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The birth of this blog came out of a conversation between myself and my friend Brian regarding sponsorship in later sobriety. For me the question itself started when I found myself at about 9 years of sobriety suddenly faced with having to find a new sponsor because my sponsor of many years suddenly needed to stop sponsoring people for reasons of his own.
So I set out to look for a new sponsor. First I started by asking some of the people I knew who had more than a few years of sobriety, who their current sponsor was. It turned out a majority of the people I asked had switched sponsors at some point later in sobriety. Changing sponsors later in sobriety was so common that it seemed keeping the same sponsor was the exception not the rule.
Some people changed sponsors because their old sponsor had moved, or died, or sometimes even drank. Some felt they had outgrown their previous sponsor. Others felt they needed just help in some area of their life that was no longer compatible with their current sponsor's methods. Some just grew apart or lost contact. Either way the biggest surprise was that roughly half of everyone I asked with more than 5 years of sobriety told me they no longer had an actual sponsor anymore. Instead they had a handful of close friends in sobriety whom they trusted. They simply kept in regular contact with a few sober friends who who trusted and called it good.
And so the topic of finding and/or needing a sponsor in later sobriety was placed in front of me. I needed to figure out if I felt I needed a sponsor after all this time, and for that matter, why. It was suggested I start by reading the pamphlet "Questions and Answers on Sponsorship". I also read what Bill wrote on the topic from the point of view of having nobody "in front of him" in AA. I also read and got a lot out of the book "The Soul of Sponsorship". In other words, I did the footwork.
Once I had that question answered I needed to know: What I did I now want in a sponsor? For me it was a question of growth. What areas of my life did I feel I needed to grow in? I certainly didn't feel I needed a sponsor to tell me to not drink, or to go to meetings, or even what page the 3rd Step prayer was on in the Big Book. So what did I was a sponsor going to do for me?
It were these kinds of questions that seemed self-evident in the beginning, but in the end made me dig down deeper than I had before. It had me questioning what I was made of, which direction I wanted to go in, and what I wanted out of sobriety. In other words I found I needed to go deeper.
In the end that's the conversation Brian and I werehaving when he asked me "Have you ever thought of (or know of) a web site for discussing stuff like this?"
Well, here it is. What's your experience?
Monday, May 31, 2010
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I've had a similar experience. For my first few years of sobriety I didn't have a sponsor. My home group was thin on men one would look to for guidance and I think I took the guideline about sponsor and sponsee being of the same gender too strictly. (Now THERE'S a topic for discussion.) Anyway, I finally did find a guy who helped me through the steps and then moved across the continent. He was referred to me by one of the women in that home group. I had never met him before phoning and asking him to be my sponsor, which is hardly the orthodox path.
ReplyDeleteI chose a very experienced AA who's sobriety and insight I respected for my next sponsor. One of the reasons I chose him was that he went to one of my regular meetings. His schedule changed, we stopped physically encountering each other and things went downhill from there. (As you can see, I'm not the world's best sponsee.)
I chose my current sponsor after doing a limited version of the kind of inventory you describe. I decided that I wanted to ramp up my 12th step work, so I chose a real 12th step junkie from my current home group. We'll see how this works out.
I'm going to make some general reflections on sponsorship and the stages of recovery in a separate post.
Sponsorship and the stages of recovery.
ReplyDeleteI think Bill W. was only slightly exagerating when he referred to AA as a 'spiritual kidergarten'. Over the last year or so I've been leaning more and more to the view that the first 11 steps are all about humility and the 12th step is about starting to move on and do something on the basis of that humility.
In a sense I view AA as a training camp for some spiritual mountaineering. It's where you learn and work on the basics of your spirituality (and I think that comes down to humility) and you then go in your particular direction from there. That is not to say that you in any way 'graduate'. You've learned the basics, the drill, you now know how to do your push-ups. You don't stop working on those basics. If you stop doing your push-ups you end up looking like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. You will probably periodically have to go back to the training camp for refreshers (AWOLs, for example). However, the basics are the entry to the path, they are not the whole path. The training is not the climb.
Once we are solid in our 12 steps we begin to really explore our spirituality. We've been doing that to a limited degree from the start, but now we really get climbing. The important thing here is that we each go our own way, be it within an organized religion, within a raditional monotheistic western spirituality, or in a less traditional direction (pantheism, atheism, polytheism...).
This climb, the second stage of recovery/spiritual growth puts very different demands on sponsorship. The relationship is now much less that of master and apprentice and much more that of companion on the journey. The sponsor and sponsee don't have to be following the same spiritual path. A Christian can sponsor an atheist as long as both recognize that they are both trying to grow in love and joy, the directions they became aware of as they began to grow in humility back there in training camp.
One of the things that attracts me to this view of AA is that it strongly reinforces the open, 'non-denominational' nature of the fellowship. For years I had a lot of trouble with meetings closing with the Lord's Prayer. There is just no way around the fact that the Lord's Prayer is the quintessential Christian prayer. I now find it quite acceptable PROVIDED it is viewed as an expression of one spiritual path that can be based on the 12 Steps. The test for a group would come if a meeting chair asked to end with a Hymn to the Earth Mother or a plea that The Force Be With Us.
I don't by any means think that all spiritual paths are equally valid, not to mention equally intellectually coherent. If someone, for example, proposes a prayer that clearly conflicts with the spirit of the 12 Steps we have every right to invoke a group conscience and put a stop to it. To take a deliberately extreme (and offensive) example, meetings should not end with a hearty 'Seig Heil'. But short of that, however much we may find a member's spiritual path as unattractive to us we must acknowledge it as being useful to them and let it go. For me, this view of the place of the 12 Steps in the stages of spiritual growth helps reinforce that openness.
A few thoughts from one with medium-term sobriety but long term sober experience and lots of immediate crises to deal with:
ReplyDeleteWHAT IS LATE SOBRIETY? I stopped drinking and became active in AA in the late 80’s; I relapsed for about a year in the early 00’s; I’ve been sober again, continuously, for 7 years (and 4 days ). So I've had more than one experience of "later sobriety," and my current 7 years represent a kind of "late sobriety" when understood in the context of my more than 21 years actively on this path: I never for an instant left AA ... not before my relapse, not during, and most certainly not after.
LATE SOBRIETY IS A LOT ABOUT CONSCIOUS MIDDLE AGE. In some ways, my being in late sobriety is much the same thing as my being a conscious person who's been trying to keep growing better and upward toward the light, so to speak - even while I was drinking on and off (just not, at that point, too successfully!). As part of that process, I have made membership in AA one – but only one – of several core “identities” (also including my professional identity, my identity as a woman, as a person of certain social and political convictions, and so on). As an AA, I’ve had sponsors – a few so-so ones and a few fabulous ones (for their times in my life). But I’ve always been pulled to Bill W’s insistence that this thing is about the joy of living – which allows us to move out of and beyond AA. Today, then, any good AA sponsor will offer guidance that both enriches my life in AA and encourages its possibilities and developments outside of AA.
MY 7 YEARS TODAY MEAN A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN MY DOUBLE DIGITS 10 YEARS AGO. My current 7 years of MEDIUM-term sobriety means far more – counts for more, helps me (and, I think others) more, than the years I “had” in the mid ‘90s – precisely because it reflects the experience of relapse after LONG-term sobriety.
The quality of my life today, as a good, sober woman of integrity, is far richer, deeper, and more meaningful than my earlier double-digit sobriety ever was. When I was in double-digit sobriety I THOUGHT I knew how I stayed sober, but I was wrong. I thought it was because of certain ways of thinking and being – my practice. But, (a) having been caught up in the OTHER “disease that tells you you don’t have it” (depression, ultimately suicidal), and (b) having made the (smart) decision to drink rather than kill myself, but then (c) finding after a year or so that there might in fact be a spark of hope somewhere, and that to find it I’d need to stop drinking and reshape my relationship with AA, I have come to understand how little I understood when I was “long sober.” I now recognize that I stayed – and stay – sober simply by grace (not mine) and grit (mine). I am sober today by accident, and NOT because I’m especially spiritually evolved, or conscious of the dangers and triggers and cunning / baffling / powerful nature of alcoholism, or good at practicing any particular “program of action.”
Sponsorship can be great, but only if it comes out of that grace and helps me apply the grit.
Moreover, come to think of it:
ReplyDeleteGOOD GUIDANCE IN MY HOURS OF PROFOUND NEED IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, NO MATTER WHERE IT COMES FROM. My questions about sponsorship revolve around rapidly shifting, short-term, emotional and spiritual challenges I've encountered in the last year or so. What I need and can most benefit from changes significantly, even from day to day. One day I find I need to quit my job, change my profession, and find a new place to live. My advice, were I my own sponsor? Trust God (as you fail to understand God) and do the foot work. A few weeks later I learn I’ve got cancer and need surgery pretty much immediately. My sponsorial advice? See above. Two weeks after that I’m on a plane to California, where my twin brother – who has already been teetering on the brink of death on and off for almost a year – is in intensive care for over three weeks, putting me in a near-constant death-watch mode, AND placing me squarely in the middle of an alcoholic family system whose fear, lashings out and dysfunction I am only able to ride out with near-constant prayer, meditation, and recitation of the Steps, all AA prayers, all soothing poems I’ve ever memorized, and the love of a few good friends. What sposorial advice did I follow to make it through that? See above (Step 3 again), add a heavy dose of Step 11, and do a lot of asking for help.
When I’m in crisis, EVERYONE I trust, everyone I ask for guidance, everyone IN AND OUT of AA, gives me about the same advice. And it’s always some variation on Step 3 (made easier by remembering 1 and 2 – my powerlessness and my experience that in the past there has always been a power great by whose virtue matters have been sorted out in an acceptable fashion), boosted by my staying honest an humble (staying in 4 through 10), and – in the most extremely trying times – by near-constant practice of Step 11.
A GOOD SPONSOR FOR MY IMMEDIATE NEEDS IN MY “LATE” (MAYBE?) STAGE SOBRIETY AT (PROTRACTED, SERIAL) CRISIS MOMENTS IS A KIND, SMART, SPIRITUAL AND OPEN-MINDED PERSON. The moral of the story: be smart about the people you bring into your life, and when you need help you’ll get exactly the right help – because they’ll all be saying the same basic thing in different ways. In other words, when in crisis, the answer’s always the same. So does it matter who’s my sponsor, or even whether I have one? Yes and no. In the end, the thing that really matters is that I’m working as hard as I can to stay on my path, to broaden and improve it, and to get as much help as possible in doing so. In other words, in one sense it’s the ASKING for help, not the help you get, that matters.
Which is another way of saying that sobriety and spiritual growth is all about recognizing – in community – that I am not / we are not God … the basics that Bill and Bob figured out and built on, and the premise and conclusion of Kurtz and Ketcham’s The Spirituality of Imperfection.
I’m guessing I won’t always be in crisis mode (please wish me luck with that!), and look forward to reading about and weighing in on maintenance-sponsorship for long sober AAs.
I think that sponsorship originally began as a method for people to be responsible for the newly detoxed so they could get out of the hospital. That is all. There was no spiritual tie intended. All the rest is baggage that has accumulated over the years as has been found useful. But it's just an aside to say there was not a lot of clear thinking about purpose and role that went into it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I am concerned, I have been sober for 7 continuous years, 19 before that, 1 drink in between. So it's been pretty stable sobriety. But not stable sponsorship. Hardly ever sponsorship. When I have found an ear and a mirror to match, to listen and reflect and offer strength where I am weak it has been wonderful. Sometimes I pick a person to work the steps and that is great also. But mostly I like a person to help me with the day to day casulties of right thinking, and help point out where I bear more responsibility than I am willing to admit. An AA concescience I guess. So it has to be someone I respect and trust. I havent been able to find anyone for a while. I had someone not too long ago, but it only worked out for a year or so. And the last two people I've tried recently have fired me for being disrepesctful. I was, it is true. I had way more sobriety and in one case was much older also, and it was difficult to maintain the kind of relationship I wanted. I kept having to "understand" their flaws until it really got to the point where I guess I couldn't respect them the way they wanted to be respected by a "sponsee". It felt like their flaws were okay, mine were fodder for the mill.
I guess since I am long in tooth I see sponsorship as more of an interactive process. In any counseling relationship the two people help each other understand each other and the thing they are trying to understand. You work together, or it doesn't work at all.
Honestly I only used the term "later sobriety" for lack of any better term. It was meant to denote the a period where someone has been sober a while (a VERY relative term in itself). Amount of months or years was only relative. To me "later sobriety" just meant - "I have been around for while, and have reached a new plateau in my life"
ReplyDeleteToday's meeting of my home group was on the topic of sponsorship (yeah, I chaired) and the discussion was very interesting. The range of experiences was wide but I think the central thread was established by one member with very long term sobriety. He said he preferred the word 'confidant', that the role of the sponsor is to be someone you can tell anything to with no fear of it going any further. As the discussion proceeded I got the impression that after the first few years the formal sponsor - sponsee relationship was less important to most people than the existence of a core of people one can trust and confide in. One guy even said that his sponsor had a 'three years and out' policy: after three years a sponsee should be able to leave the nest and fly. If they need to call, the sponsor would be available, but the apprenticeship was over.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this reliance on a core of confidants can only work if the AA has fundamentally strong sobriety and can be sure he won't 'distribute the truth' among these confidants. For that reason, I think the spirit of the meeting was that one privileged confidant who knows the whole story is a good, perhaps necessary thing.
Here is the thing I was trying to get at in my response to another topic:
ReplyDeletehttp://thestoolwith3legs.blogspot.com/2010/06/story-from-work-and-aa-way-of-life.html
The guy with the "3 years and out" rule, is right. The guy who needs a sponsor (with one-on-one time) for decades, is right.
I have had to learn that I need to allows others to be "right" or "wrong" as the case may be. I need to allow others to make their choices, live their lives, and I need to learn how to "not judge that".
I don't believe it is a case of separating the sin and the sinner. I believe it is a case of no longer judging what is or isn't a sin, therefore eliminating the label altogether from either the act or the person.
I guess I feel my current goal in AA is to feel I am able to do these things, make these choices, and feel neither inferior or superior to others. The less I judge me, the less I judge you. The more I feel at peace.
So when it comes to sponsorship, mt quest lead me to the fact that I need and want one. period. Regardless of what others think.