and this is what I did, and this is what I do today to stay
clean and sober -- it has so much more meaning."

The four-year-old network, based in Irvine, Calif., and available on cable
in close to 15 million households nationwide, runs occasional documentaries
on addiction and subjects related to emotional illness, a "wellness" show
whose host is the author Gary Null and a program called "Overcoming
Overeating." But its signature series are "Testimony" and "Full Circle" --
simple programs in which recovering individuals, singly and in groups of 10
or 12, ignore the camera while starkly recounting their successes and
failures. Most episodes were filmed in 1997, and -- this is low-budget
television, just a step above public access -- have been rerunning
constantly since then.

Under the "Full Circle" rubric, groups of adults battling problems like
alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, spousal abuse and mental
illness -- and coping with how their problems affect their loved ones --
sit on couches in a nondescript meeting room and speak at the behest of an
unobtrusive moderator.

The "Full Circle" groups "meet" for 13 one-hour episodes. The group members
give up at least part of their anonymity, although no last names are used.
The participants come from all economic strata and range from alcoholics
who have been sober for decades to drug addicts shuttling from residential
treatment centers. They were recruited by Share, a Los Angeles-based
nonprofit organization that serves as an umbrella for self-help groups, and
were given $25 a day for expenses.

In "Testimony," "Full Circle" participants are given a half-hour to tell
their stories uninterrupted.

Regular viewers of the Recovery Network eventually get to know the
"regulars." These include people like Diane, a professional woman and
recovering bulimic who recalls being molested as a child and becoming a
straight-A college student with an encyclopedic knowledge of her campus's
least-frequented bathrooms -- where she went to throw up after her periodic
eating binges; Steve, a musician who began taking drugs at 11, burned out
his nose with cocaine use, has "been to jail quite often" and whose
proudest accomplishment to date is being trusted to answer the telephone at
his current rehabilitation facility; Mike, the son of an abusive "rage
aholic," whose wife had broken her promise not to abandon him to tend to
her two addicted adult children from a previous marriage; and Mr. Dey, who
faced disapproval from longtime members of his alcoholism 12-step group for
his use of antidepressants -- and found solace in a more tolerant group of
12-step "double trudgers" (addicts with emotional disorders who trust both
in a higher power and in psychiatric medication).

Although an on-screen disclaimer at the beginning of "Full Circle" states
that "it is not intended to be a 12-step meeting," and no mention is made
of Alcoholics Anonymous, any of its offshoots or tools like "The Big Book"
or "The Twelve Traditions," it's obvious that the organization's techniques
and philosophies are being enthusiastically embraced.

Another parallel to Alcoholics Anonymous, albeit an unintentional one, is
the Recovery Network's low public profile. The network does not have cable
channels of its own. Instead it is carried at odd intervals, usually for
several hours late at night, on public and governmental access channels.

In Los Angeles, for instance, it appears on cable Channel 36 from 10 p.m.
to 2 a.m. daily. In Chicago it pops up on Channel 23 from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m.;
in Las Vegas on Channel 2 from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

In the New York area it is seen in the Bronx on Channel 46 from 6:30- 7:30
a.m. and in various New Jersey communities, including Bayonne, Belmar,
Bergen, Creskill, Hoboken, Hudson, Monmouth, Newark and Union City, at
various times and on various noncommercial channels.

The availability of the network would probably be news to most of the
households that receive it, since its programming is rarely if ever listed
in TV Guide or local newspapers. Still, it receives hundreds of letters of
thanks, most often from relatives of people with addictions or emotional
problems. They write that after watching the programs, they are better able
to understand the problems they and their loved ones may or may not have
come around to acknowledging.

Local cable operators report a positive and unexpectedly vigorous reaction
to the channel. "All of the area support groups whose phone numbers we list
on the channel are very happy that we run it," said Joyce Gallagher, the
cable television administrator for the city of Chicago. "As for me
personally, I believe it's a life-giving service."

Steven Grace, president of Channel 36 in Los Angeles, said: "I don't have
any hard ratings figures, but just talking with friends and people I meet
with during the day, it seems we're satisfying a huge need and inspiring
hopeful solutions.

"In fact, when I told the woman who runs the coffee shop I stop at every
morning that I worked at Channel 36, she said: 'Oh, sure. I know it. That's
the Recovery Network.' "

The Recovery Network is provided free to local cable operators, its
programs separated by public service advertising. It is not an altogether
altruistic enterprise, however.

The network was conceived in the mid-1990's as a commercial channel, in
anticipation of the 500-channel basic-cable systems that seemed imminent.
That market didn't materialize, and the network is now a nonprofit arm of
RnetHealth Inc., a publicly traded company that recently underwent a
downsizing and restructuring. RnetHealth, among other things, sells courses
and teaching aids to institutions and individuals dealing with
substance-abuse problems and emotional illnesses.

Wendy Boros-Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Rnet Health,
said she would soon begin soliciting PBS-style corporate underwriting for
the network. The company is not aggressively promoted on the Recovery
Network's programs, but the name of its Web site is occasionally flashed.

The programming, she said, perhaps a bit wishfully, is a good fit with the
rest of RnetHealth. "If you really look at who could be watching us," she
said during a recent interview, "we are aiming at people who not only are
affected by drug abuse, alcohol abuse and other behavioral disorders, but
the people we call 'affected others.' Their families. Their employers.

"The truth is that almost all of us know somebody who is having problems.
When you extrapolate those kinds of things into a potential audience, it's
mindboggling -- it's over 100 million people."

Bob Dey, who has been an active volunteer staffer for several self- help
groups, had no qualms about being named in an article. Despite having
received just the $25 a day for his appearances on "Full Circle" and
"Testimony," he has no objections to the Recovery Network's being connected
to a profit-making enterprise.

But he does see its basic mission from a slightly different angle than does
Ms. Boros-Johnson.

"I think networks and programs like these can have a tremendous effect," he
said. "One of the biggest assets to those kinds of shows is just the single
fact that it gets out the message: I am not alone.

"So many people who have an addiction or mental illness suffer both from
their symptoms and sensations and from feeling so alone and inadequate to
life. What these shows do is say: you're not alone. Look at this body of
people here who have suffered, maybe for years, from what you're suffering
from. And yes, there is hope."