Addicts Are Cousins – Not Brothers

Once people like you and me and others who actually recover from this thing experience it actually happening to us and then watch as it also works with others to whom WE in turn pass it on, the light bulb goes off and we can see clearly why it works. We can also gain insight into why others methods or half measures fail.

A man asked me to sponsor him a while back, last summer I think, maybe longer. We got together and he told me he was a heroin addict. I said fine, and continued to probe him about his history.

Nice enough guy. Lots of suffering. Truly in need.

But it came out that he really was not an alcoholic, but a drug addict. He was going to AA meetings because he was told that a drug is a drug us a drug, and that AA had a better track record than other Fellowships.

I had to turn him down.

I was looking for another person to sponsor, so it would have been easy to grab him for MY sake, but I swatted my ego away like a buzzing skeeter, and said I would not be a good sponsor for him.

He was disappointed; because he said I was the first person, he met since rehab who seemed to walk the talk and who really understood the Program. He had heard me speaking around and someone actually suggested to him that he find me for sponsorship. (I do not mind being “stalked” under such conditions) He said that he liked my “zeal”. LOL. (My wife jokes about my so-called “zeal” and tells other AAs that her curse is living with a sober cartoon character, whatever that means) He looked so disappointed. He did not understand when I said, “I might kill you.”

What I said to him came totally off the cuff, and it was the first time I had ever said it in these words, but I try to remember those words because I think they were put into my mouth at the right time, not so much for him to hear but maybe for me to hear.

I said, “Joe we may get along just fine. We could become great friends and maybe learn a lot from each other — but at some point we are going to be sitting down at a table from one another, and I am going to be talking, and you are going to look at me, listen to me talk about my experience with booze and say to yourself ” Holy Shit – this guy has absolutely no idea of what I am talking about” . You will be right – and you will be dead, Joe.”

He did not get it then. I hope to God he got it finally.

There is no way that every human nook and every human cranny of a human being can be filled with the amount of unbreakable confidence and incredible trust that needs be placed, consciously and unconsciously, in another person, than what is required for that person to take the drastic and necessary steps it takes to recover from what ails him, if there is the slightest doubt that THIS man has walked one hundred percent in his shoes and has walked the same exact road as he.

Experience with working with others teaches this. Not Big Book theory and round robins at 12 & 12 meetings. Not rehab counselors. Not old-timers. Not hearing things at lots of meetings.

I have harmed my fair share of drug addicts with my own ignorance on this matter – been to their funerals – hugged their wives – cried with their mothers and kissed the foreheads of their little kids. But no more. I have done it too many times only being in this business eight years.
What I have just conveyed above comes from experience, which is only gained through action. Not through reading or listening.

Not by worshipping this Program, not be thumping these pages, not by becoming a Big Book attorney.

Only experience.

Peace,

Danny S