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About AA and AA Grapevine

Welcome

      It was at Bill W.’s kitchen table that he and Ebby T. formed the first sponsee/sponsor relationship. “He had come to pass his experience along to me—if I cared to have it,” Bill wrote in his story, the first chapter in the Big Book. “Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless.”

      Ebby T., a former schoolmate and occasional drinking buddy, had gotten sober through the Oxford Group and had been told to carry the message of hope to others. But Ebby’s message to Bill wasn’t just sympathy for a suffering man. He told Bill that if he wanted to get better, he had to change. Ebby started working with him on making amends and getting rid of character defects. “I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies,” Bill continues, describing in the Big Book the early work he did with Ebby: “We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong. ... My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me.” That message led to Bill finding Dr. Bob, and they became sponsor/sponsee. As the AA program grew and its founders began to work with others, the flame of sponsorship was passed along—and it continues to burn today.

      “In AA, sponsor and sponsored meet as equals, just as Bill and Dr. Bob did,” says the AA pamphlet, Questions & Answers on Sponsorship. “Essentially, the process of sponsorship is this: An alcoholic who has made some progress in the recovery program shares that experience on a continuous, individual basis with another alcoholic who is attempting to attain or maintain sobriety through AA.”

      In this book, members write about the joys and challenges of sponsorship, the many ways we do it, and how we consider it a vital key to staying sober as well as living a happy life. “Alcoholics recovered in AA want to share what they have learned with other alcoholics,” Questions & Answers on Sponsorship says. “We know from experience that our own sobriety is greatly strengthened when we give it away!” There is no right or wrong way to sponsor, only suggestions—each sponsor and sponsee finds his or her own path.

CHAPTER ONE

      I Would Not Stand a Chance Alone

      AA members talk about how they define sponsorship

      “Sponsorship is a bridge to trusting the human race, the very race we once resigned from. In learning to trust, we are strengthening our sobriety,” writes the author of “A Means to a Beginning.” “A sponsor’s only job (and only area of expertise) is to help fellow alcoholics not take that first drink by passing this program on to others as it was passed on to him or her in order to stay sober,” adds the author of “Shopping For a Sponsor. “The only qualification is his or her own experience learning to stay and live sober.” In the stories that follow, AAs talk about how they see and experience sponsorship.

Have You a Sponsor?

      January 1975

      What can be done for the alcoholic who is a newcomer in AA, who has suffered one traumatic experience after another, one failure after another, who is desperately willing to reconstruct his life, yet unable to do it himself? How can hope be instilled in him, to replace despair? How can a recovering alcoholic find calm and something that was never in him before—patience? How can a person who has repeatedly failed all his life be convinced that things will get better, especially when he will not even be in control of his own life?

      Like everything else in AA, the answer is simple. The key to success for the alcoholic, to repairs for an emotionally mangled life, lies in AA sponsorship. Sponsorship by its very nature demands complete honesty and gut-level communication between the sponsor and the newcomer.

      I speak from my own observations, but mostly from my own experience. I do believe God’s will is being projected through my sponsor. I thank God that my sponsor has intervened in my life when I started straying, especially when I was doing something that could interfere with someone else’s way of life. At many of these interventions, I objected vehemently, but I later accepted the fact that I was sick.

      I would not stand a chance alone. In the past, I did everything recommended by AA except getting a sponsor, and for a long time I stayed frustrated and baffled, wondering what had gone wrong.

      When I drank, I had a drinking problem that I could not handle. When I stopped drinking, I had a living problem that I could not cope with—I had no idea even where to begin. But I am stepping along now, and those steps feel a lot more secure with the help of my sponsor.

      L. W.

      Syracuse, New York

A Means to a Beginning (Excerpt)

      February 1984

      I picked out a sponsor who had reasonable sobriety, seven years, and was walking the walk. He told me, “Come follow me. I’ll show you how to …” I learned that sponsors are people with open minds, who suggest things to their “sponsees” or “pigeons.” They show us by example. They are not a means to an end, but a means to a beginning. They teach us how to participate in our own recovery by participating in life. They are a bridge to other members. Sponsors show us a picture of the whole of AA, beyond the meetings. They teach us about the Three Legacies. Sure, the first is Recovery—the Twelve Steps; but we must also keep this thing together—Unity, the Twelve Traditions; and we must carry the message—the Third Legacy, Service, guided by the Twelve Concepts.

      The AA pamphlet “Questions and Answers on Sponsorship” states, “Experience shows clearly that the members getting the most out of the AA program, and the groups doing the best job of carrying the AA message to still-suffering alcoholics, are those for whom sponsorship is too important to be left to chance.”

      Sponsorship is a bridge to trusting the human race, the very race we once resigned from. In learning to trust, we are strengthening our sobriety. And the benefit goes two ways. The Big Book best explains this: “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.” Or, to quote a friend and longtime AA member: “A man is no fool to give away something he cannot keep in order to get something he cannot lose.”

      M. S.

      Grand Island, Nebraska

Shopping For a Sponsor

      May 2003

      It took many years (and many relapses) before I understood the value of sponsorship. I had to learn the hard way that the word “I” does not exist in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was my own sponsor for many years, and I got the results one might expect: repeated relapses, much frustration, and a deep sense of failure. I did not find the happiness, sense of purpose, and joy I heard about from others in Alcoholics Anonymous until I surrendered, and we (my sponsors and I) started to walk this journey together.

      Newcomers frequently ask me how to choose a sponsor. Looking back, I now see that I’ve probably spent more time choosing a dress or CD than I’ve spent choosing the person who would help me with the most important task in my life—living sober, one day at a time.

      Today, I am blessed with two wonderful sponsors, both solid AAs, and each a gift from God, who came when I became willing to become teachable. From their examples, this is what I have learned about what sponsors are and are not.

      What sponsors are not:

      Sponsors are not guidance counselors, marital counselors, lawyers, nor doctors. (I have seen tragic results from well-intentioned sponsors advising their sponsees to discontinue medications without their regular doctors’ consent.)

      Sponsors are not bankers, mortgage