Sponsorship and the Big Book – Came to Believe – Part 1 of 4 – Local AA Speakers

Thank you. my name's Dave, I'm an alcoholic. I'll end now actually, get a round of applause at the beginning, that's downhill from now I guess. Thanks for asking me, I am pleased to be here and I'm pleased and very grateful to be clean and sober today. It's always a pleasure to be asked to do any kind of service in AA and if it's within my power to do what I'm asked to do, I will do that. You know, I've found the benefits of AA in my life over the years that I've been sober to be immense really. And what it provides me with today, you know I haven't had a drink for 13 years. I don't think necessarily I'm going to have a drink today. But what it provide me with is a perfect vehicle to get out self. I can come here and gives me a vehicle, a structure in my life to be able to try and help somebody else and as a result of that ease my self-centeredness. And it seems to work perfectly as that vehicle. In the years I've been coming I've found no good reason to leave. I know people do leave and people do different things and stuff like that and what other people do is entirely is entirely up to them. But I've stayed and I enjoy it. So today, I mean you've got three hours of me talking, which is a long time. And one of the questions you get asked by newer people is how on earth do you find things to talk about for three hours? And then when you get around to be around as long as I have, you think well actually I need to cut some bits out. Like a lot of AAs, I guess I can talk a lot. Those of you that know me will will attest to that I'm sure. But what qualifies me to do this, for those of you that don't know me, I think the main qualification I have is that I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I was asked to do it. And I think that, you know, I don't think that there's anything particularly special about me that enables me to sit and talk for three hours when maybe somebody else doesn't get asked to be there. You know, how do I manage my ego within that framework? I'll just do what I'm told. The speaker in AA can be a dangerous job to sit up here and think that I have knowledge that can change people's lives or impart wisdom that means that you're going to have an improved recovery, and that's all down to me. It's a very dangerous idea. So I find that the way that I manage that dynamic is that I only do what I'm asked to. Someone says to me come speak about sponsorship, I'll come speak about sponsorship. Someone else says come speak of the seventh tradition, I go speak about the Seventh Tradition. And I endeavour wherever possible to limit what I say to my personal experience rather than what I might believe or my opinions about things. But within today there maybe will be some belief and opinion because sometimes that dialogue could be useful to tell you how I got where I was, where I am currently. So that's my main qualification. In terms of specifically with sponsorship, I've been a sponsor for about 11 years to other people. And I've had four sponsors myself in my time in recovery. So I'll endeavour to speak about both sides of that dynamic, they can't have one without the other in some respects. And I probably heard at the last count there's somewhere in the region about 110 fifth steps. I've worked with a lot of people, and that doesn't mean that I'm any better than anybody else. That's just the path that's been presented to me in my journey in recovery. What it does mean is when you've sat with so many people and heard so much stuff, it does give you stuff that you can share to help maybe people that haven't had that experience. So that, I guess, is my qualification to be here. If anything that I say is at odds with what you currently believe, your current practice, or anything that you think is right for you, please endeavour not to take that personally. I'm not here to convince you that what I do is the only way or the right way. A few years ago I might have been here to do that because where I was in my personal recovery meant that I actually felt that a lot of people were doing it wrong. I've overcome that barrier personally and I've come to understand And actually, I don't think there is a right or wrong to go about this. Because people are very different. One of the wonders of life for me is the understanding about the human being is that everybody's unique, everybody's different. There aren't two human beings the same in the world. I know several sets of identical twins who have the same genetic make-up. They came from the same egg. So genetically they're the same but if you speak to them, they're different. They have different ideas about things, the way that they've lived their life may be different, and things like that. The human beings are unique. And the chances of all of you human beings being here sitting in a chair, being who you are currently today, the odds are infinite. You can't actually compute them, it's an infinite thing. That could be a possibility. But I find that immensely exciting. Immensely exciting that there are no two human beings the same we're all having a very unique experience of life from our own perspectives on our own way of living and nobody else can have that experience. So you can love other people, you can have other people share your life with you but nobody else could live your life as you. It's wonderful isn't it? So understanding that has enabled me to have respect for what other people want to do, choose to do want to believe or do believe. I no longer try and convince people that I'm right and they're wrong and that's been a blessed relief for me you know, it creates less suffering in me to come from that position. So if you're here and you feel yourself getting moved to a position of defensiveness because it's what I'm saying maybe is challenging what you currently believe you know don't take it personally. But sometimes when you get them challenges you know and I've had it, you know I've been in conventions various places around the world where the speaker has been saying things and it's kind of I feel myself bristle a little bit you know because I'm thinking that's not quite right you know that's how I see it And sometimes after the convention or maybe in the tea break, I get a moment to reflect. Why was I getting so defensive about that? Why was that making me angry? And sometimes I've changed my mind. My beliefs have changed. I've experienced complete consciousness shifts while sitting in chairs in conventions. I go to a convention and the speaker will be talking. After an hour of listening to the speaker, I'm in tears because what I believed before I sat down