Sponsorship and the Big Book – Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Dustin B.

Dustin Barnes, alcoholic. Real quick, just going to do some quick introduction stuff before we start getting into this. Real quick my sobriety date is 3-20 of 06 and I went to treatment in this town. So I don't know if you can call it treatment really but I was subjected to the tortures of the state system at the time. So, and it was good, trust me. We are going to be sharing our experience today. It's just our experience, you know. The deal is I used to have this idea that if you weren't sponsoring a certain way and if you were not doing this and ifyou weren't out doing that, then you probably weren't going to make it. Probably because if I didn't do that stuff, I wasn't going to make it. And a couple of months ago I got an opportunity to sit in a small town in northern Minnesota and I walked in and the meeting happened to be on the 12th step and I had one of those experiences that I think are necessary to continue to grow in this program. And what that was was that I listened to a guy talk about how they do 12-step work out in the middle of nowhere in northern Minnesota. And I realized how richly blessed I was because they literally don't have the facilities and they don't have the big influx of drunks, both local and from different states coming into their area. What they have is people that come into the meeting and they find out, they look in the phone booth and they walk in. What I realized from that was my experiences may be different from someone else's. I'm so richly blessed to be in the Twin Cities and to have such an opportunity for sponsorship and such an opportunity for 12-step work and to be able to come in contact with a lot of alcoholics that are newly sober and looking for sobriety. So I preface that because I just want you to know that I'm just going to share my experience, and Kelly, my wife, filled in luckily for Juliet who went into surgery emergency this last week, and I'm so blessed to have her with me, and we're going to show her our experience. It may be different from your experience. You may agree, you may disagree, but the way I was brought up in sponsorship is I'm not responsible for the outcome. I'm responsible forthe effort. I'mresponsible when the phone rings, I'mresponsible to say, you know, if I can do it, absolutely, absolutely. I'll be down to St. Peter. I don't care if the cops are blocking the street, you know? I don' t care. It's funny, he came up to me and said, Is this okay, you all right? you know, the cops blocked it off. And it's like, buddy, a few years ago I was strapped down in medical restraints. Like, I'm golden, you know? I'm cool. The other deal is that I would like to thank anybody that had anything to do with us being here today. I used to think I have to do this stuff to stay sober. And what I realize today is I get to do this stuff. I'm alive today as a result of the program and the fellowship and being of service in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't have to do anything. I get to be of service. I get to share my experience, and what a cool deal. So we're just doing some quick introduction stuff real quick. I want you to know that I'm not a person that's an original winner in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't come in and just get a wonderful experience and to just become real spiritual. That wasn't my story. My story is I tried, I stayed sober for a year and changed the first time. I got loaded, I came back, I went for 30 days, I got loaded, and I said I'm never going back to Alcoholics Anonymous. So you've got to understand if I'm going to share my experience, I'm going to show some of the stuff that didn't work as well as the stuff that did work. And I'm not trying to be adversarial when I do that. I don't know what you're doing down here. It's nothing personal. It's just my experience. The other deal is I came back to Alcoholics Anonymous drug-backed. You know, I didn't just walk in and go, here I am, you know? I was drugged back by way of a state commitment. You'll hear people all the time say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You can't force an alcoholic to get sober. And I want you to know that the State of Minnesota's not familiar with that policy. You know, they're not aware, nor do they care. They'll bring us here, you know. It's the greatest outpatient program that they have to offer because it doesn't cost them anything, you know. So that's how I come in. That's how i come in, uh. The other deal is that what I did find is I had been doing a lot of things that I thought were going to keep me sober, and they didn't. And so I had a lot hurt and a lot anger to work through this process through. I love Alcoholics Anonymous, and I want you to know that I'm not a spokesman. I'm an expert on sponsorship. How silly would that be for me to be some sort of expert? I'm none of those things. I'm just an example that AlcoholicsAnonymous and sponsorship, strong sponsorship, works. I'm one example, one way or another. I'm sober today, and that was something I could not do for one day at the end of my drinking. I could now not drink one day a time. I just couldn't pull it off. I would make the decision not to drink, and then later on my mind would say, well, that's a little bit of a serious decision, don't you think? I mean, you could probably have a drink to knock the edge off. And I would say yes, yes, that is a phenomenal idea. I would have a drank setting off this cycle, and I would be drunk, and then I would come home the next morning, and it was just, it was hell on earth. So my experience may not be your experience, but I am just here to share mine. That's it. And with all that said, I'm going to ask my wife to come on up here and do a little introductions and then we're going to get rolling. Hi everybody, I am Kelly. I am an alcoholic. It's so funny because Dustin is like, oh, you know, I get to do this today and all this stuff. you know, and when he first got asked to do this and he wanted a woman's perspective, he of course comes to me and I say, no way, no, I'm terrified. I'm like, nope, not going to do it, find somebody else, I don't want to do this. And, you know God always has different plans and so, you now, he struck Juliet with, you know, an illness and here I am. So, I am grateful to be here though. You know we came in and you guys were so welcoming and you made us comfortable and you were so friendly and I'm so so so grateful to be here makes me a lot less nervous but my sobriety date is July 22nd 2006 I did not I did come in here because I wanted to I did not come in because my life was perfect and everything was going great I came in here because I was homeless I was had knew not a soul in Minnesota I did not have a job I did have any money and I did not have any way to do anything but go to treatment and I came into treatment not saying I'm gonna go to treat get better I came into treatment so I could find a job get an apartment you know have a place to stay for 30 days to get my life back together. And it was funny, because the first night I was there, they brought me to an AA meeting. And in this AA meeting, there's all these people, and you know, they're just, they'RE happy, theyRE laughing, you know. It wasn't the best AA meeting in the world, but I tell you what, I was so glad to be there. It was the weirdest thing in the world that I had ever seen. I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous because my dad was in it, but I'd never gone. You know, and I'm not a relapser. I came in, I stayed, I stuck. And I honestly was very, very, very excited about AA after that meeting. Now as I got down the road a little bit, I got very discouraged as I went to more meetings. I started to not like AA so much because you'll hear a lot of opinions out there and you'll hear a Lot of things that were not working