Grapevine Quote of the day for May 7, 2017.
“Everyone’s recipe for serenity is different. It’s like vegetable soup — nobody makes it quite the same.
“Chestertown, N.Y., January 2006, “Circles of Sobriety,” AA Grapevine.
This topic is one of those subjects where, if you write what’s popular, the old-timers will love you. If you don’t, you can guess how popular you will become, and it won’t be good. However, this is my story and my personal opinion, which we all have a right to say.
The favorite thing to say would be, “I have a sponsor, who has a sponsor, who had a sponsor, who had a sponsor,” but if I’m sincere, which is what I try to be, it isn’t my story. Right or wrong, it’s the way I did it.
Here is a brief history of why I chose not to have a sponsor, or at least the way it’s discussed in AA meetings. It started with growing up in an alcoholic home. Promises were made and broken daily. My father left us kids to deal with a drunken mother when he died drunk in a car crash. I learned early in life how people can’t be trusted. Then, after 25 years of my own alcoholism, I entered my first meeting. It was then that I was told I needed someone to run my life, as I was incapable of making sound decisions myself. I was an engineer in a responsible position with a company I’d worked for for twenty years. I need someone to run my life? I don’t think so!
I attended meetings daily for my first ten years. Since then, the number of meetings has been reduced slightly.
My first attempt at asking a fellow AA to be my sponsor wasn’t very successful. After a year of contemplating and making a careful choice, the guy I picked seemed to be perfect. I finally asked him, and he said yes. Two days later, he called, wanting my help with a twelve-step call. We sat at a kitchen table and watched our prospect drink Vodka while we made arrangements for him to enter a rehab. When the guy changed his mind, we left. I went to a meeting, and my new sponsor went to the liquor store. He stayed drunk for the next three years, and that proved my point: how can I trust anyone?
During those early years, I did have friends. I talked with people about my emotional problems, which were many. I entered therapy with a counselor who had experience in alcoholism and used her as a sort of sponsor. I guess I was working the program, just not in a conventional way, but it worked for me. I somehow thought that if I was paying the person to help me, they could be trusted.
After staying sober for ten years, I finally arrived at step nine and made the necessary amends to feel better about myself. Many hours looking into the mirror and forgiving the person looking back landed me where I am today, which is, “I love who I have become.”
Right now, at thirty-one years sober, I can honestly say I don’t have a “sponsor” as the program defines it. I do have close “friends” who I talk with daily, and have at least one person who knows all of my secrets.
My program is THE RECOMMENDED approach. I agree wholeheartedly that having a sponsor is the easiest way to recovery and ridding ourselves from a hopeless state of mind. I didn’t choose the “easier, softer way.”
I would say, “do as I say, not do as I do,” but if you have trust issues to the extent I had, sobriety can still be achieved if you are willing and have a connection with a power greater than yourself.
Come to find out, I am not unique in not having a traditional sponsor. I have asked around and found, at least among those I asked, that half of them didn’t have a sponsor or had one in name only. In reading Chuck C’s book “A New Pair of Glasses,” he had never had a sponsor. Like I said, this is not the easiest, softer way. The point is, don’t let any of AA’s suggestions or so-called things you must do if you are to stay sober keep you away from the program.
Road To Recoveries 