has changed whilst I've been sitting there. And so, again I guess the recommendation from this speaker would be to try and sit with an open mind. You might learn something you might not. So that's the opening caveats. The way I'm going to try to do this today is speak for this first session just generally about my experiences with sponsorship. So, what it was like to be a sponsee, how I initially felt about them experiences and things like that. And then how I've become the sponsor that I currently am. I think for me it's always been a work in progress. You know, the way that I approach sponsorship has changed over the years that I've been sober. You know as more has been revealed to me as I've kind of got to work with stuff and practice stuff in different ways. And then the second hour after lunch I'm going to endeavour to answer some of the common questions that have been asked over the years about some of pitfalls of sponsorship, some of the things that people are uncertain about, general queries that occur. And then open it up for some questions from the floor as well in that second session. And then in the last session what I'm gonna do is I'm gunna get a big book and I'm to sit here and I'm going to show you exactly how I go through the big book with a new person. Maybe some of that would be helpful. So I came to AA, I took my last drink on August 24th 1998 and to me it seems like a long time ago now. When I talk about my drinking stories in recovery sometimes it's like I talk about someone different. It doesn't really feel like me anymore. You know, the changes that have happened in me and in my life, in recovery, mean that when I look back on the person that I used to be it's almost like looking at somebody else. And so I've got the language to talk about stories and stuff like that but quite often I'm not connected emotionally to that anymore. It's kind of, it's just a narrative you know. But I'm aware that that narrative can be helpful. So when I came here I was in a terrible state. You You know, I was suffering from my alcoholism and very mentally unwell and looking for something different, you know. And I didn't know that when I first come to AA that that would involve not ever drinking again. I figured that maybe I could find a way to not drink for a while, improve my mental health, get access to my daughter, improve things at work, the kind of life management stuff that was kind of falling apart around me. I don't think I came here with the idea that I would never drink again. In my early meetings in Alcoholics Anonymous, I got hope. I heard people talk about drinking like the way that I drank. I heard talking about feeling the way I felt. I heard about doing some of the things that I used to do whilst I was drinking. and I understand now that helped ease some of my separation, my sense of separation. Because I never knew that there were other people that kind of had that stuff going on. You know, I was a very isolated human being. I could be in a room surrounded by people and feel completely alone. And in AA, the first few meetings was the first time I'd felt like maybe there were some people like me in the world. And it gave me hope and I continued to come to AA, and after a period of a few weeks in AA a miracle occurred and I completely recovered from Alkalism. And I went from being that kind of hopeful individual that came to the first few meetings and returned and reverted to what is my natural state of mind and being which is extremely arrogant and judgmental and I sat in meetings being extremely arrogant judgmental in my head. Not to you, I'd smile at you and be polite. My mum brought me up to be polite, but in my mind I'm thinking what a bunch of losers. Badly dressed. Some of you are really old. Some of you didn't seem to have much else going on other than other than AA. And I felt a bit of pity for you about that. When I look back now, I can kind of see why that was, but at the time it felt like I was right and he was all wrong. People talked about sponsorship, not often, I didn't hear a lot in AA. I got sober in this area and the kind of things that you hear in meetings now has changed with my time in AA, and sometimes I ask is that my perception? Is that just that I'm remembering it in a certain way and that isn't actually what happened? So I asked other people who got sober at the same time that I did and we agreed actually no there wasn't a lot of talk about sponsorship in the meetings. There certainly wasn't much to talk about God, and very few people seemingly had worked the steps. And those that had in a general way talked about it as being a really tough thing to do. I can remember people talking about spending years writing the fourth step and things like that. So it sounded like quite a laborious kind of option. So I'm sitting there three or four weeks sober thinking well what does this really mean to me then? This laborious option that doesn't really seem to do much anyway, and nobody really seems to think, you know, and so I didn't really bother with it. If there's an easier path, or apparently easier path I will choose that. A path that requires no work or a path that seems to require effort and work I'll choose the path that required no work. You know, that makes perfect sense to me. And so I did get a sponsor. I didn' t think there was anyone in AA who could sponsor me anyway because I figured I was probably more intelligent than the rest of you. And, you know, I figured that I'd be sponsored by Marlborough Light. That's what I thought. I like Marlboros and, you now, other people got sponsored by Marlbour and they're racing drivers and things like that. So I thought that's what i'd do, I'll be sponsored by Marloborough. And I didn't read the big book. You know, my first big book I bought when I was three weeks over and we were getting it home that night and sitting in bed and I opened it up and it said it was written in 1939 and I immediately thought this book can't teach me anything. See, I've got a psychology degree so this book can't really teach me nothing. And I looked through the contents page and there's a story near the back called Freedom From Bondage. It was quite late at night and I thought that might be an interesting read. I read the first few pages of A Freedom From Bondage and it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And I closed that book and it actually stayed under my bed, propping my bed up as though it was a wonky bed and it stayed there for the first 18 months of my recovery. So, my initial introduction to AA didn't involve things that I now see as important because of the way I was and possibly because of the way the fellowship was at the