for me. I was told to get a sponsor, so I did. My sponsor said call me every day, so I did she said go to meetings every day. So I did She said, go to the sober house. So I did. But that was about it. That was about all she told me about. I'm like, oh, well, can we do the steps? She said yeah, yeah, you can do those. And that was it. So I'm sitting in this sober house who does not believe in AA, by the way. And I'm reading the big book. I'm going to these meetings that aren't talking about the big book or anything in the big book. I have this sponsor who's not telling me anything about anything, and I'm absolutely miserable. But the thing that was so cool is I didn't need any of that. All I needed was the big book. And I did what the big books told me to do. Now it wasn't to the best of my ability, but I did it. You know, and I was just reading an article over there in the archives, And it was so funny because it was a letter to Pat Cronin who said, and Bill said, you know, in areas where there is no AA, here's the book. We hope this helps. We've heard that this helps for where there's areas where There's No AA. Now, there was tons of AA everywhere around me. And the only thing that helped me was the book? How sad is that? you know, and like Dustin said we have no right way, we have no wrong way, you know I sponsor almost every girl that comes to me in a different way because there's different things that they need but the one thing I always do is I take them through the book because that's what is important and I have a sponsor today who as well did not take me through the books because I had already been through it but I did that on my own And she said, Kelly, you know enough about the book. I don't need to take you through that. You know how to work the steps. I don'T need to teach you how to do that. She said, you had the book to teach you howto do that, and I thought, how cool is that? But we are so excited to be here. We're excited to get into the sponsorship stuff. I think what we're going to do is take the questions and answers pamphlet, and there's all those questions in there, and we're just going to share our experience on those questions and what we do and what has been done for us. So we are very glad to be here. Thanks for letting us. Now, we're coming out of the questions and answers on sponsorship, but what we're going to do here is we're going to take the questions that are in there and just kind of share our experience with them. The other thing that, well the first one here that we're going to look at is what is sponsorship? There's a guy in my lineage of sponsorship that used to say stuff like the word sponsorship means so much nowadays that it doesn't mean anything. It has so many definitions that it does not mean anything and also said that any problem we have in Alcoholics Anonymous can be solved by one-on-one sponsorship. That's the way that we can really carry the message, is one-to-one. So what does sponsorship mean? Well, what I can tell you is exactly what Kelly was saying. Until I got someone in front of me who was saying, you know what, the answers come out of the big book. The directions for how to recover from the mental obsession and the physical allergy driven by the spiritual malady, the directions for how to do that is in the big book. That's why it uses such terms like directions, you know, clear-cut, specific, we shall tell you what we have done. And so I'm going to continue to go back into the book today just because that's how I was taught. And I believe we're a product of how we were brought up in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of things that I'm gonna share today that are not original ideas, if you can believe that or not. It was stuff that I was sponsored into. It was something that I was shown through a living example of what the program, the fellowship, and being of service could do. A living example who pointed me in the direction. So sponsorship to me, you know, page 18 of the big book, the bottom paragraph, says that the man who is making the approach has had the same difficulty. That he obviously knows what he is talking about. That his whole department shouts at the new prospect that he is a man with a real answer. That he has no attitude of holier than thou, nothing whatever except the sincere desire to be helpful. That there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured. These are the conditions we have found most effective. I think that the phrase strong sponsorship brings up an idea of someone screaming in my face to tell me what to do. And when I say that, that's not what I mean. Sponsorship for me was always someone sharing with me what they had done. It's always been someone sharing with me in context of their experience with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous which I was taught is laid out from the cover to page 164 of the big book. But what about the meetings? Well that's something else. That's unity. That' a different side of the triangle. That's where we go to bring it together as a fellowship. You know, I have some goofy ideas about this stuff because I've been to meetings before. I think sponsorship is someone that I hang out with and I drink coffee and we sit there and zing each other back and forth and I got a buddy and we just do a lot of fun stuff together. You know? And that's a part of the deal. What I can tell you is that some of the guys that I sponsor and I have become real good friends. We have become the best of buds. and we'll sit there and zing each other and we will have a good time and you know we will itch and scratch and drink coffee and carry on and do the deal but before that could happen I have to have a base I have a foundation in my life and I was taught that's recovery that's recover we are going to be buds maybe I don't know but we are gonna work the 12 steps and the sponsorship I've had we work and rework the 12 step because I've experienced in my own life that, believe it or not, my character defects hung out after the first time through the steps. I didn't become like some holy roller, you know, a big-time believer. Sponsorship did something for me that a psychiatrist couldn't do. You know, sponsorship did something für mich, that the men of religion couldn't du. And what that was was show me how to go from a militant atheist. I mean, I was. I was just, I wanted to argue. You want to talk about God? You wantto talk about a higher power? Oh, I know what you're really talking about. And we would just, and I go back and forth all day long on that stuff. A sponsor sat me down and said, yeah, yeah. I know. Are you willing to believe? Well, sure. I have no choice. And took me through a process. And what happened was it's through the process of the 12 steps as they're outlined in the big book. Actually, yes, actually paying back the money. Yes, actually knocking on the doors and saying, hey, you know, I wronged you in this way. I would like to write all matters to the utmost of my ability. Not in that language because that sounds goofy. But to have that intention when I show up. To start and pray and meditate and to start to keep track of how I'm doing on a daily basis. By doing that, what happened was I had a direct experience with God. It wasn't about theories or opinions or ideas. I went from a militant atheist, didn't believe but willing to because I was backed into a corner with a gun barrel called alcoholism pointed at my face and going what other option do you got? So work the 12 steps and have an experience with power in my life. All of a sudden I start to wake up. That's it. Spiritual awakening. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message. What message? The message that I've had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps. I did. My life changed. All of a sudden, I start to have a personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism. I'm no longer obsessing about a drink. I don't wake up in the morning and just choose not to drink. You know why? Because I choose wrong some days, and I drank. The power in this universe, regardless of what you want to call it, placed me in a position of neutrality and allowed me to start living life on a different basis you know the 12 and 12 talks about the the steps are spiritual in their nature a set of principles spiritual in leur nature that if practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to live happily and usefully whole what a good deal you know i mean really if you come from where i come from like i could be whole i can i can wake up in the morning and not want to drink? See, because I thought AA and I thought having a sponsor was we sat and we gripped onto the tables in our meetings as just as hard as we could. And we just tried to not drink one minute, one second at a time. Not my experience. My current experience is if I get taken through the steps by a man who has a real answer because he's done it. He's done the work prior to me. And he can show me how to get from a sniveling, whining, hopeless drunk to a man who has an experience with a loving creator who can start to grow up, you know? Start to grow up a little bit and start to be responsible and do all that. What a cool deal. There's so much power in sponsorship. You know, the history stuff was great. I believe we have a responsibility. You know? We read the responsibility statement and then the guy walks up and says, well, you sponsor me? And we go, eh, I kind of got a lot going on. Just read the book and call me in a week. I don't know how responsible that is. So sponsorship to me is nothing more than a person who's engaged in the process of recovery, hopefully knows something about the 12 traditions which are, in theory, supposed to govern our fellowship, and has a working knowledge of how the circle and the triangle comes together and we can live happily and usefully whole when we start to address the mind, the body and the spirit by working the 12 steps, bringing our body to the meeting being of service. And so a sponsor that is involved and engaged and bought the whole package the whole Package of Alcoholics Anonymous, the circle and the triangle to do the deal. That's what it means to me as someone who has the light on in their eyes that's what I see sponsorship as when I see a person who's got the light in their eyes and they're carrying this book and talking about the solution what a cool deal this is a person that that knows how to get out of the ditch and that's that's all I really need I don't need a therapist if I need a therapist you know what I should go get one you know drunks are want we're wonderful people I love alcoholics I don'T know if we're the only people to do it but I know that We like to give our opinions on things we know nothing about on a regular basis, you know? Because one's been married eight, nine times doesn't make them an expert on marriage. You know what I'm saying? If I need a marriage counselor, I should go get one. You know, if I need therapy, I Should Go Get It. If I Need a Psychiatrist, I Shall Go Get it. I think we put a lot more on sponsorship than it was ever intended to be. It's a person that can show me a way out of the ditch, show me away out of alcoholism. And that's it. Okay, so what is sponsorship on the women's side? Now I was talking to Don earlier when we first got here And we were talking about how it can be in some areas really, really hard to find strong women's sponsorship. There's just not as many women in AA as there are men. And sometimes women, my opinion, what I've seen is women that come to me for sponsorship seem to always have something better that comes along. So it's very, very, it was very difficult for me in the beginning because I got sober in a really small town in northern Minnesota. And I think there was like three women in the meeting that I went to. You know? And so it was, it's, it wasn't easy for me to find a woman to sponsor me. You know, and so it's funny. So Dustin and I, we'd drive down to the cities almost every single day for meetings. and there was this lady that we were at this meeting at the, oh what was that place called where Rick does his four step workshop the CRC and this woman just comes bouncing along like I've never met anybody like this before she was just so excited and so happy and I'm just like it's noon lady what is your deal you know and she was jut I mean hugging everybody and, oh, who are you? Are you new? Oh my goodness. How great to meet you. This is so wonderful. Let's talk. Are you coming out to lunch? Blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, whoa, you're nuts. You know, here's my number. I mean, she was just crazy. And, uh, you know, after the three months of, you Know, going to meetings, having the sponsor who was not telling me to do anything and sitting in a parking lot of a bar in a small town nearby. I'm going, should I go in? Should I not go in what's going to happen? You know, what should I do? But I literally sat there for like three hours debating in my head what I should do. And so I called this lady, you know, cause I'm like, obviously she is very excited to be here. You know? I wonder what that's all about. Maybe I should call her and see what that is. That's all it's all all about and so I called her and she said why don't you come over to my house and I said okay where do you live well I live in St. Paul I'm like oh my god I have to drive all the way down there you know how we are we just really don't want to let anything inconvenience us but you know I did I was miserable I didn't know what to do and I drove down there and basically what she did was you know she got me writing another fourth step. Now this is, I'm 90 days sober and this is the second fourth step I'm doing. And thank God she did that because this one actually had a fourth column on it so I got to see my mistakes and stuff. So it was very, very good that she did that. And we went through a fifth step. And this woman was just, she was loving, she was compassionate. She knew the book inside and out. She was willing to help me any way she could. You know, and she was just, she was very wonderful. And I was very, very blessed to have her come in my life. You know what? It's funny. We hear a lot in Minneapolis that a sponsor is somebody who takes you through the steps and that's it. And I'm not sure I believe that. I believe that that's the first thing a sponsor should do, is take you through the steps. That's what I do with the women that I sponsor. I say, okay, we're going to go through the steps. I lay it out for them. We're going to go through them in the big book. This is what we're going to do. Yes, you have to pay the money back. I know that's horrible, but yes, you're going to have to. Yes you're gonna have to work with others. Yes I know. Busy, busy. Yeah, I get you know but I lay it out to them and that's what we do you know. But if they if we always say as well in this in Minneapolis is that you don't take your problems to a meeting, you take the solution to the meeting. But so if a sponsor is only there to take you through the steps and you can't take your problems to the meaning then who are you supposed to take your problems to? And that's the question I always ask. Now, Kathleen, when she was taking me through the steps, I was calling her all the time because I was newly sober in a relationship with somebody newly sober and we're nuts. And I was telling her on a regular basis like I don't know what I should do. We're breaking up again, you know, on and on and on. And she was always there to love me and to say, lovingly say, Kelly, you know, 2218's, you know, half an hour away. Why don't you go there and see if there's someone you can help? You know, or hey, I'm speaking at so-and-so tonight. Why don't your come along? Or whatever. You know she was always