SPONSOR
One effect of alcoholism is that many of us are reluctant to get close to people. We have learned that it is not safe to trust, to reveal too much, to care deeply. Yet we often wish we could experience closer, more loving relationships. A gentle way of approaching this goal is through sponsorship. By asking some one to sponsor me, I express a willingness to experience more intimate relationship. My sponsor helps me to learn to receive love, but I also learn about giving. The interchange between sponsor and sponsored is a form of communication that will nourish both of you. He can be a wonderful le model. I can best put what I learn in to practice by passing it on.
Having a sponsor gives newcomers someone to talk with – someone who hopefully is well grounded in the Steps. Being a sponsor gives someone with time the chance to reach out to another in a real and practical way.
But a sponsor doesn't have all the answers; a sponsor can't keep someone sober. All a sponsor can really do is set an example and make suggestions. And the cautions against opposite sex sponsorship are worth considering. But sponsorship is not a lifetime contract. At its best it's an every deepening friendship, based on mutual honesty and self-revelation, allowing both parties to grow from their own experience, strength and hope. When it's less than that, the relationship needs to be changed. Sponsor is a guide and serves as a mentor to another new member in the fellow ship. It is a part of the recovery process.
A sponsor is a reassuring lifeline to sobriety of a new comer in the recovery program. For those who have gone through treatment, a sponsor is an introduction to AA and a mirror in which to try out their new reflection in the real world. And for those with many years of sobriety, a sponsor is a friend who knows them better than any one else in the world, who is both a sounding board and a security blanket, in good and bad times. New member can be referred to as a “sponsee” or “pigeon”.
Selecting a sponsor is a significant step in recovery. It is your sponsor you will turn to when a crisis arises. The sponsor is well along in his own recovery process, and gets to know your situation but is not emotionally involved in your life. The advice & opinions offered by him are more valuable than what your emotions will tell you. Like selecting a spouse, selecting a sponsor is very personal. The sponsor right for you might be wrong for some one else.
What Sponsor should be?
1. Availability.
2. Long sobriety-3 or 4 years.
3. Quality sobriety, which includes solid sobriety with happiness in life and respected by the group. Should be a good speaker and should have strong foundation in AA program.
4. Broad AA interests in local, regional and national programs.
5. Record of success.
6. Congeniality-Should be easy to talk and listen to-and makes you comfortable with and have confidence in.
7. Trustworthiness: So you can share your deepest and intimate feelings and problems.
8. Objectivity: Spouse, love and a friend might be appealing but not appropriate as a sponsor.
9. Same gender as the sponsee.
10. Toughness: Shows tough love and be able to confront you.
11. Compassion: Despite tough love who can point out your good points and help you build up your feelings of self-worth.
12. Compatible life style and family: Having the same kind of background.
Choosing a sponsor is important but using his experience in sobriety is more important. Don’t just leave contact to a chance? I see my sponsor almost daily. Have a regular time to speak to your sponsor daily. Confer when-ever and wherever it’s most convenient.
Fourth step should be done with the sponsor. Raise your questions and objections to his suggestions. Keep him posted as to what is happening in your life. Should there be any temptation, cravings or headed for a slip, call him immediately. Some people might need more than one sponsor.
In the end, your sponsor will be only as good as your willingness to take full advantage of the relationship.
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DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH
The Other Women
by A. Orange
Bill and Lois in Paris, in 1950.
(That is the woman whom Bill ignored because she was too much "like a mother".)
Bill Wilson taught that he was "powerless" over every urge or craving he ever had, no matter whether it was a thirst for alcohol, cravings for cigarettes, greed for money, the desire for self-aggrandizement, the temptation to lie, or the urge to cheat on his wife Lois by having sex with all of the pretty young women who came to the meetings. That's an interesting excuse for cheating on your wife, one of the more novel ones, but it doesn't wash.
Notice how such an "Admission of Powerlessness" is really just a veiled excuse to continue such behavior: "I can't quit jumping on all of the pretty young women at the meetings, because I'm powerless over my sexual urges. So I guess I'm doomed; I'll just have to keep on enjoying all of the cute young babes because I don't have any control over the situation..."
Bill Wilson was habitually unfaithful to the wife who was supporting him, both before and after sobriety. Bill was such an outrageous philanderer that the other elder A.A. members had to form a "Founder's Watch Committee", whose job it was to follow Bill Wilson around, and watch him, and break up budding sexual relationships with the pretty young things before he publicly embarrassed A.A. yet again.1
The impression that he was a ladies' man seems to have come from the way he sometimes behaved at AA gatherings. When Bill wasn't accompanied by Lois (or later, Helen), he could often be observed engaged in animated conversation with an attractive young newcomer. His interest in younger women seemed to grow more intense with age. Barry Leach, who knew Bill nearly thirty years, told me that in the 1960s he and other friends of Bill's formed what they came to refer to as the "Founder's Watch" committee. People were delegated to keep track of Bill during the socializing that usually accompanies AA functions. When they observed a certain gleam in his eye, they would tactfully steer Bill off in one direction and the dewy-eyed newcomer in another.
Bill W., A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Co-Founder Bill Wilson, Francis Hartigan, 2000, page 192.
Susan Cheever reported the same thing in her biography of Bill Wilson, although she tried hard to downplay its importance, using standard stereotypical alcoholic Minimization and Denial to claim that it didn't matter much and wasn't any big deal:
Many people in A.A. worried that Bill Wilson's sexual behavior would be discovered and reflect badly on the movement. Whether or not they were necessary, self-appointed "Bill watchers" usually stayed close to him at meetings and conferences to prevent him from interacting with attractive newcomers in a way that might appear unseemly.
My Name Is Bill; Bill Wilson -- His Life And The Creation Of Alcoholics Anonymous, Susan Cheever, page 225.
What kind of a healer or leader is that? You have to follow him around and watch him, to prevent him from sexually exploiting the newcomers?
Also notice how Susan Cheever totally ignored and avoided the important issue of the harm done to the women alcoholics who got used by Bill for his sex games and self-aggrandizement. Susan Cheever wouldn't touch that issue; she only wrote about how some silly worry-warts unnecessarily fretted over Bill's behavior, worrying that it might "reflect badly on the movement", and "might appear unseemly". Susan Cheever writes as if the women in recovery didn't matter and didn't have any feelings worth worrying about, and their recovery, their health, and their continued sobriety was of no consequence, not even worth mentioning. The women whom Bill Wilson used and exploited were treated like irrelevant objects both in Bill's sex games and in Susan Cheever's mind.
Bill Wilson just didn't want to be bothered with the hard work of resisting temptation. Like so many other phony gurus, he lived a life of hypocritical irresolute self-indulgence, preaching "spirituality", "absolute purity", "rigorous honesty", and self-sacrifice to others while indulging in all of the pleasures of the flesh himself -- with the sole exception that he does appear to have finally quit drinking alcohol after it nearly killed him.
So just how was Bill's behavior an example of a life "lived on a spiritual basis"? Besides the fact that he hypocritically yammered the words "God" and "working selflessly" all of the time, and held séances and played with Ouija boards, just what was "spiritual" about William G. Wilson?
(HINT: "spiritual" and "superstitious" are not synonyms.)
PEACE BE WITH YOU
MICKY
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