time. It was made quite easy for people to come in and not work the steps and kind of do that stuff. I can remember talking to a bloke at a meeting there was a third meeting I went to and I said what's all this God stuff about? I was an Atheist, I was educated Atheists and I liked arguing with people about God. I wouldn't listen to their side, I'd only tell them mine. And he said to me, don't worry about that Dave, it's all a load of bollocks, sorry for my language. That's what he said, I'm quoting him. I thought, oh excellent! And I can remember periods in my recovery getting angry about that when I kind of had different experiences later on later on and thinking, you know, that bloke sold me down the road, didn't he, saying that? It was out of order, him saying that to me. But again I've got to reflect on that. And I think that if he'd have said anything else, I'd have probably left. Or maybe I would have been less interested in staying. So maybe he did tell me what I needed to hear. So I'm careful about my judgements today, about what other meetings do or other people do and things like that. I don't know what the big picture is for each and every one of you. You know, for some of you in here suffering will be required for you to live your life. Suffering will be require for you find a solution. I'm not going to deny you that opportunity to suffer if that's what you want to do. So my initial experiences with AA were kind of interesting really but masked by my arrogance and I carried on like that for a while and in the end I decided to leave AA. Because if you're an atheist going to AA, who's not interested in getting a sponsor, doesn't want to do any service, doesn't even really want to be in the meeting, doesn't wanna put any money in the pot really, also begrudge that, even though it was only a pound. That's how I absolved my conscience, I'm not doing any service but I put a pound in so that's my bit. The NA doesn't offer much, really. I didn't really like you. I could see that some of you were quite genuine but I was also quite suspicious of a lot of you. A lot of people I thought, what's their angle? Because I judged you with the way that I was. See, I was always on an angle. I was playing people. I'd only do something for somebody else if they were saying anything for me. I was the kind of bloke in the pub you a fiver on a Wednesday night knowing that you were getting paid on Friday, but I could tap you for a score. So sometimes in AA this kind of, the over-happy individual wants to shake your hand and give you a lift home and stuff like that. I was like, please stay away from me. You want my phone number? No chance. And life carried on. I left AA. I remember sitting at work one day thinking to myself, I've been sober about 10 months at this point. And I can remember thinking, you haven't drank Dave and things like that but life's still not that great. Things still aren't really going the way that you'd like. You need to make some changes in your life. Maybe you should drop out of that AA. You haven't drank for a while. All they do is talk about drinking and you don't really like them anyway. So why did you go? I thought to myself, I've got no idea why I'd go. I'm not going to go. And I stopped going. And I carried on without AA for eight months. And because I've only lived my life, I'm a unique human being, like all of you are, I don't know what it's like to live like somebody else. I don't know what it's like to live a different life. I've only had my experience. Because my experience of coming to AA and putting down the drink, things were slightly better than they were when I was drinking in a physical sense and in a mental sense. The main symptoms of my mental health problems went away. My physical health improved because I wasn't drinking alcohol. I thought that was all that was here I didn't know that there was an alternative, a way of feeling good. I didn' t know that. And I'd never really felt good, only artificially. But I didn''t know that either. So I'd only felt the way that I'd felt. And so I struggled on thinking that it was okay, that this was it, this is all there was. And what happened to me is after 18 months without a drink I reached what I now understand was my rock bottom. And at that time in my life, externally things were better than they'd been for a long time. Had a job, had a car, living in a better place than I had been living in. I had access to my daughter. You know, I got fit physically, you know, things like that. I was kind of... To the external world, things seemed to be going okay. but internally I just felt complete despair. And I reached a point of suicidal depression where I decided that the only way that I could change the way that I felt, knowing that alcohol and drugs were not an option for me any longer, was to end my life. You know, I was always quite a positive bloke as a drunk really. Even when I was on the psychiatric unit I thought things were going to get better, you know. That's the way, I guess I was always like that as a child even, you now. So in my drinking I was never suicidal, not once was I suicidal with my drinking even though I ended up with some terrible conditions physically and mentally but never once really considered in depth that ending my life would be the thing to do. I used to think quite regularly about ending other people's lives. Because I thought I was alright really, everybody else was the problem. So after 18 months without a drink to reach this point of wanting to end my life is a significant thing for me even now just to reflect on really that I'd reached that point of desperation. I was just talking to somebody before the meeting about a friend of mine who did end his life as a result of this illness. And all the other people that have ended up in that situation, drunk and sober. So I don't say it lightly. That's my experience is what happened. I decided I didn't have a particularly original plan for ending my life. I did plan it. That's how you can tell whether someone is serious about this or not, is that they have a plan generally about how they are going to do it. And so I had some pills and I had some booze and I decided that I was going to it away from home so that for some reason I thought that would lessen the burden or lessen blow to the people that love me. And I ended up 300 miles away from a strange series of events I didn't end up going to where I wanted to go to But somehow I ended up there, and I booked into a hotel. And I can remember thinking it was a Friday. I remember thinking, sitting in this hotel room, maybe you should go to one more meeting of AA. At least then when people think about what you did on your