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James Christopher, a sober alcoholic since April 24, 1978, originally attended Alcoholics Anonymous, but broke from AA early in his recovery due to his discomfort with the AA approach. Staying sober with his own "Sobriety Priority" program, he went on to found SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety / Save Our Selves) in 1985. He arranged for the first SOS self-help support group to be held in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California on a Monday evening in November, after giving numerous public lecturers and authoring numerous articles dating back to 1984. the key article "Sobriety without Superstition" was published in the national periodical Free Inquiry and received worldwide responses from recovering alcoholics and addicts, treatment professional and the media.
James Christopher has since authored four books: How to Stay Sober (Prometheus Books, 1988), Unhooked (Prometheus Books, 1989), SOS Sobriety (Prometheus Books, 1992) and Escape from Nicotine Country 
(Prometheus Books, 1999). He was also a contributor to Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook (Third Edition, Williams and Wilkins). Soon he plans to release his fifth book, about his reasons for leaving AA, to get sober on his own and go on to found S.O.S.
SOS has grown from one meeting in Los Angeles to a data base of over 20,000 members worldwide. Each SOS meeting is autonomous and held on an anonymous basis at no charge to participants and stresses James Christopher's "Sobriety Priority" abstinence-based, self-empowerment method.
James Christopher has appeared on over 300 radio and television shows and the SOS alternative has received extensive coverage in hundreds of print media feature articles including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the British Guardian, Newsweek, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Glamour, Playboy, Modern Maturity, Professional Counselor and Sober Times.
James Christopher worked as Program Director for Priority One, an outpatient treatment facility in Beverly Hills, California for two years. He moved the SOS International Clearing House to Amherst, New York, in June 1990, accepting sponsorship by CSH, an international humanist organization. The SOS movement is separately incorporated as a non-profit organization and has been publishing a quarterly newsletter since 1987.
The US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration includes SOS in its official literature; the US Congress Employee Assistance Program subscribes to the SOS Newsletter, and since 1987, the Los Angeles Court system, as well as numerous courts across the US, have offered SOS as a viable recovery choice to persons mandated to attend a self-help program.
In February 1995 James Christopher returned to the Clearing House to Los Angeles and currently divides his time among three activities: SOS Clearing House duties, holding recovery workshops across the US and abroad, and doing research on the evolution of the SOS Sobriety Priority program, described by James Christopher as the "CVS Method" (Cognitive / Visceral Synchronization).