very good at, you know, getting me out of what I was in and showing me a way out. And, you know, and that's what I do for my women. You You know, they call me. They've got a problem. I might not have the answer, but I may know somebody who does. Like right now I have a lady who's going through a custody battle. I don't have kids. I have no clue what that's all about. But I sponsored another woman that does. And so I said, you know what? I know the perfect person for you to call. And she did, you Know, and she got that experience because that's All we have to share is our experience. and thank goodness I've been crazy enough in sobriety to have a lot of experience with certain things so you know it's helped out a lot and I'm so blessed with that I just want to kind of finish up there's a story Dustin was talking about how this guy could pull me out of the ditch he knew the way out ofthe ditch and there'sa parable that I heard I don't remember from who But they say that, you know, there's this guy stuck in a well. And he's down in the well and he's yelling, help me, help me. And a doctor comes by and he is like, oh, you're stuck in the well. He's like, yeah, help me. And the guy writes something on a little pad of paper, throws it down there, you know, walks away. And so the guy is like all jeepers, you know, help me, help me. And a preacher comes up and looks down and he is like oh, you're down in a well. Yeah, help me. And the guy says okay, I'll pray for you. And walks away. And, you know, so he's still stuck down in the well and he's yelling, help me, help me. And another guy comes along and he says, oh, you're down in a well. And he jumps in. I was like, what did you do that for? Now we're both stuck in the wall. He said, but I know the way out. And that's our job in sponsorship. We know the way out because we're sitting here today. And there's somebody that's not sitting in here today. And we can show them the way out. That's our only job and it's our primary purpose. And, you know, we come in here and all we want is a purpose in life, and then God gives it to us, and we say, well, not that! You know? God, I have a life! Hello! You know, but it's far, far, far beyond what I ever could have imagined my life to be. And working with others, and like Dustin said, seeing the light come on in their eyes. you know seeing them actually get better seeing them get excited seeing them want it like calling me up and being like you wouldn't believe the amends i made to my probation officer today it's like you know i mean how cool how cool is that um so yeah that's all i got thanks tough act to follow question out of the pamphlet seeking a sponsor how does it help you know I uh I went through a very militant phase where if it wasn't in the big book it wasnít plain and simple. If it's not in the book, it's not. It's not our program. Thank you for your opinion. And I would just walk away. And luckily through sponsorship, I learned that there's a program of recovery which is in the book. And there's a fellowship and there's a lot of things that I could use help with besides the obsession to drink. And to learn how to not only get sober, which I think is the most important thing. It's real hard to work on being a better person if you're drunk. It''s my experience. It ''s real hard to care about how your character defects are affecting other people if you''re drunk. I mean, I just didn't care when I was drinking. You know, you better get out of the way. That's just the way I drank. That's the way i lived. You better get out of the way because you're going to probably get hurt and I'll take what I can from you. And then when there's nothing left, get out. Having a sponsor initially work in the 12 steps. I personally do my fifth step with my sponsor. I've gotten turned on to the idea of multiple fifth steps. And as well as taking it to a sponsor, I've taken it to friends. I mean, I've done that whole deal, but my sponsor knows what's going on because I share my inventory with them. That's not necessary, I suppose. I've don it with chaplains. I've do it with whatever, but I share my fifth step with my sponsor because as we get down the road and I start doing 10 and 11 and I start getting out living life, I'm going to bump into people still because I'm selfish self-centered by nature. It's not that I'm going to do it on purpose. I'm so selfish. I just can't, I can't see you. I don't see how I'm affecting you when I want what I want and having a sponsor to do that 10 step with and to call up and go, you know, I was doing this and I went off on this guy in a meeting. I had a lot of that because I was so hurt that I was told to do something in AA and it would keep me sober and it didn't keep me silver. Just, you Know, just going to meetings didn't work for me. It worked for a time. But eventually, the internal condition got so bad that I would just sit in meetings and want to die. I would jut sit in meeting and want a drink. And so when I come back and I have the experience out of the book, I got like most drunks, you know, when they get on something, I got real righteous, real self-righteous and real... I would bash people over the head with the big book and I went through that phase. And to have a sponsor to like kind of guide me towards, you know, that well, you know, it also says in the book Dustin love and tolerance of others is our code, you know like there's a theory didn't didn't see that part you ever notice that we like the things that uh justify our belief systems that are in the big book but the things that go against what we want to do or what we think is right to do we like to just kind of pretend that doesn't exist you know to have a sponsor to start get me involved with this whole idea that if it's not in the Big Book it's Not was flawed if I was looking at it so militantly but if I look at the big book and I see that they tell me to go seek out other spiritual teachers, when I see it tells me to see a psychiatrist if I need one, when I start to see that it's not about being rigid, it's about becoming a whole person. And whole people, I believe, are flexible and allow God to give them intuitive thoughts and to move down the road. The chances of me offending you on purpose today are slim to none. You may be offended by something Kelly or I says today, but it was through sponsorship that the edges started to get rounded off and I'm not going to intentionally offend anybody. See the difference? To start working with motives and intentions and what am I trying to get? Where am I self-seeking? Where Am I driven by fear? Where am I driven by self-pity? Where is it still selfishness, self-centeredness? I need a sponsor to help me do that. You know, it was a sponsor who taught me about the 12th step, not because of what the book said. You knows, it says, and practice these principles in all your affairs. A sponsor who said, you know, Dustin, yeah, I know you needed to get sober. AA had to be the most important thing in your life for a while. But you know what, bud? Practicing these principles, working a program includes paying child support and showing up for your kids when you said you were going to show up. It includes being a part of their lives, or why did God get you sober? I know guys right now that work with sponsors, seven to ten guys at a time every week, and they run them through the mill. Just take them through The Book, take them Through The Book. Take them Through The Books, and their kids haven't seen them since they got sober. I don't think that's what the deal was here. The deal was I was supposed to re-enter the mainstream of life and start living up to my other responsibilities, start being a better husband, got remarried, nightmare to be in a relationship with. I am. To start being a husband worth having, to start being a friend that you would like to call your friend, to start, you know, being a human being. Instead of an