last day, my mum and dad and things like that, they think well at least he had a go, at least tried to do something. He didn't just give up. So I rang the AA helpline team and asked them if there was a meeting that night, and they said there was. There's one where I was in the town that I was at that night and it started at half past seven. So I thought well I can wait until after that meeting before I end my life. So I went to the meeting and there was bloke there and this bloke he eventually became my first sponsor. He didn't know that at the time and neither did I And, you know, I sat in the meeting and it was apparent that I wasn't really enjoying myself, you know. And he saw that, you know, he's a good AA really. And he didn't make it a question. After the meeting he just said, you're coming with me son, and he kind of put his arm around me and scooped me away. Well, he didn' ask me. But I thought about that a lot, you know, over the years. I think if he had asked the question would I have gone? I'd probably have made some excuse and not. And on some level, I guess he probably knew that. You know, he kind of took me hostage really. He just said you come in with me son, he's quite a big bloke. And he put me in his car and he was driving me around. And he didn't ask me how I was. Well, he didn' t need to did he? You could see. And what he done like a good AA, he just talked about himself. What seemed like an eternity. He talked in a way that, in the book, in chapter 7, it talks about how to approach a new man. And he did that with me. I didn't know he was doing that but that's what he did. Talked about himself, sharing in a general way, talking about his stories. As you could see he was hooking me, he was upping the ante, getting more and more stuff going. See, I was in a desperate condition when I met him, to the point that actually in an hour or so's time I was going to attempt to end my own life. And just that last conversation, that conversation I had, him talking and me listening to him was enough to tip me over the edge. It was almost like, I felt like he could see through me. It was one of those last vestiges of pride. If you think about it, suicide is a prideful act isn't it? It's done out of desperation but also it's about saying I'm still going to control the outcome here. I'm not going to surrender. And he said to me, you need never feel this bad ever again son, if you do one simple thing. I said what? He said get on your knees and pray and ask for help. He said what have you got to lose? I had to concede to him on that night I probably wasn't the greatest power in the universe And after he left me, I said the first honest prayer I'd said since I was a small child. I said, please God, if you'll help me, I don't know what I'm doing. And that promise has come true. Never felt that bad since that night. The rest of the conversation he had with me was that this program's not broken. You don't have to try and fix it. It worked for you the same as it's worked for a couple of million other blokes. All you've got to do is have a go. He told me my recovery is my responsibility. He said, no one gets sober on your behalf. No one can go to meetings on your behalf. You're the one that has to go and sit in the chair. He said no one can say your prayers on your behalve. You are the one who has to do that. He said if no one could write that inventory for you, you have to do it. And when the time comes to make them amends you're the ones that's going to have to go out and do that stuff as well. Nobody can do it for you. And rather than being frightened by that I became when I thought about it the following day it empowered me. Because I realised at a moment What happened to me that night when I surrendered? See, I had a moment of complete ego deflation. Just the moment where I was able to surrender and ask for help and mean it and it just shifted my consciousness enough to start to see things differently. So rather than getting angry about this being passed to me this idea of being responsible for my own recovery I realised it was empowering. At this moment I realised that what would happen to me not be dependent upon what you did, any of you said to me or did for me. It's entirely dependent on what I was prepared to do. And I came back to AA properly with a different attitude. Took it seriously. I came to meetings every day for quite a long time when I came back and I've got service in the meetings you know and that bloke lived a long way away So I figured he couldn't be my sponsor. I didn't ask him. And so I started looking in the meetings. He said to me, look for somebody local then Dave. That's what you want. Look for someone local. Go to meetings, listen to what people say. You know? Listen to what they're saying. When you find someone that you think has got something that you want then ask him because I think it's a dangerous thing to say actually if he's got something you want you'd have a look and see what his bird is like That's the way I was thinking at the time. And I did hear a bloke, you know, and he shared a lot about his experience of being adopted as a child. You know, because I'd been adopted as child, I thought that that was a connection with him that I had. So I asked him if he'd help me, this bloke. And we met up a couple of times. And on some level I knew it wasn't for me, you know. I can't say why, I don't know why really. I just knew, I said an instinctive thing. There's nothing wrong with him, he's still sober as far as I know. And I just know it wasn' t for me. What it did when I had that experience with him is I realised I needed to go back and ask the bloke to help me. You see, the bloake had the courage of his convictions not to say to me after that meeting just don't pick up the first drink son. go to more meetings, do nightly and nightly. He never said none of them things. He 12-stepped me in a way that meant he showed me what the solution was. He wasn't afraid of his own experience with God and he offered that to me. And on some level I wouldn't have had them words to describe it but instinctively I knew that that was the person I needed to go back to. And so I did, I rang him up and I asked him and he said well I've been waiting for you to ask son. So he believed you had to ask. Act of humility. And he said to me, you need to pray every day. He didn't suggest it, he said you need the prayer every day, that's his word, you NEED to pray everyday. So I did. As an atheist, pray everyday. I'd ring him up sometimes and say, Taron, don't worry it's going to work for me, I don't believe in God. He said, Don't be cute if you believe in something, just do it anyway. Carried on praying and