A. The language of the Steps is complicated—perhaps overly complicated. Listening to people discuss them can be like listening to American history scholars debating the precise meaning of the Bill of Rights.
That’s why it’s helpful to find someone in the program to sponsor you and guide you through the Steps. They were written in such a manner that they are impossible to do all by oneself. So we choose mentors, whom we call sponsors, to take us through the Steps.
By the by, the reason we use the term sponsor when we really mean mentor goes back to the early days of AA, from around the time of its founding, in Akron, Ohio. Back then, one of the sources of potential new members for the then-unnamed fellowship was Akron City Hospital, where Dr. Bob practiced medicine. Hospital staff would identify for Dr. Bob patients who had been brought in for chronic alcoholism, and then Dr. Bob would “sponsor” or oversee their movement from the hospital’s general population to a private room.
This would facilitate the visits of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous, who would talk about their own troubles with booze and describe the spiritual solution that helped them stop and stay stopped. Strictly speaking, sponsorship meant getting a drunk a private hospital room, not mentoring him in the Steps. Time passed, and the word sponsor stuck.
As a result, we don’t look for mentors—we look for sponsors. So how do you select a sponsor? There’s really one simple test—the person “has something you want.” The formulation is deliberately vague, so as to accommodate pretty much anyone who comes to Twelve Step recovery. Maybe the person has a nice car. Or a really solid career. Maybe that’s what you want. Or maybe the person emanates a calmness, a sense of poise, that you wish you had. Or has a hot boyfriend or girlfriend. It doesn’t matter as long as whatever that person has is something you perceive as a step up from whatever you have or don’t have right now.
The idea is that if you go to enough meetings with people who are also working and living a program, you will find someone who has that special something you want and who will help you get that same thing for yourself—whether it is material, emotional, spiritual, or something else altogether.
It’s deceptively brilliant. Some meetings assign sponsors, but for the most part, the choice is left to the newcomer. We say that “We have a wrench for every nut,” which refers not just to meetings that will be appropriate and conducive for one person’s recovery but not necessarily for another’s, but also to mentor figures. The person you choose might be someone I wouldn’t relate to. Somehow it all sorts itself out.
There are pitfalls, of course. When you ask someone to sponsor you, that person may say no.
We’re not supposed to say no—we’re supposed to say yes to every Twelve Step fellowship request. But not everybody plays by all the rules, all the time. There was one moment in my recovery around the time my first child was born that I felt so overwhelmed that I had to tell my sponsees I just couldn’t continue. I resumed with some later, and some just moved on, which is fine. But by and large, whenever anyone has asked me, I’ve always said yes.
It may not work out with the first or even second person you pick. Remember that we are a nonprofessional organization and anyone with the desire to stop drinking or using can join any relevant Twelve Step program. As noted earlier, we are not saints. Some people in Twelve Step programs just don’t have great people skills. Or they talk a good game in the meetings, but when you get them one on one, the results are disappointing.
It can happen that the first person you ask becomes your sponsor for life, but it’s more likely that you will move from one to another over the course of time. I’ve had four AA sponsors through my first twenty-five years of sobriety. One has since passed away, and I am in regular contact with the other three, including the person who is my sponsor today. I cherish these relationships, as will you, I hope.
We addicts and alcoholics don’t always know a lot about love. Some of us think we know a lot about sex, but frequently we don’t know all that much about how to relate lovingly to another human being and have a relationship be successful. We know how to manipulate people through giving them the appearance of love, but when it comes to love itself, we come up short.
That’s the case until we enter into a sponsorship relationship. This is really the first time that many of us have experienced, understood, and accepted unconditional love. In Twelve Step programs, everyone is rooting for everyone else. It’s not like golf, where someone likes every shot. Nobody wants to see a fellow member of AA or NA or any A get drunk or high. We all want to see the other guy succeed.
This is one of the things that makes Twelve Step programs so special. The person you choose as your sponsor will most likely be honored that you’ve asked, and, I hope, will say yes. The act of sharing the program, which has saved our lives, with another human being desperate for the same kind of relief, is one of the most amazing things one human being can do for another. These are absolutely treasured relationships, and we do it for fun and for free. There are no dues or fees. We don’t pay our sponsors for their time. Instead, we pay it forward. We turn around and help the next person. That’s how the whole thing works.
The same thing holds true with the people we sponsor. I’ve had the privilege of sponsoring many, many men in AA, Al-Anon, and Debtors Anonymous. A few of those relationships have gone on for more than fifteen years. I love the men I’ve sponsored, and I love the fact that I can express love to others. Alas, at least three of my sponsees have died from alcohol and drug abuse; another committed suicide. Loss is part of the sponsorship experience. I don’t regret going through those losses, although of course I wish these folks had stuck with the program and survived.
Maybe if you want, at the very end of the book, I’ll tell you the story of my sponsee Kevin. It sums up why I’m so ardent about the program. Okay. But no peeking ahead to Kevin’s story. Deal?
We’ve talked about the sponsor’s role and why the sponsor is so important in the process of taking the Steps. Now let’s get back to the Steps. There are variations on doing the Steps, both of which have dance terminology attached. There’s two-stepping, which consists of taking Step One and Step Twelve and ignoring the intervening Steps. The idea here is that you acknowledge that you’re powerless over drugs or alcohol, and then you become a renowned “circuit speaker,” beloved to all and famous for carrying a fabulous message. The only problem is that you never got well by taking those other ten necessary Steps. So two-stepping is not really an effective shortcut.
There’s also the three-step waltz, which consists of taking Steps One, Two, and Three over and over again—one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. You’re not exactly waltzing your way to a better life, though. We do have nine more Steps for you. It’s terrific to acknowledge your alcoholism or addiction in the First Step, and acknowledge the fact that help exists in the Second Step, and accept the help in the Third, but why stop there? Unfortunately, many people do. They never get the full benefits of the recovery program, and their lives never develop as they might have hoped. Neither two-stepping nor the three-step waltz are recommended. That’s why having a sponsor is vital—your sponsor will “recommend” that you get Step Four and the rest of the Steps done. Otherwise, if we sponsor ourselves, we’re headed for trouble.
It’s also suggested to take the Steps in order. You don’t go out and make amends until you’ve done the earlier Steps. You don’t go out and do a Fourth Step until you’ve already accepted the spiritual help available in the first three Steps. Addicts and alcoholics like to shake their fists and rebel against everything under the sun. In this case, the wiser course might be to acknowledge that maybe those people who go to the meetings and are sober might know something, and then do the program the way they suggest.
For a long time, I lived in Southern California, and I’ve been to a lot of meetings in that area. As a friend of mine in Santa Monica meetings says, “I went to the dumb meetings. I listened to the dumb people. I read the dumb book. I took the dumb Steps. And I got really, really smart.”