I'm Black and I'm Sober: The Timeless Story Of A Woman's Journey Back To Sanity
Chaney Allen -author, lecturer, teacher, counselor-has been joyfully sober since 1968, when she made a commitment to God and humanity to spend the rest of her life doing anything to help anybody suffering from alcoholism. She earned her Associate of Arts degree in social science from the City College of San Diego in 1977, besides taking courses in counseling at the University of Santa Cruz. Even more important to her than her prized A.A. is her "AA," the education she found in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. This background, along with her own recovery-with dignity-from the indignities of her own drinking days and her talents for helping others, have made her an authority in her field. She is a founder and member of the California Black Commission on Alcoholism and a founder of the California Women's Commission on Alcoholism. She has been associated since 1971 with the Alcoholism and Counseling Education Center (ACEC), where she has developed techniques for working with minority alcoholics. She helped organize two rehabilitation houses and played a part in establishing a women's detoxification center The Chaney Allen Women's Centers in San Diego and Cincinnati were named after her. The U.S. Naw Rehabilitation Clinic in San Diego called on her regularly to lecture counselor trainees. She has taken part in dozens of workshops around the United States, both as student and teacher, and has appeared on television and in a film, New Beginnings: Women, Alcohol and Recovery.As a young woman, Chancy Allen left her native Alabama-her strict upbringing in a CME minister's family and the unhappiness of a teenage marriage-to move to Cincinnati, where she began the destructive pattern of weekend partying and drinking. She has worked in a defense plant, in a beauty shop, at a dry cleaner's, at a country club, in food service and as a silk screener.