started to engage myself in the step work. Things started to improve. I couldn't deny it was a tangible difference From where I'd been to where I, even after a few months of just doing them simple prayers. Please God help keep me sober, things like that. Serenity prayer. Started to feel better. And this bloke, I used to go down and see him once a month for a weekend, stay down at his place. He lived down in Cornwall, he liked surfing and things like. It was handy really. He worked out really well, it was perfect. He had got surfboards in his garage and things like that. We gradually started to work through the steps. See, that man as a sponsor, he doesn't sponsor people like I sponsor people now. He had no structure with what he offered. He left it entirely up to me how I wanted to interpret the book. You ever read the book with me? It just wasn't the culture of AA at that time in this country. There might have been people around that did it like that, I don't know. But you know, I didn't meet them. So there was a few of us, I made a few friends in recovery at that time and we kind of worked stuff out together. Did a step three prayer on my own, didn't do it with my sponsor, did it on my And my sponsor said to me that you should write a resentment inventory. And I said to him, well there's people up this way, Tony, that are writing a life story. And he says, well do that as well if you want. So I did. You know, I wrote a life-story. A life story wasn't a bad thing to do. But it didn't really teach me anything I didn't already know. That's the trouble, isn't it? I've lived my life, I know the story. I'm good at telling stories, you know, I can dress it up, it should be published really. I'm glad I've burnt it, do you know what I mean? The temptation's gone. I can remember thinking while I'm writing it, you now, what am I going to do at the publishing house reception when they offer me a glass of champagne? and I thought about what I'd have to say, you know, in that situation. And so he kind of left it up to me, you now. He talked a lot about the big book, my first sponsor, and he promoted the bigbook. He used to go to meetings and talk about the book and things like that. Well I know, if you listen to this tone it's not meant as a negative but I know it's the only book he's ever read in his life. background he came from wasn't one of being educated and things like that. And he carried that message to me in the way that he could carry that message to me. So we started to try and work it out, so I wrote this inventory, you know, it was the inventory that I wrote, people would be critical of their own inventories probably, it wasn't very good, it was this, that and the other, it doesn't really matter, it's just one that I write and I shared it with him And on the day that we decided to do my fifth step, he had a few caravans on his land. And I sustained one of them and went down there and stuff like that. And he said to me, have you finished? I said yeah. He said right okay, we made a time. So I'm sitting in this caravan and I'm waiting for him to come in. And I'm anxious. I've got my pages, and I'm anxious. And the reason why I'm anxious is that I know I've missed a couple of things out. See, I feared his judgement, I feared all your judgement really, but particularly him. There was a couple things that I'd done in my life that I didn't really want anybody to know about. He walked into the caravan And he cracked a joke. He said, oh, caravan's tipping up at the end there. Must be the weight of that full step, son, isn't it? He sat down and lit a cigar. Oh, I don't like cigars. He's already pissing me off. Do you know what I mean? Got the tea and biscuits out. And he told me a couple of things, you know, that he'd been meditating. He told me couple of thing that spooked me a bit. things that he knew, he said things about me that he couldn't have known, it was strange really. He went to a spiritualist church so he kind of did that stuff and he had what people's spiritual guides were and things and he never ever promoted that to me and said I should go there but that's part of his spiritual life. So he told me a couple of things, so I'm anxious thinking that I'm not going to tell him these things and then he spooked me out by telling me a couple of these stuff. He told me when my spiritual guides were, and he said a couple things. What does this mean to you? Does it mean something to you son? This is what came to me. And I said, God, how does he know that? He looked at me and he says, if you lie to me today son, will you hold anything back? He says, I probably won't know But you will. You'll know, and you'll walk away from this feeling terrible. It's kind of making me drop again, do you know what I mean? And then he told me a couple of things about himself. One of them was worse than anything I'd ever thought about doing. I felt like I had to say it on him as well. It's just enough, you know. Do you know what? I was able to tell him the whole truth. And I think if I'd have done this, I know people go to a Catholic priest or psychologist, the book says you can do that, doesn't it? Says you can go and share your stuff. But for me, I think, if I had been approached in any other way other than with somebody who understood the importance of sharing their own experience, I maybe wouldn't have told the whole truth. I told him the whole true, including the two big secrets which I now share quite happily with everybody that I sponsor in my exchange with them. I say these are the two things I didn't want to share and I'll share it with them before we do that fifth step. There's loads of people who know about that stuff. It's not that big a deal really but for me at the time it was. I walked out of that caravan feeling like a free man. I felt physically lighter. I remember on my board the following day, it was like a perfect surf. Absolutely. It was like I had perfect balance. All surfers fall off at the end. The sea runs out, doesn't it? But it felt like that. So I had a wonderful experience with that fifth step with my first sponsor. He allowed me to work through the rest of the steps in any way that I wanted to. He did say to me after that fifth-step experience that I should continue to take inventory. He made it quite a clear stipulation, he said from now you should continue to take inventory though. He never ever stepped on me about it and I learnt to continue to taking inventory through not taking inventory. That was my experience, I left that feeling so good that I didn't bother taking any inventory but after a few months I realised that I probably needed to take some inventory. And he carried on being my sponsor and I'd