Dear Essay readers,

As we considered our options for the “old-timers” theme of this edition, we looked firstly at limiting ourselves to articles from members with 30+ years’ sobriety—all but one of these would be from the US, but thought this too narrow. Therefore, we decided to broaden the review, taking articles from members who are not simply sober for years, but that each of them would have either the longest sobriety or be a pioneer in his/her country.