animal that just runs through life scratching and itching and taking what it wants. And it was through that that it really has helped. The other thing is to have a person to bounce all my great ideas off of because I get a lot of them. I could sit in a meeting and have 500 great ideas you know phenomenal ideas and when I bounce him off a sponsor he goes you do know you're insane right like that's probably you know I went through a phase a couple months ago I had stopped smoking and like two and a half months off of it and I determined that it was best that I go get healthy right I put on some weight since I got sober and I'm gonna pretty much leave AA except for maybe a couple meetings a week and and I've never you know I'm not really going to like raise my hand too high for sponsorship and we're going to go get healthy. And we've went and bought mountain bikes and we went and did all this and we were just going to become health nuts, you know, which I have no interest to be, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And, uh, you knows, the sponsor that was like, don't you think that's a little extreme? You know, I go from one day, like smoking cigarettes and eating donuts. And the next day I'm out, you Know, buying bikes and getting ready to hike the Himalayas. You know? I, I just, I'm enthusiastic. I'm driven like that. So sponsorship has also turned into an accountability thing for me. You know? There's a lot of people that got sponsors, but not a lot of people are sponsored, you know? To have someone that I actually will let into my life to give me ideas contrary to my own belief system. Because my mind tells me it's a great idea and prior to Alcoholics Anonymous I see no reason to check it with you because I'm smarter than all of you, you now? I know, and I never, I just run with every idea that comes into my head. Sponsorship has allowed me to have someone in my life who knows what it's like to be in a fantasy land most of your life and to kind of, you know, point out reality and say like, you know we may want to scale her back a bit, you know. Don't go taking out a loan for the trek bikes, all right. Like just, just, you want to get a bike, you wanna do, that's cool but to talk about these things, to get my good ideas out. You know, sponsoring others has been great because I get to watch my great ideas play out in other people. It's kind of a cold way to look at it, but I get to watch people that go, well, I'm doing it anyway. And I go, well, have fun. And I watch them go do it and I watch the pain and I watched the misery. And sometimes if I'm having a good week, I may actually pay attention to it, you know, and go, I don't really want to do that. I get to watch the fresh wave of insanity that washes up on our beach every single day. And I get to partake in that deal. Having a sponsor, you know, the deal is I'm not afraid when I sit down with a new man. I'm terrified, I'm nervous about if I can do the job because I got a sponsor that I stay in regular contact with. I don't have a sponsor who tells me to call him every day at a certain time and show up and obviously I'm wearing a tie today. I have a sponsors who shows me by way of his actions how to live so I'm more comfortable showing a newcomer by way of my actions how we do this deal. And that's it, it's helped. I'm not worried because this is coming straight down the chain. How I was taught to do AA? I try to show the guys that ask me for help how to do AAA. And I've had a lot of great teachers and I have a lot of spiritual advisors and I got people from New Jersey to California, from northern Minnesota to the tip of Texas that are spiritual advisors in my life. And these men also know my stuff, and I've allowed them into my life. But I got one sponsor, one sponsor that kind of hears my good ideas before I go out and do them. You know? So pass it on to Kelly. Okay, how does it help? I think in the beginning sponsorship helped because it was somebody who knew the way it was someone who knew the way out of the well and that's what I needed my first sponsor obviously did not help I've had a few sponsors by the way my second sponsor though Kathleen she took me through the book the second time she helped me you know, I agree. I did my fifth step with my sponsor. She knew all my junk. If I started getting goofy, she was there to call me on it. You know, if I called her up and I was like, well, Dustin did this and blah, blah, bah, blah. And she's like, Kelly, is this you being manipulative? I'm like, oh yeah. Kelly, are you sure you're telling me the truth? No. You Or, hey, where were you for the meeting last night? Oh, well, you know, so you're being lazy. Okay. She was very good at calling me on my crap and keeping me on track. And it was vital at that time. Dustin said accountability. It was huge for me to be kept accountable because I am a loner. I want to sit in my house, I want to sit on my couch, watch chick flicks over and over and over again until my husband comes home and then we're going to go to bed early and I'll do this all over again and this is what I'll doing even today I will sit in my house for days on end not talk to a single soul and be perfectly fine with that but she didn't allow me to do that unfortunately and she kept me accountable and she keep me on track today I have a sponsor who teaches me everything I need to know about the three legacies I go to her you know I go to her house I sit on her couch and she smokes cigarettes she's 84 years old and she's just you know a whip and you know so she'll sit there and smoke cigarettes and just you know spout off on the mouth and I just listen Because it's just amazing what this woman knows. She knows everything about anything, and she's been living this way of life for the last 40 years. And I just listen. She's there to teach me, and I need to be taught. There's lots of things that I don't know. I spent the last two years in recovery, in the recovery side of the triangle, and that's all I did. It was, you know, treatment centers and detoxes and, you know, working with others and meetings. And, you now, it was all that, you know, and I had completely forgotten that there's a whole other part of this deal that I don't know anything about that keeps us running. And I completely took that for granted. The first time I sat down with her, she said, when you say you're a member of AA, do you know what that means? And I was like, what do you mean? You know, I was, like, just flabbergasted. And she just started talking. And I sat there for, like three hours going, oh, my gosh, this woman knows more than anybody I've ever met in my life. And, you know, and it was just so cool. And I'm so grateful that God keeps me open-minded, you know, because there's so many prejudices that I still want to have, and there's so many things that I want to be right about, and this is the right way, this is the only way, you know. This is all we need to do. These people are doing it wrong, whatever. And like Dustin says, a sponsor is very good for roping you back in. And she keeps me teachable, and she teaches me a lot. On a side note, I want to tell you that neither Dustin nor I went to our sponsors about this health nut thing and we have mountain bikes in our closet right now and we have like four pairs of tennis shoes and all these workout clothes and none of them get used so you know good note there but uh but they do I mean sponsors are very very helpful to keep you online and I know that you know a lot of times when my women run from me is when I keep them accountable. You know, I say, oh, you weren't at the meeting tonight. Oh, yeah, you know, I thought I'd go work out instead. Oh, great, that sounds good. Glad you're getting fit. That's wonderful. Why weren't you at the meet-up? Why weren' t you at a meeting tonight? Oh, I wanted to go work outside. Oh, well, you're unemployed. You couldn't work out earlier today? You