go down and visit him and we'd talk on the phone and we do that kind of stuff. And then I was at a meeting one night and some bloke asked me to be his sponsor. He came up to me after the meeting, because I got fired up. After I had these experiences with my sponsor, I got fried up in AA. I was excited about what had happened to me. Finding a higher power in my life as an atheist was a great turn around. And I felt so good, felt so clean for the first time. I was excited. So I'd come to meetings and I'd share this stuff. I thought I was exciting about what was happening. I suppose that was attractive you know. There was a bloke that asked me after a meeting, he said would you be my sponsor? I immediately thought no. Because I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. In fact, if I could have picked one person in that meeting that I didn t want to sponsor it would have been him. I said, I don't know. I'll have to ring my sponsor and ask him. Hoping that Tony would say, no, no if you don't like him son leave it. It ain't going to work out. If you haven't got a connection it ain't gonna work out, that's what I'm thinking. If I could save face in the meeting all that with the bloke. So I got home that night and I rang Tony up and I said, you never guess what's happened to me, some bloke has just asked me to sponsor him and he says well why don't you do it son? It might make you learn this program you keep going on about. So I started to sponsor this bloke, I really didn't know what I was doing, but I was willing I was willing to try, and he didn't stay silent. That bloke died, hopefully not as a result of my sponsorship. It was a while after that he did die. He was somebody who struggled in the fellowship, things like that. And I got asked by other people. People started to ask me all the time. I ended up sponsoring lots of people, not really knowing what I was doing. You know, didn't have any structure to the way that I was sponsoring people. I was letting people do what they wanted to do, you know, in terms of interpreting the book. I had a kind of loose framework of how I'd work the steps. That's all I had really. And most of them didn't stay sober, you now. That's my experience really. Some of them are still sober. There were some blokes around who themselves got more than a decade of sobriety when we were sponsored in their early years. We all had to take through the steps later on as an amends to them, because they didn't really know what I was doing. That's not beating myself up or giving myself a hard time. I was a willing participant of Alcoholics Anonymous doing my best. That's all anyone can ever do really is doing their best. And then other people started getting sober and things like that things like that. We started listening to CDs and recordings and tapes and things, American speakers and things like. I got excited about that kind of stuff. There seemed to be other things going on about the big book and stuff like that I didn't really quite understand. Then I started going to a meeting where there was a very direct sponsorship going on which which hadn't been my experience with sponsorship, you know I hadn't had that. My sponsor whenever I used to ring him up for life advice he'd say to me, how am I supposed to know what you're going to do son? He said get in your knees and pray and ask your God. I don't know what have you got to do with that. So he never ever told me what to do in my life, not once. So I started going to this meeting and then people talking about taking guidance from their sponsor, bringing their sponsor to check what their decision making should be like on a daily basis whether they should go out with a girl or not whether she should take the job or not kind of life management stuff it seemed very different to what I'd been experiencing I started to question whether I was doing it right it's very persuasive to sit in a meeting where people all talk in a certain way and you don't have that experience yourself I felt uncomfortable sometimes in their meetings people would openly ask me who's your sponsor and I think, what's it got to do with you, really? And so I thought about that. Is that something I need to do? Because the blokes I'm working with, most of them aren't staying sober. That was my experience at that time. I worked with a lot of people, most didn't stay sober. I'd drive around with a car full of drunks everywhere I went. I had a carful of drumps. Me, Vic, car full o' drunks. So I thought about it a lot, but there were some things that I couldn't reconcile. And one of the guys who used to attend that meeting, I became friendly with him. I used to go around his flat and he'd talk about what he did as a sponsor and how his sponsor worked with him and things like that. Some of it sounds very appealing to me, having that kind of structure and stuff like that but there are things I couldn' t reconcile for myself and I'm not saying that that style of sponsorship is wrong or bad or anything like that There are some people that flourish under it, absolutely flourish. But there's some lines that people would say like things like I defer to somebody that knows better than me and I say to myself well what if he doesn't know better than you? How will you know? He's a human being isn't he? How will he know if he's trying to manage your life for you? I couldn't reconcile that. People will talk about deferring up the lines. My sponsor doesn't know, he asks his sponsor. So because I'm a logical thinker I think what happens at the top of the line then? Who's that bloke? Where does he go? I couldn' reconcile that and there were some positions that people had around other things things like that, that just didn't sit well with me. So I chose not to go down that path, you know, that type of sponsorship. But I took on board some of the things that they did use. You know at that meeting that I went to, you know I used to go to that meeting and another one where they talked about certain suggestions, six suggestions they called it, and they used to give them out in a car. And I could see how they'd be useful, I could say you know when you talk to people they say well what it is, is we give these to the newcomers, it gives them something to do until they've worked the program. I think that makes sense. I never had them suggestions when I was first sponsored. My sponsor told me that I needed to pray. That's all he told me. So I adopted them suggestions myself. They seemed useful. I started to pass them on to people that I sponsored. I found that people started to stay sober for longer. There's my experience with that. The people that ask me for help, I'll give them these suggestions. They