Sponsorship Experience

Sponsorship was also been key to me – to my recovering in the first place and staying that way too through serving to others. I was taught that unless I work with others through the 12 steps, I cannot stay sober myself. I believe it is the very reason God has taken me through these steps, granted me a full recovery and given me tools to stay in shape for Him.

I came to AA to stop drinking and I wound up spiritually awakened and a sponsor with real power.

I must have recovery to transmit in the way of recovery, beyond that it really comes down to my, ability or experience.

One of my protegee is only three months sober and he is already sponsoring three men through our 12 Step Program. It is absolutely miraculous to watch these men at work. The “wait a year” BS I am used to pales in comparison to the miracles of recovery I are witnessing right now in our little Beginners Big Book Step Meeting up here.

Why would ANYONE want to hold onto this for themselves one whole year before passing it on to others? My Big Book tells me that as recovered alcoholics, we have been given the power to help others – hardly powerlessness.

The clock is ticking with these suffering men. They, their little children and wives wait with tears in their eyes and it IS a race — the obsession to take the next first drink is coming. And I am in no position to pretend to them that I KNOW when that it going to be. It might be today. Unless that obsession has been removed, as promised, my protogee could be a dead man by tomorrow. Am I am going to tell them “Easy Does It?

Is THAT what EASY DOES IT means? It reminds me of when Bill W. said how he felt whenever he saw men, barely 6 months sober, recovered from this disease, working intensely with others.

“Watch any A.A. of six months working with a Twelfth Step prospect. If the newcomer says, “To the devil with you?, the twelfth-stepper only smiles and finds another alcoholic to help. He doesn’t feel frustrated or rejected. If his next drunk responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other sufferers, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn’t feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his former prospect is sober and happy.

And he well knows that his own life has been made richer, as an extra dividend of giving to another without any demand for a return.” (Bill W. – GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958)

SIX MONTHS and they were working with others?

I guess no one told Bill W that they first needed a YEAR of meetings under their belts. (Where does crap like that come from anyway?) What “controversy” and “SCANDAL” to the Fellowship “Suggestors” who are killing people with advice they have no idea about — no basis of experience — no right to foster on the real alcoholic who will die unless he carries THIS message of AA and not some other self styled malarkey designed to fit “Their” messages.

What it comes down to, I believe, is love.

• Do I have enough love in me to take this phone call? This late at night? On a Sunday?
• Have I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps and have THIS message to pass on by taking another man through the steps?
• Do I have enough love in me to stay up late and have coffee with this man, when I am so dammed tired?
• Do I have enough love to stay after the meeting for an hour or maybe two, when I had planned to go home?
• Do I have enough love in me to go speak with this man’s wife? On a SUNDAY? When I could be with my family?
• Do I speak and act from a position of experience and love of the 12 Steps or am I talking out of my ass, about a Program which I have never done – which I do not live myself and for which I only have opinions and no experience?

All of my life, I thought that love was just an emotion or a feeling. A good feeling that was just this side of some sort of ecstasy. I was wrong. I was selfish. Love is ACTION. It is things that I DO, nothing that I feel.

Feeling love is selfish, acting love selflessness.

I have never known love until I began sponsoring other alcoholics through this thing, and began working with them even more intensely than any job task, home project or goal I have ever taken on. I need excellent sponsorship myself. And I do my very best to be an excellent sponsor to others.

I recently received a phone call from one protogee who just wanted to thank me for some time I had spent with him recently during a rough emotional situation, and he told me that I was “a great sponsor.”

That is something that I never expect to hear, but I will tell you, I feel that it was God’s way of letting me know I am barking up the right tree.

I hope everyone has such experiences.

Peace,

Danny S