know? And I keep them accountable, you You know, I was accountable when I got here. I was shown how to be accountable. I was kept accountable. And I honestly believe that's the only way I survived this deal. If I wouldn't have been kept accountable, I'd still be sitting in my house on my couch in front of the TV, probably with a bottle of vodka, you know, but it was vital to me. And so, yeah, that's all I have. Thanks. How to choose a sponsor. In my first and second run into our fellowship, the way that I chose a sponsor was I need someone I can relate to. I need something that I can related to. and um you know when i was completely insane and i found someone that i could relate to and uh we would sit at restaurants and drink coffee and uh kind of be insane together you know what i look for today because i have uh by way of circumstance and by way of personal decision have changed sponsors a couple times in the last two and half years. What I look for originally was someone who could show me how to work the steps and do the real deal, and I had a guy who used to pound the podiums and used to go all over the place and really, you know, 12 steps and it was real powerful to listen to. But I found it lacking because there wasn't, it's hard for me to talk about, there wasn'T a lot of depth to it. When I got close, what I seen was there wasn' t a lot oF depth to iT. And unfortunately, the man who originally carried the message to me didn' t stay sober this time. He just didn' T. And it was a real brutal thing to watch because our fellowship picked him apart because he had been pounding the podiums and doing that. And we're real ugly sometimes when people make mistakes in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, we're not – the sponsor used to say to me, if you're expecting AA to be a bunch of healthy people, you need to reconsider your thoughts. We're not always the nicest. But the deal is, is that what I look for in a sponsor is someone who is engaged in the whole package. Kind of talked about this already. But someone who's going to eat the whole meal so that they can show me how to do that. There's so much to Alcoholics Anonymous, so much more than I thought there was even a year and a half ago. There's such a lot of people There's just so much to this deal. And a lot of our members, if you look around pick and choose what they can use and throw the rest out you know what do i need to know about the traditions for well because our our group may fall apart if we don't pay attention to why do i needed to know anything about general service that's for those people well because uh you know if those people which is all of us don't take care of our fellowship we may not be here for my kids. We may not be here in a couple generations and people say stuff like AA's not going anywhere. Really? Look at some of the other organizations that have passed off the scene. At one time percentage wise I'm not too into the whole numbers and stuff but the Washingtonians was growing quicker than AA ever has and they just disappeared no one knows about them anymore you know so what I look for in a sponsor is someone who's going to eat the whole meal. Someone who believes in the circle and the triangle. I know we've taken it off our literature for whatever reasons, but someone that believes that if we work and rework to 12 steps, if we become a part of the fellowship, bring our body to the meetings, get involved in our home groups, attend regular meetings regularly, try to apply the traditions not only within our group but also in our lives because they're great principles and someone who knows what it means to be of service. you know that's hard to find you know part of the thing that that i've i've done in in my life is i couldn't for a while find the type of sponsor that i wanted you know i'm greedy i want you know mr aa like the guy that's got all the answers i want the perfect sponsor and what i realize is that's probably not feasible and it's not it's fair to the guys that sponsor me to expect them to have all the answers. They don't. We're supposed to go to the source of power, not to the guy who carried the equation to get to that power, i.e., the big book. So I've started to try to become the sponsor I would like to have. I've tried to be a better sponsor than I used to be on a regular basis and try to show by way of example how we can do this deal. And what's happened is someone came into my life who's got the light on in his eyes. I mean, this guy is just on fire. He is so strong that he doesn't have to do anything but give you a hug and smile. I mean he doesn' t slam anything down my throat. It's none of that stuff. It' s none of that kind of ego-driven AA. It''s very calming. It ''s very back to basics, back to the principles of this program, back to what does the book say? What does A Comes of Age say? You know, what are we doing here? So I try to choose someone that's got the light on in their eyes, a man who looks like he has a real answer. You know there's a chunk on page 18 right before what I read earlier that says, but the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution who is properly armed with facts about himself can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished. That's what I've got today as a sponsor. I've gone someone who's won my entire confidence. I don't think he's perfect. I don' t think that someday it'll be him and Bob up on the wall and they're going to have Jeff's face right in the middle. I don''t think that's going to happen. But what I have is a guy who's been dedicated to Alcoholics Anonymous over a considerable period of time and who's really doing this deal in his life. You notice I didn't say anything about how much time I look for because it doesn't matter. It just doesn't care. It doesn't even matter. The guy that carried the message to me was two years sober. There's guys that I sponsor that are a year sober who if my little brother called me tonight and said, I need a sponsor, I need to get into this deal, I would put them in their direction before I would Put them in the hands of some of the guys I know with 20, 30 years of sobriety. Not because the guy with the year is somehow better because he knows the book or anything like that, but because he's close enough to the fire to know how to get out. It's a pretty fresh experience and he knows what he needs to do. So when I look for a sponsor, I look für someone that has a working knowledge of our program and our principles and the 12 steps and the12 traditions and the twelve concepts. Someone that's doing the deal. You know, if we waited, if you had to have a year to sponsor when we started, none of us would be here. Bill had six months when he carried the message to Bob. They had a couple of weeks when they carried the message to Bill D. There was guys with under a year of sobriety starting AA in different states. And people can disagree with that all they want in this fellowship, but that's the history that there was guys who would get sober and go somewhere else. There was guys Who'd get the book and just do what the book said and then they would start AA in their community and wait for AA members to come along. You know? And some of those areas are filled with the most vibrant sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. So, you know, time, eh, I don't know. I don' t know. You know, I was pushed out the door 60 days sober, carrying the message to others, doing a horrible job of it, you kno? But I stayed sober and I learned how to more efficiently transmit the message that was transmitted to me, you kno? So that's kind of what I look for. As you know, when I first chose my sponsor, my first sponsor, it was because she was the only woman in the room. And, you know I was told get a sponsor so I did. But when I met Kathleen, you know it was it was amazing what that woman was so excited about like I just I could not believe how excited she was about AA and I tell you what she was a little over a year sober it was like no wonder she was so excited she hadn't gotten discouraged yet you know like she was just on fire for the whole thing she loved Alcoholics Anonymous she loved alcoholics she loved everything about it, and she knew the book, and she was going to commitments, and you know, she was sponsoring women, and she was, you know, introducing herself and, you know, making herself available, and that was huge. Unfortunately, Kathleen, you know, I believe that a sponsor has to grow in order for you to continue to work with them. And I was growing and Kathleen wasn't. Unfortunately she had gotten a really great job that took her overseas and she stayed right where she was at. it was almost to the point where I had nothing more to learn. I had nothing more to learn from her I you know she gave me all she had and and I am so so so grateful for that we're still very very good friends to this day if you know if I could tell her to quit her job and just sponsor me that I would she was just a wonderful lady um but so you know I was on the lookout for a new sponsor and I was praying for God to put a woman in my life uh to sponsor me And I was going to all these meetings, and I was looking for a new sponsor, somebody to teach me, somebody who had something to teach me. And it was difficult. I tell you what, I went quite a while without a sponsor. I went a couple months without a sponsor because my old one was overseas all the time, and I didn't have anyone to keep me accountable. and so I started telling people I'm looking for a new sponsor and I continued to pray for God to put somebody in my life to give me a new teacher and this young buck comes up to me and he says I have the perfect woman for you and I had shared with him at one point that my vision in my head of a sponsor is some old short cranky lady who's just like you know like this was my I don't know why this was my vision but this was the vision that I had in my head and so he came up to me and he's like I have the perfect woman for you he says will you go meet her I said absolutely give me your number now as a good alcoholic I didn't call her for like three weeks um you know it was just what we do and uh I was terrified to meet somebody new I was horrified to tell somebody again about my whole life and all my deep, dark secrets. And so I did not call her for like three weeks. And then finally I was like organizing my bookshelf and her number just falls right out. And I'm just like, oh yeah, Esther, that's right. Oh, maybe I should call her, you know? And so I pick up the phone and I dial and I'm hoping the answering machine comes on, you you know. But, you know, she's old and she's retired so she's home and she answers and she's like, who are you? How do you know me? She's just perfect. And she said, why don't you come over? We'll see if you want me to sponsor you. And so I go over there a couple days later and I sit down on her couch and like I said, the first question she asked me was, do you known what it means to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I was so just amazed. I was so amazed with that very first question, I was like, this woman has something to teach me. You know, this women knows way more than I know and she says you need to read A Comes of Age, you already know about the big book, I don't need to re-read that to you, I think you're pretty intelligent, you can do that on your own but you do need to know what you're a part of and from that moment on it's just, you know, she continues to teach me and she continues to keep me accountable and call me on my crap. One thing that she has done for me recently is she's made me aware of all three sides of the triangle. That's what Dustin said. I wasn't even looking for that in a sponsor. I knew very little about three sides of the triangle. It's not what I was looking for. But I put my trust in God and I said, you find someone for me because I'm having troubles here. And he gave me somebody who had all three sides of the Triangle. And she talks a lot about working the traditions in her life. Not only in AA but in her wife. And she's obviously in the general service structure. She's a past delegate, and, you know, and so she knows a lot about that. And she says, yeah, you know, I was at the area elections this last month or month ago. And, you know, like, I call her afterwards, and you know she wants to know all about it. And, we, you, know, we talk about it, and she teaches me, and she says well this person's good for this, and this person is good for that. I mean, she just knows everything, you know. I have a question about anything. All I have to do is call her and she knows, you know. It's just great. But, you know, I didn't really choose her, you know. So I don't know how to answer this question, how to choose a sponsor. I'd say, you know, I'd tell my girls, you know, if they were looking for somebody new to move on to, to choose somebody who knows the way. You know, but I didn' t choose my sponsor. my sponsor chose me you know she was brought to me and i'm i'm grateful for that but thank you well uh once again my name is dustin barnes i'm an alcoholic and uh we're gonna pick right back up here kind of where we left off uh it was good food i am ready for a nap after eating so um we'll get back into this next question out of the pamphlet is what to expect this is a kind of a varying question you know take a look at what to expect what not to expect you know i kind of once again i'm going to go back to the big book and On page 20, there's a piece in here that talks about if you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking, what do I have to do? It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. You know, and that's what this really comes down to, is, you know, I need to share with another where I'm at so that that person can give me guidance as far as their experience goes. In the beginning, I needed someone who was going to take me back to the literature and say, this is what it says in the book. This is how it says to work this step. This is exactly our specific, precise instructions on how to do the action necessary. Because I was the guy that people would say, let go and let God. And I'm an atheist. I'm agnostic. How do you do that? You know, how do you just let go und let God? I don't know how to doing that. You know the thing I found by a sponsor who would take me back to the book is my best example of how to let go un let God is, you know, why don't you try steps four through nine. I write an inventory. I do a fifth step. I ask God to remove the character defects involved. I piece together who got harmed by that conduct, and then I go try to make things right. You know what? Some of the deepest resentments I ever had in my life were a direct result of me being unwilling to look at my actions, of me feeling guilty about it. Of me being willing to look at where I had been wrong in that relationship. And when I was finally confronted with the fact that I didn't have a part, not my part, but my mistakes, that I had some stuff to take a look at. What I found was a lot of the people I resented, I had done more to them than they had done to me. I really had. I had harmed them more than they hade harmed me. I had been using that resentment to fuel all sorts of poor behavior. I had continued to harm people, and I couldn't stop thinking about it because I was still insisting it was their fault. So when a sponsor got in front of me with the big book and said, we're going to do this process, I got free of it. You know, what to expect? You know what? Expecting anything out of an alcoholic's, you know, you're setting yourself up for therapy. You know? Ask the family groups. But hopefully the person sitting in front of me is armed with a real answer. Hopefully the person standing in front of me can show me how to get from point A to point B. I've had sponsors that told me lots of stuff that wasn't in the big book, and I think that that stuff was necessary as well. When the speaker gets done, go shake their hand. It's respectful. Try not to cuss from the podium. There's a thought. I come in and I can't do anything but swear every other word. That's who I was. And thank God that my sponsor didn't tell me I was a bad member of AA and that I was going to drink because I couldn't stop using the F word, you know? Thank God I had a sponsor that said this is Alcoholics Anonymous and we try to be respectful. You know, what to expect? A, we should expect that we're dealing with another human being. See, the answers don't flow forth from my sponsor. If the man is connected to his spiritual way of life, the answers flow through my sponsor. By him doing the work, by him getting involved, by Him seeking God, by him getting in a spiritual program of action, getting involved in a Spiritual Way of Life himself. And then he can transmit to me something that he has because he has it. You know what not to expect as a therapist? My sponsor is not a therapist. He said you probably need to go see a therapist. I didn't get into story stuff and do all that because that's not what we were here to do but what i can tell you is i had a high trauma high impact childhood that's just what i came from and my sponsor was not in any sort of position to give me any direction out of his experience based on uh his life and so he said go see someone that can help you with that and so you know no problem doing that go go do that after two years of kicking and screaming you know my sponsor is not a legal advisor you know I've had guys that what do you think I should do about this ain't got a clue man call your PO you know. I've got guys that'll come to me and say you know i'm looking at this charge i'm going to face this this is they hit me with a charge from before i got sober and uh what do u think i should do about it and all's i can do i never been arrested i can go to the big book and i can say well you know the big books says we ought to be willing to go to jail if necessary? Well, I don't think I need to do that. Well, yeah, I don't know. How free do you want to be? I guarantee you from my experience of being involved in the correction system that there's people that are incarcerated right now who are freer than people I know hanging out in the rooms of AA. You know? So, I don't know. What does the book say? Go back to the book. Go do that deal. My sponsor, the sponsors i've had are definitely not marriage counselors you know and and i used to get angry at him because i'm having a horrible relationship based on my actions and i'm going to them asking for advice and they're giving me advice that uh you know i can't really blame them for because i was only telling them about 30 of what was really going on anyway and i i'm i'm tweaking the story to get them to tell me what i want to hear so that i can continue to act poorly and feel spiritually justified in doing so. You're being selfish, sweetheart. You need to write some inventory. You know, the people that just say to me, like, I don't know, what's the book say? What's the literature say? You know? I can't expect this flawed human being sitting in front of me to have all the answers as far as the sense of my life. You know. I've sat with Kelly's sponsor and just been blown away by the stuff that she knows and points to the literature and all this stuff. That stuff's great, but what do I do when my kid won't behave? My sponsor is a guide initially to recovery through work and then rework in the 12 steps. And then you get into the other aspects of the fellowship, but starting to take these principles outside of these rooms. And the sponsor I got today, I don't know that it's an expectation, but I do know that it's true. That being in his presence, sitting in his house makes me want to be a better father because he's a better father than I am. Sitting in his house, being in His presence, meeting His family, doing that stuff, it makes me wanna be a better husband. It makes me wannna be a better friend. I want what that man has. Plain and simple. And I've gotten to the place where I've had to realize that what I do to get sober and what I do to stay sober there's gonna be some variance in that. You know, there just is. I found that underneath all the pomp and the calamity and the worship of other things, all the hatred, the resentment, the pain, beneath all that stuff was a deep thirst for the power of God in my life. I am spiritually hungry and I hope that I don't lose that. I really don't because it's been sponsors that didn't impose on me their limits. They didn't impose on me, well, I'm here. You can't read that book without me. You can do this. I've had sponsors that said, you know what? Why don't you take that same enthusiasm you had for drinking? And boy, let me tell you, I had some enthusiasm for drinking. And why don't put that into this way of life and see what happens? Yes, yes, we know you need balance. Get confronted with a fourth step and I go, you know, I really need to just spend some more time with my kids. Really? Really? I need balance at that point. No, I needed to pursue it with the desperation of a drowning man. And the sponsors who have gone in front of me and said, yes, do that, do that, are phenomenal guys. I don't expect a sponsor to make a bunch of demands on me. They just don't. This whole idea of never say no to an AA request. The guy was talking about it during the service talk. I uh I try not to I try not to but I got kids same deal I have to show up in their lives if I have the affairs to practice the principles in you know what I'm saying I have too be where the action is and where the action is for me is not hiding out in Alcoholics Anonymous it's living life and coming here and going to the meetings but realizing that I have a responsibility you know that what I expect from a sponsor is someone that's, you know, doing the same thing. Maybe not the exact same thing? I got sponsors that share with me what they did to get sober and I got sponsored to share with what they do to stay sober. And coming into this next section after Kelly shares we'll kind of get into more of that stuff. Like the stuff I was taught is most of what we've been spending time with. How I was brought up in Alcoholics Anonymous and what I do with sponsorship Now, and after Kelly shares here, we're going to be getting into kind of a synthesis, a combination of all that stuff and how I try to carry that into working with others. How I try To Be of Service to the guys that are sick enough to ask me to sponsor them. Because, I mean, if you're going into spiritual help for someone in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, you've got to take a look at that. we're alcoholics. And some of the most spiritual people I know hide out in these rooms. I don't mean hide out, I mean they're in Alcoholics Anonymous. So the guys that asked me to sponsor them, I'm kind of blown away sometimes. You know, driving to work the other day, I got a beautiful job, I've got a relationship with my children, I have great friends in AA, I sponsored these guys and over the last couple weeks I've been going through an experience when When I even taste what's going on in my life, I start to weep because I was strapped down to a gurney a few years ago. And now my life is so good, I can't believe it. Has there been trials? Yeah. But all in all, I ain't been strapped down to the gurney in a long time. I haven't been walked into a courtroom with shackles on in a long time and I'm just truly blessed to be sponsored in Alcoholics Anonymous by people that love Alcoholics Anonymous by people that really care it's not just something they do it's something they are they are an embodiment of the principles and that's what I'm striving for and that's it