Questions and Answers on Sponsorship (contd)

The AA (General Service conference approved) booklet: Questions and Answers on Sponsorship

Extract:

“May a newcomer change sponsors?

We are always free to select another sponsor with whom we feel more comfortable, particularly if we believe this member will be more helpful to our growth in A.A.

If a newcomer has received a thorough course of treatment and indoctrination in an alcoholism program outside A.A., will a sponsor still be needed in A.A.? Is a special approach needed?

The alcoholism programs of government, industry, and other agencies are referring more and more alcoholics to A.A. These newcomers usually reach us in a physically dry condition, at a somewhat later stage in recovery than the shaking newcomer of the past. Detoxification is often weeks and even months in the past and the physical compulsion to drink is gone. But the mental obsession with alcohol may still be there and, as A.A. groups that have welcomed such newcomers generally believe, sponsorship is necessary as soon as possible to help overcome that obsession.

This newcomer may have learned many medical facts about the disease of alcoholism. But learning about alcoholism in an institutional setting is one thing, and functioning as a sober alcoholic in a drinking world is quite another, we find.

The sponsor is ready to share experience in how to cope with this situation. The sponsor’s personal experience can enable the newcomer to find guidance in applying A.A. principles to everyday life — just as any other newcomer does who arrives at A.A.’s doors for help.

Is it ever too late to get a sponsor?

No. An A.A. who has been in — or “around” the Fellowship for many years often finds that getting a good sponsor, talking frankly, and listening can make the whole program open up as it never did before. Most A.A.s feel that sponsorship is a vital part of their ongoing growth and progress in recovery, including persons who have long term sobriety.

Sponsorship can be the answer for the person who has been able to achieve only interludes of sobriety or has attended meetings casually and has not really taken the First Step. For such a person, a sponsor with a firm grounding of sobriety in A.A. can make all the difference.

Even if we have many dry years behind us, we can often benefit by asking an A.A. friend to be our sponsor. We may have been feeling discontentment or real emotional pain because we forgot that the A.A. program offers a whole new way of life, not just freedom from alcohol. With a sponsor’s help, we can use the program to the full, change our attitudes and, in the process, come to enjoy our sobriety.”

(our emphasis)

Comment: Oh dear, oh dear! Is a sponsor necessary? The quick answer is no! Necessary means (among other things):

1. Absolutely essential. See Synonyms at indispensable.

2. Needed to achieve a certain result or effect; requisite: the necessary tools.
3.
a. Unavoidably determined by prior conditions or circumstances; inevitable: the necessary results of overindulgence.
b. Logically inevitable.
4. Required by obligation, compulsion, or convention: made the necessary apologies.
n. pl. nec·es·sar·ies
Something indispensable.

Sponsorship, therefore, is NOT “absolutely essential” to recovery; “willingness, honesty and open-mindedness”, however, are. (See AA, Appendix II, Spiritual Experience).

Sponsorship is NOT “inevitable”.

Sponsorship is NOT “required by obligation, compulsion, or convention” (except in cult circles).

Finally sponsorship is NOT “indispensable” (It's worth remembering here that bit about “probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism” but “that God [of your understanding] could and would if He were sought”?) (AA, Chapter 5, How It Works, p. 60)

You may or may not choose to have a sponsor (with the consent of that person of course). You may or may not find them helpful. But that's up to you - not them! And of course there are plenty of people OUTSIDE AA who it might be helpful to talk to from time to time e.g. your doctor if you get ill, a counsellor or a psychiatrist if you're experiencing psychological or emotional problems, a religious 'professional' it you want to get some advice in this area, an accountant for your financial affairs (tax avoidance etc – irony!), a lawyer (for legal questions), relationship counselling (by a professionally trained adviser) etc etc. In other words it might be wise to consult somebody who actually knows what they're talking about rather than some 'font of all wisdom', 'know-it-all' sponsor. The best sponsor of course is the one who frequently says things like: “I don't know”, or “I haven't go a clue. What do you think?”, or “How do you see the problem?” and so on..... Geddit!!

Of course you can always dispense with sponsorship altogether and just have a chat with a FRIEND, someone who doesn't need a title in order to relate to you or who feels obliged to TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, who respects you enough to recognise you're an adult and quite capable of making your OWN DECISIONS. What a curious concept! (yet more irony!).

Finally – NO sponsorship is ALWAYS better than bad sponsorship!

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

(to be continued)