seem to stay sober for longer. Over a period of time one of the suggestions I dropped, you know, one of suggestions is to ring two newcomers every day and I found that my experience with that was that it wasn't helpful to people you know because it'd become like a tick box thing and be quite insensitive sometimes. Sometimes a newcomer would end up with 10 phone calls from a group in the morning you know it could be a bit overpowering I know people that find their phone calls very helpful and useful, but I stopped offering that as a suggestion to people. If they wanted to take it on board themselves, it was up to them. So I started offering them suggestions because I'd come into contact with them, found them useful. My sponsor never used them so far as my way still never has, you know, that man. And I carried on that way. And then I met some other people in AA who talked about using the book as a sponsorship tool, you know, using the big book. I thought well yeah I could do that couldn't I? I could use the bigbook. And I started to work with people using like edited highlights out of the bigbooks or like pick key bits out of the chapters that I thought were important and I kind of I'd do that with them and I found actually more people stay sober So little by little I was kind of, not through any grand design or anything like that Just through saying a prayer or showing me how to be helpful, that's what I used to do a lot of the mornings. I'd say, dear God show me how to be of maximum helpfulness to you and my fellows today. I'd be just taken down these paths, find new information all the time and gradually experiment on people and see whether it worked. Some people would say, I remember people saying to me, well that's a bit dishonest Dave, isn't it? If you're using stuff that wasn't your experience, isn' t that dishonest? Well, that's common sense isn't it? If you come across new information that's helpful, isn't common sense to use that? A bit dishonest in the slightest. My experience with the suggestions was that for me they were suggestions. I wouldn't really worry too much if people didn't do them. I still don't actually. There's a line, isn't there, between offering something as a suggestion and then trying to control the outcome. If I'm trying to control the income, control the outcome with an individual to make him do the suggestions, they're not suggestions. If I was saying to you that if you don't do them suggestions I'm going to withdraw sponsorship, I'm not suggesting it to you, I'm telling you. It's a fine line, but it's one I think is important for me. So if I offer you a suggestion and you don' t do it, I' m fine with that because I've only suggested it. It's your business what you do. I'm not in the business of trying to control anyone. See, I learned through this journey and asking questions of myself and other people that any attempt to control someone is based on my fear. My fear they won't stay sober. My fear that my reputation as a sponsor won't stand up amongst my fellows because all my sponsees are getting pissed. What will they think of me? So I learned about the suggestions. Then my sponsor, he won the lottery and he won, him and his father, they shared three and a half million quid. Driving down the road one day, had a phone call which was toned and he never really rang me often, you know I'd rang him, he didn't ring me very often And he said, you're sitting down, so I said well I'm in the car, it's a Sunday morning. It's a car that he gave me, he gave it to me because my car got smashed up. He was a good bloke at that time, he was a very generous man, you know. And I didn't have any money to pay him, he said to pay me whenever I'd got the money. So I'm the car and he says we've had it off son, I won the lottery. He said, what do you mean? I think he's got like a hundred quid or whatever. So he told me and he said on that motor he said don't worry about the money for that son, he said you keep it. Brilliant, my sponsor has got what I want. And he's hung up and I'm driving down, and I figure, he could have got me a fucking better car than this one. One of the other blokes he sponsored got a Merc, you know. Well thanks Tony, thanks for that. Anyway, what happened to him was that over a period of time he eased up on coming to AA. Money can do that, it changes things doesn't it? I think he didn't change a great deal, he's quite solid but his whole circumstances around him changed. The way people were with him changed and there was some drift there really. So I ended up really for probably a period 18 months without a sponsor technically because Because he had a different relationship. He wasn't really going to meetings. Can you have a sponsor that doesn't go to meetings? I don't know, maybe. But at some point that to me became not an option. I knew that I needed to move on. I knew I needed find somebody else. So I did. I found somebody else I asked another bloke and he said yes, he sponsored me and he was local I went through the program again and he had a slightly different way of doing stuff and i learned from him all the time we're still working with my blokes you know gradually refining what i'm doing working it out and uh eventually i moved on from that sponsor i realized there was nothing left he could teach me you know let's not be an arrogant i think that's part of the journey in ai yeah for those of you that have been around a while you may be on your second, third or fourth sponsor. Quite often now I'm somebody's third or fourth sponsor and I encourage the people that I work with to seek a new experience all the time. My current sponsor now, he lives in America and we have a loose relationship I certainly don't ring him every day I've rang him three times this year He's like a spiritual guide really I don't bring my sponsor with inventory, unless it's something that's very private. A lot of you know my wife is in the fellowship. So for me to share with my fellows, you guys in here, things about her wouldn't be appropriate. There are some things I do take from my sponsor. And because he lives so far away, it's helpful. He doesn't have to see my wife and be involved with her life, You know, knowing stuff about her that you shouldn't know. I'm respectful of that dynamic. But for other stuff, I'll share with anyone. I talk to the band, talk to anyone, it doesn't matter. I'm quite open really about what's going on in my life and things like that. There was a bunch of blokes around who started working the steps using the Joe & Charlie tapes. I remember speaking to one of them about how he sponsored. And he said, well I'll read through the book with them. I said, what all of it? He said, yeah. That's what I do, I sit down with the book and read it all with them And I remember thinking that's a good idea I remember when he said it, that's actually a really good idea. What did I think of that? You know, I've been doing this kind of edited highlights thing I said why'd you do it that way? He said because then I know they've read it and I know that they haven't missed anything Common sense isn't it? I hadn't thought of that. I was seven years sober, I think at this point. So I started to do that. Every new bloke I worked with sat him down, started a bit of doctor's opinion, started to read through the book. I found that more people stay sober. That's my experience. So I started to think about what it means now for me to be a sponsor. What does it mean? All along that journey, I asked that question. Do I want to be somebody that is going to try and manage somebody's life and give them advice? And I think, well I've never had a sponsor that has done that. But one of the sponsors that I've had has ever done that to me. And I seem to have been able to live my life quite fine. And I realised actually at some point that I don't need to do that. I don t need to try to manage somebody s life for them. Why would I deny them the opportunity to make a mistake and learn from that? And their life is their business. The problem as a sponsor, if I'm trying to manage other people's lives, is that eventually I might start to think I do know better. That's a dangerous place for somebody with an ego. If I know better than other people. I've seen sponsors that go down that path and end up with a hierarchy around them. People that they try and manage or that people are counting, but quite often the pressure of that dynamic becomes too much for that sponsor. They begin not to share honestly about what's going on in their life. They've been unfaithful to their wife and they've started using drugs on the side. Because they can't lose face to these people that look up to them. Sometimes just the fact that people who are always on the phone asking what to do do becomes too much for that sponsor. He was okay with it when it was just one or two blokes, but now he's got 12, 13, 14 blokes ringing him up every day. He can't cope and often then people leave. The pressure becomes too much and they bail out. So I decided because of my experiences and because of what I see that I don't want to do that. As a result some of the people that are sponsored have struggled under my sponsorship. They can really desperately sometimes want me to tell them to do. They ring me up and say I've got this, this and this going on Dave, what should I do? I say I don't know. What do you want to do? Have you prayed? What's your conscience telling you? I'll never tell them. One bloke once. It's hard to keep that discipline. Some people are very good at drawing you into their drama. It's a discipline I've learned. One bloke once he asked me, I heard Bill Wilson took LSD seeking the spiritual experience. I was thinking about having a bash at that myself. I just said no! I try and practice non-judgment in being a sponsor today. My sponsor practices that. I learn a lot from my current sponsor in being non-judgmental. I think as a result of that, none of the people I've ever worked with are frightened to walk down my drive. They don't fear my judgment. So I might not speak to them for a year, two years, three years, four years sometimes. You know, blokes come and go. Do you know what I mean? There's not one person that I've worked with that's afraid to come down my drive if he's in trouble. Tell you that now. Because I won't judge him. I'll make him a cup of tea. Tell you what's going on mate. I have no desire or need to control anyone. I think it's quite arrogant sometimes. As a person in recovery sometimes you see You know, the idea that maybe they do know better. After a couple of years sobriety you think you know better you can manage other people's lives. I still struggle to manage my own life sometimes I let other people have their own experience I think it's more respectful and I'm comfortable with that So really the kind of sponsor that I am so this whole first hour has been about defining that It's about defining what is sponsorship to me I mean different things to all of you We all have different ways of interpreting this and going about it So, what am I today as a sponsor? What I am is a person that takes somebody through the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. When somebody asks me to be their sponsor, that's what I offer. That and that alone. Now if they want to continue with that relationship beyond that point I'll then become what's known as a spiritual guide. I'm quite happy to wear that hat. In some ways it's the same thing. It's no different, just the language is different. We use the word sponsor in AA because that's the culture of AA. Outside of AA these people will be called spiritual teachers. That's what they're called. That's who you all are. All of you that are sponsors, whether you know it or not, spiritual teachers So that's how I define it. That's where I am currently with my sponsorship practice. And I find that I can be comfortable about that. I no longer have doubts that I'll give people the wrong information. I no long have doubts that I've misled people and maybe contributed to their suffering. You know, I'm very open and honest about what I offer. I offer them the pure, undiluted, original solution that the first hundred used. And as a result of that, I can have a clear conscience. I'm not giving them advice, I've not told them what to do, I've tried to offer them something that's outside of the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've just offered them that. So I go to sleep peacefully. Whether or not people stay sober, whether or not they enjoy their life, see my part of that deal is done. What you get, whether you stay sober whether you guys enjoy your life, will be based upon what you're prepared to do. As long as I'm comfortable that I've told you the right stuff, given you the right stuff. What you do with that is your business. In the same way that Tony said to me, my recovery is my responsibility. It still is today. It's empowering isn't it? It is empowering. You don't have to worry about what your sponsor says, you don't Worry about what the next door neighbor says or whether something's going to turn up for you or whether some random events are going to go your way. Just suit up, take action, and you'll get your rewards. That's it for the first hour. Please enjoy your tea break and your lunch, and I'll see you later. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening.