The Chemist’s Surrender to a Plumber’s Advice – Stan B.

This is the session that's supposed to be on sponsorship at the IDAA meeting here in Baltimore. My name is Stan Bloom and I'm an alcoholic. I came into AA in 1976 and into IDAA in 1977, and I overheard this young man talking about how you finance this sort of thing, And actually, when I got here, I didn't have a job or anything like that. So for the first couple of meetings at Morristown and the IDA meeting that I went to, they kind of let me come. And as I've gotten more prosperous and I'm wearing ties and things, I've been paying my own way so that I don't know how that will work out for you in particular, but for me, that's how it worked out. We're supposed to talk about sponsorship. and when the organizer, I guess, Joe Chambers called and asked if I would lead a session at the IDAA meeting I said the natural thing which was yes I have learned to do that before I stopped drinking that would not have been a natural response since I've gotten sober and been in the program I try to do things that I'm asked to do sometimes I don't do things because I have a legitimate excuse but if I can make it and do it I try and do and Joe didn't give me a lot of directions on what should be covered in a session on sponsorship he left it up to me and until we got the word that they would like to have this taped I was planning on a somewhat more informal discussion and I think we can probably still keep it as informal as we can but because it's being taped we'd like to have you use the microphone for your comments which means i guess coming up here and using the microphone there's a local meeting in dc where the capital medical group meets that has a hand around microphone we don't have that we've got one up here so that if you want to talk or if i dragoon you into coming up been talking, if you would be so kind as to use the microphone. As I say, I'd like this to be sort of a discussion, like a regular AA meeting where the topic is sponsorship. So some of the things we probably should cover are, well, really there are only two. How you pick a sponsor and how do you be a sponsor i picked my first sponsor before i actually really got definitively sober i was between rehabs and struggling and found this fellow who lived not too far from where i was living at the time and asked him for her ride and went to the meeting with him, liked his style and asked him to be my sponsor. At the time when things were sticky we sort of called each other on the morning that he took me to my third rehab where I finally got sober and he was he's my first sponsor and I learned a lot from him. I think that's one of the important things about sponsorship learning from your sponsor which makes picking a sponsor fairly important. How you do that, whether your sponsor should be another doctor, someone in the health professions or should decidedly be not a doctor is something that I think we can talk about. I find myself quoting Henry the Plumber more often and John John knows who this guy is, as does Kurt. Henry the Plumber, more often than I do, quoting Hal Marley. And maybe you may know who Hal MarLEY is. Not because Hal doesn't say great things, but because Henry says things that are kind of at the core of my being. I am an alcoholic, and I still have the disease. I've been recovering for a while. and having kind of learned things from my sponsor uh and been sober for a while people then some people at least asked me to be their sponsor i haven't taken on this chore with everybody who's asked i kind of tell them what my ground rules are and make a guess of how much I am willing to commit because I think a sponsor has to make a certain commitment to a relationship of that type. And then we decide that, yes, we'll go ahead on that. And that so far has worked out. My sponsorship has been extremely successful. I have not gotten drunk. And that's a pretty good criterion, you know. Some of the things about being a sponsor that we might cover are the duties and responsibilities of the job, the level of management and directions that a sponsor is willing to give or insist upon or advise or so forth. For myself, I am not comfortable running someone's life from telling them what time to get up in the morning to how to tie their shoelaces and the whole thing. Some people are comfortable with that. some people in the program need that kind of guidance. I personally am not comfortable with it myself. Some of being a sponsor or picking a sponsor has to do with availability. How can you get a hold of the lady or the guy? How often, how easily, how difficult is it? Do they have time for you? How about personal contact? one of the things that I've always insisted upon is that I'd like to see physically the person at least once a week probably at a meeting because that's the easiest for both of us to negotiate in terms of getting together some of the things that I think we can talk about it in more length part of the sponsor's job are being there when the pigeon wants to dump their garbage how do you handle that, how do you do that? How about breaking off the relationship of sponsorship do those things just kind of fade away are they ended on mutual consent? I really don't know how about keeping therapy the doctor patient relationship and that kind of thing out of being a sponsor and as I may have said but I'll repeat I'm a chemist. I'm not an MD. I work for the Food and Drug Administration. I review drug applications. I'm in the neuropharmacological drug area, so I'm familiar with the drugs that bend mine a wee bit. And every time one of these medical questions comes up, I put on my chemist hat and say, I know a lot about this stuff, but that's not my job description. So in terms of doctor-patient, doctor-therapist type of relationship, that's something that perhaps those who have had some experience with that can talk about. A couple of other things as sponsors. I said I'm not high on giving direct commands like to tie the left shoelace first and that sort of thing. And my sponsors have never really given me a lot of directions about that kind of thing, which is probably good because I have a natural, well, or unnatural resistance to following authority. And I don't like to do what I'm forced to do. And sometimes it's obvious that I have to do it, and I will do it. But I don't necessarily have to like it. So from the pigeon point of view, there is the question of following directions. Some people who are sponsors insist or ask that they're... And I keep using the word pigeon. If that offends anybody, you know, too bad. uh it's kind of a traditional term in a and it seems perfectly acceptable to me and i don't mind it i've been i've bin that and i try not to use it too many times to people i'm talking to because i i try to be a friend as well as a sponsor to anybody that that i get to know in the program on that sponsorship kind of basis but some sponsors insist on a daily phone call I don't know if that's how you operate as a sponsor or how you want to work as a pigeon fine if someone were to ask that of me I would try to work that out I guess no one has one of the things that I've had trouble with as a sponsor, not too much, is when the pigeon or sponsee does something stupid before checking it out in any way. And that's a little hard not to come down on them when they do something like that. But with that sort of an introduction, I've tried to lure and coerce a few friends and people that i know to come here and and to share with us as part of a discussion about sponsorship and you can talk about any or all the things that i've touched about or you can talked about your experiences as a pigeon or as a sponsor or you could wander off into other areas too i guess since this is an aim meeting let me start out by calling on kurt who is a somewhat more expert on this since he's sponsored i think many more people than i have My name is Kurt Wright, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Kurt. And, you know, as near as I can tell, there's no right way to do any of this because the thing that continues to impress me is that given the commonality of alcoholism, the fact that it seems to do about the same thing to all of us, if you do it long enough. I'm still tremendously impressed by the differences among the people that I meet in AA and the differences between the people I've sponsored and the sponsors I've had. I have one sponsor who literally did tell me to get up and he was a temporary sponsor in rehab and it was fairly easy because he shared the bunk next to mine it was a military rehab and we didn't have rooms we had a large open bay in which we tossed down and he would tell me to get out and it was now time to go to breakfast and it was not time to come back from breakfast and it was now time to go to group and would I try to please be on time. And that was okay, because at that point in my life, I couldn't assemble a vacuum cleaner with the instructions. And that's literally true. I remember being in tears sitting on the carpet in the rehab, supposedly I was supposed to vacuum the carpet, and what I was doing was having bits of vacuum cleaner all around me, and I didn't quite know which end to check into which. And at that point in time, I needed somebody who was terribly, terribly directive, terribly, terrible practical. So I picked somebody who had a little brain damage. And he did. I mean, he could not follow terribly complex sentences. He had to keep them real short. And if he didn't understand, he'd kind of look at you stupid and would say, could you say that over so I could understand it? And I did, and it worked. At the same time, I couldn't have followed directions like that for five or six years, nor did I need to. I've had sponsors that called me. I've Had Sponsors That I Called. I've Had Pigeons That Called Me, and I've Have Pigeon's That I've Tracked Down. I've Given Up Chasing Them Through The Woods. There was one who got drunk and pounded his cast off with a rock. He'd kind of gotten drunk and broken his arm, and we were kind of chasing him through the woods trying to wrestle him to the ground and get him into treatment again, but he escaped, and that was probably no bad thing. And I learned a lot from that. In a way that I cannot explain, I've seen very few sponsor-sponsee mismatches. I've seeing a couple, but they're relatively rare. Usually people pick people whom they can get along with or who have something that they need or are directed to them. My current sponsor, I did not pick. I had been having terrible trouble And there was one fellow whose opinion I respected, and I walked up to him and I said, Who should I ask to be my sponsor? Please tell me. And he said, Well, you can choose him or him or her. Ask one of those three and they'll let you know. And I did. Worked out fine. Continues to work out well. Because I found that on questions of relationships, almost anybody's opinion is better than mine. I wish that were not so. But it turns out that I can do relatively well for another person, but in terms of my own life, I've still got an idiot in charge. And please, take it from me. I don't need to tell any horror stories. I cannot direct my own wife. I'm willing to be careful with the lives of others, but for some reason i have this big blind spot where i'm concerned and that continues till this day and that's why for me sponsorship's an ongoing affair i i can show the most incredible stupidity in matters of human relationships and persist in doing so years after i got sober and i don't know why i went to the psychiatrist he was screwing up much worse than i was and i decided that that wasn't going to help and i read books about the development of personality and i simply got confused from them and so i decided to simply accept that's the way i am and perhaps always will be and it seems like there's an epidemic of it going around because I see a lot of other people who are that way too. So I continue in a sponsor-sponsee or sponsor-pigeon relationship, and I plan to continue for some time. And when I say that, I mean I see my sponsor twice a week. And if things get a little shaky, I call. Usually I lie. I mean, I, I called and I want to talk about something else, but that's okay because i've made the contact i'd like to say that i'm able to instantly recognize what's wrong in fact that there is something wrong and make a contact and talk about it get it out on the open take it get to take care of i don't i get up and talk About something else i call talk about something else but i've touched base and that's a very steadying thing for me and i i do not understand it, nor do I wish to. And that's what I know, Stan. Thanks, Kurt. We'll be having volunteers, and if you want to talk now, anytime, repeatedly, just kind of wave your hand or come on up here and push me out of the way, because I'm going to call on people too. Just a second, John. I've got the microphone. Yeah, that touching base with a sponsor, even if you lie, or even if he don't say anything, is important. One of the things that I guess I didn't mention and that worried me about picking a sponsor was that as I get to know this person and as I work the program, is this the person I want to take my fifth step with? And that's a question you don't have to answer at the time you pick a sponsor. That's a questions you don' t have to answer until you've worked your fourth step, you know. So it's not really a concern. As it turns out in my own case I did. I took my fifth step with my first sponsor because he was a person that I came to know and trust and understand and call when things were going well and call what things were not going well and see regularly so that he could see how I was doing yeah John my name is John I'm an alcoholic yeah I really love the subject of sponsorship since I I believe very firmly that, well I don't only believe it, I've been practicing this since I've been sober in AA, that I've either got a sponsor or I'm looking, or I am looking for a sponsor at all times. And there was a period there when I was in Colorado when the person that was sponsoring me in Alaska the last six months that I was in Alaska, was not returning phone calls, not returning letters and stuff. And I didn't have anybody in Colorado except just to call different people and go to meetings and stuff, but I was on the lookout for somebody, you know, and I was always on the look out a person that I could ask to be my sponsor. And I asked a couple of people and got turned down, which is kind of unpleasant, but that's okay, you know? The important thing is if somebody says yes they should be prepared and willing to follow through, I think, because it isn't important. It's a responsibility. You know, it doesn't mean that the person that if I say yes to somebody that I have to follow through with it forever, you know, I may change my mind after a while or something. But it is an awesome responsibility, I think. And sponsorship for me is important because there's got to be somebody that knows me inside and out in the program. There's got to be somebody that knows me inside and out, whom I can call up at a moment's notice. And I don't have to explain the unexplainable or fill in the meaningful gaps that he doesn't know about because he already knows about it. And all I have to do is, you know, say a few words and he knows exactly where I'm at and what's happening. And that's very important for me because I'm always, I have the tendency being an alcoholic, I have a tendency to feel that I'm not a worthwhile person at a moment's notice just because somebody looks at me cross-eyed or it was hot when I went across the street or just for no reason at all. All of a sudden I feel like I'm not a worthwhile person and then I need to talk to somebody who knows me and who can reinforce the healthy part of me, you know. And that's very important. And I don't stop needing a sponsor just because I have been sober X number of days or years. I continue to need someone that I can talk to. And in my experience with sponsorship has been mostly on the receiving end rather than on the giving end, although I have had a few people that asked me to be their sponsor. But the number of sponsors that I've had who helped me has been much greater. It must be at least ten or more in the years that I have in the program. And the very first sponsor that I had brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous. I had wandered into an Open AA meeting, I was there as a visitor. I wasn't, I didn't consider myself an alcoholic and this man had the nerve to 12-step me after the meeting and suggest that maybe I might have a problem, and so on. And he talked with me, and then he gave me his card. And then I called him, and he came and picked me up and took me to my first meeting that I went to for me. And And then he took me to a lot of meetings in the northwest Washington, D.C. area and introduced me to people. And there was a lot warmth and love and so on. And after two or three weeks, he took to all these meetings. I knew where the meetings were. I knew some of the people and they knew me. And I felt like I belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous, like I was part of the program. Now one of the things he suggested was that I get up in the morning and I didn't care for that very much because I was self-employed at that time and I liked sleeping until noon and you know, this kind of thing. And I had a kind of an undisciplined lifestyle and one One of the things that he thought that I should do was say, get up at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning and go to work. And I was very insulted by this because I was interested in more important things than working. But I did follow the suggestion, and I got up in the morning and I would go to work, maybe 10 o'clock or something like that, and grudgingly I would go and make rounds in the evening because I preferred to make rounds at night, like 10 p.m. or midnight. And so this was a change in lifestyle for me. And this sponsor was not a doctor, thank God, you know. Very few of my sponsors have been doctors, thank God, is all I can say. And what has worked for me has been getting regular AA people to be my sponsors. And one of the reasons, for instance, that I picked Stan and asked him to be one of my sponsors along the way, this Stan over here, was that he wasn't an M.D., you know, because I didn't like M. D.'s very much, even though I was one myself, And maybe it was because I was one. I don't know. But anyway, I had a resentment against my own profession. And to some extent, I still don't like MDs very much. I had 14 years of psychotherapy by MDs before coming into the program, and I was sick and tired of professional treatment. And I didn't want to darken the door of another doctor again if I could help it. And so anyway, then this guy, this first sponsor that I had, he disappeared. One day, you know, he didn't call and I didn't hear from him and he just flew away. And several years later, I asked him what had happened. I knew he was still there and everything. And he told me he had decided to turn me over to the conscience of the group the business about letting me find my own way and float to the top of the water and find somebody on my own to sponsor me. So he was just the introductory sponsor. And that was good because he wasn't a person I could really share with on an intimate basis, and he probably realized that, and so he realized that what he liked doing was having a lot of pigeons that he would take to meetings and take care of him the first couple of weeks, and then he had his buddies and his friends. But he didn't really share on an intimate basis. That wasn't his style. And anyway, the third sponsor that I had, and don't worry, I'm not going to go into each one in detail, but I just wanted a few that I want to talk about because they're very important in my sobriety. And the third sponsor that I had was what I call a gifted sponsor. He was not a health professional or a mental health professional, and it turned out he was on disability himself for mental health reasons. But he had been sober about 10 years and he knew more about mental health. He had read more books, he had read some books that I hadn't read, let's put it that way, and that impressed me because not that it meant very much because I hadn t read very many books for many years but it was just a fact that he came across as being pretty knowledgeable in a folk therapy kind of a way. You know, we would sit at the table in the coffee place and he would draw diagrams for me on a napkin and that kind of thing about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know. That was the kind of things that happened and it was very useful for me. I learned a lot from that. And I was happy being in the role of a pigeon, if you like. And I accepted things from him that I would have never accepted from a doctor or a psychotherapist or a physician. And, you know, I was ready, willing and able to accept a lot of things. But this man later turned out to be a professional 13th stepper and then he started deciding that he was going to help my wife, my ex-wife into the program, you know. And then I heard that he used to, after he had gone with sponsored... He used to sponsor women. He would sponsor woman for a year, he would go to bed with them and that sort of thing. And so then I, after about six months, I asked the guy to stop being my sponsor because I was concerned that he might make off with my wife. But for the six months that he and I worked together, I got nothing but benefit from this man. I got all the good parts and none of the bad parts. It's a beautiful thing about AA is that even when someone who is sick does sponsor us, they're usually not sick with us. That has been my experience. They haven't been sick with me. And maybe they've been sick somebody else but not with me and anyway, that's about all I have to say. I think I'm going to pass. Thank you. Thanks, John. You know, talking about ending relationships with sponsorship and that, I recall one gal who came to a meeting very excited, and she had discovered that she could fire her dentist. I don't know if it's ever happened to you as a physician or medical practitioner where a patient has fired you, but they've got that power. He kept her waiting for two hours and she said, screw it. Phone another dentist. And in having John and relating with John and I think this is true for any person sponsoring anybody as a sponsor you've got to be willing to put in the time that they ask for up to a point and then say wait a minute now I can't get my day's activity done because you're consuming all of my time You've got to negotiate something about that. And I've spent time talking with John. He's learned. And he was talking about Alaska and trying to find a sponsor in Colorado. Actually, when John moved out to Alaska, I had been his sponsor here in Washington. And you wonder why you don't return phone calls to and from Alaska. It's because your phone bill gets out of sight pretty quickly. John called me a couple of times. I talked. I called him back once or twice, but I couldn't afford it. It's good to see you. We have kind of lost touch. volunteers yeah come on up my name is Jack and I'm an alcoholic and I wanted to come up here for two reasons I have something to share about sponsorship and I also don't want to be at this meeting and just sit in a chair as I have many times before and just listen and not partake in it And I know that I've been to meetings and come and gone and, you know, and didn't give anything of myself. And it's a different feeling for me when I do that. And so I'm determined in this meeting because I've missed a few of these meetings for the last few years. And even forgot, honestly, I can't believe this, and I know the first weekend in August every year IDAA meets. And though I didn't get any mailing this year because I had moved and whatever happened, I still know that there's an idea and I forgot about it. And it shocks me how easy it is for me to forget really where I got my sobriety and what it means. That first year I had a wonderful sponsor. I'll never forget that first year with him. He was Irish and he told me his sponsor was Jewish and he was looking for a Jewish pigeon so that he could repay what this Jewish man had done for him to help me out. And so I was ready, willing, and able and needy, terribly needy. I was terrified I'd just come out of treatment. And he gave me his rules, and his rules were I was to call him on the phone every day at 3 o'clock whether I wanted to or not. If I couldn't meet these rules, he wasn't going to sponsor me. And I had to call them every day At 3 o'. And I met him every night for a meeting and twice on Sunday and read the chapter in the book with him every week and read The 24-Hour Book and tell him, you know, he had all these rules. And it was the first time anybody was telling me what to do and I was listening because I needed to. I'd really hit bottom. And I was willing then to do what he told me I had to do. And it really, really worked for me. I felt taken care of. I felt nurtured and loved by somebody. Though these were rules, was like my, you know, a caring father had said, this is the way we do it to grow up right. And I listened to him and I got a lot out of that. But as he moved away and I thought I knew it all by then. And as the time has gone by, it's been harder and harder for me to reach out to anyone because I'm medical director here and I'm treating alcoholics and I am the knowledgeable one and I have not taken care of myself in that way anymore and I've grown to be very alone and lonely in the program because I have let nobody take care of me so when I came in here this morning to the early meeting I realized I want to recommit myself not whether I feel like it or not, nothing to do with my feelings and wants, but I had a commitment to be here and to do what's supposed to be done as my first sponsor told me to do. And it worked. It was like the best year. And I've never had that year again. It was likely the year I learned the most. I remember sort of my internship that year. I've Never Had Another Year in Life as I had that here because I learned. I had experience. I experienced what it was to take care of patients. And I want, and so I'm kind of up here to recommit myself to getting a sponsor. I don't know how I'm going to do it. It scares me. I know, as I have told you, just ask, you know, just to ask. And, I'm sure that person will be there. When the pupil's ready, the teacher will appear. And. . . I'm imagining, you know. . .. Well, maybe I should get my original sponsor on the phone. Just make phone calls to him. He's in New Orleans. I'm in Florida. and then I don't have to, you know, let anybody really know. Tell them what I want to tell them. But that isn't going to be what I need. And so I do know now that I need to start the program again because I am really cut off from people in AA. Either I'm better than everyone, you now, or the very worst thing walking this earth. Never just a human being with strengths and weaknesses. And when I saw the topic, you know, I knew that I wanted to be in this room to help remind myself that I do need help. I am not this island. I've got this in my head that it's just Jack here and then there's the rest of the world. And that's not the place that I can have peace and serenity in. it's really out of balance if you think of it. So, thank you. Thank you, Jack. You know, it doesn't have much to do with sponsorship, but there's a saying about saving your ass before you save your soul. And, well, actually, it has a lot to do with sponsorship too. And both you and John talked about the kind of little healthy green thing inside that's starting to grow and needs nurturing and needs somebody to watch over it. And I think sponsors can help with that. And as you were saying, how do you get a sponsor? You walk up to somebody and you ask them. And as John said, they can say no. That does not have to be crushing. It might be for a while, but you just ask somebody else. I've been turned down. It doesn't feel good, but I've survived it. There were some other people who were young. Gentleman back there? Hi, my name is Jay. I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic. I was kind of looking at the meetings that we have this afternoon and I find myself here. They won't let me in the old-timers group and uh i'm not a family of a not a relative of an alcoholic i find myself in sponsorship maybe god wants me here uh i remember my first sponsor in the program i was very very fortunate in the program i had a a very very kind and loving and gentle man by the name of doc fagan for a sponsor everyone in the program called him doc uh he came off of skid row in new york during the 1930s and spent his first year of sobriety living with dr bob and and learning how to stay sober a day at a time he was not the kind of a man that you you shared things easily with because his answer was always the same, and that was, all this will pass. And you know, I'm damned if it didn't. But he did ask that I drive him to a meeting every night, and because I drove him to meetings every night I got to 365 meetings during the first year. He asked that I meet him once a day at the gas station next to our hospital before I went to work. So I met with another group of AAs, and I really had two meetings a day. That first year in the program, I really had very little problems. My time was occupied—momentary anxiety attacks when I had an opportunity to meet with my ex-spouse. Doc would say, Don't worry, Jay, all this will pass. Now I look at the sponsorship on down the line. After I'd been 10 years sober in the program, Doc went out and drank. He died in a nursing home of his disease. now when i go to meetings and i look at that roster i find that i find there are not a great many people in any one given group that have been sober for a longer period of time than i have and that one of the greatest gifts that god has given me a secondary benefit of this program is to be able to share my own experience in my strength and hope with another suffering human being and show him how to get well. I find myself thrust into a role where occasionally I must be a sponsor. I am not a kind of a sponsor with whom one can share feelings easily. I get uncomfortable if you share your feelings with me. I'm going to send you another sponsor. but i do know the necessity of getting to meetings for 90 meetings in 90 days and i do know the necessary of setting up ashtrays and i don't know the need to set up a meeting i do know the necessity of doing a fourth and a fifth step although i'm damned if i'm ever going to let anybody do a fourth or a fifth step with me they can dump their problems wherever they want but i don't want them to dump them on my back um and my sobriety comes first uh i was faced with a physician several years ago who wanted to dump on me a story of family incest, and I was not ready for that. Take that to my sponsor. And so I had to tell him to find spiritual counsel in the program. It's also more difficult as those years pass for me as a recovering alcoholic to share not just the joy of my sobriety but the pain of my sobriety with somebody else you know when you're the old man in in the room and you've been sober 20 years everybody is supposed to come to you with their problems and yet they're the longer you stay sober the longeryou realize that that life has its ups and downs and its joy and its pain and and and the pain is there for a reason god puts it puts it there so that we can begin to grow um and so i have to find other sponsors many of the sponsors that i find in the program i have i have one guy who's been sober 40 years and i i always go to jack but the only problem problem is jack always tells me i'm right okay he said no matter how badly i feel well you're right jay and so I have to go to somebody else who was an ex-football player and he says jay you're an asshole okay because he's got his good point too. You can shop around, but the thing is that I found relationships in the program. I found relationships with people who are able to tell me things that I would never accept from another human being outside the program If someone on my hospital staff or a member of my family were to tell what an asshole I behaved like several nights ago I couldn't accept that If they were to tell me that I needed more meetings I'd tell them they needed more meetings too and so that's a little bit I guess those are some of my own thoughts on sponsorship I think it is a gift to be able to sponsor next yeah my name is Pat and I'm an alcoholic finding this microphone intimidating. Sponsorship to me has a lot of depth. I have thought a lot about sponsorship in regard to my very, my first sponsor who was in describing this individual I felt I've never been able to live up to this person yet I'm not Mary and so I found that that's okay. And Mary called on me and the next day uh mary called me four or five times during the day and asked are you drinking and i would respond no and she'd say that's good i'll call you later and then she would ask me the same question and i would say no and she'd say that's good and then near the end of that day she said and i'll be coming by and i will pick you up for a meeting first i had never had anyone spend so much time on me and i thought that was absolutely phenomenal that anyone would care whether i was drunk or sober so with that technique of hers you know i've never been able to match it I've never had that opportunity but I have never forgotten it that she did that the first day that she cared that much she didn't have long conversation but she just checked it out every few hours she checked and that's really wonderful for the active alcoholic who had not had anyone really understand or care for the whole time of their alcoholism I think that's a marvelous technique and then her saying that she was taking me to this meeting which I had no knowledge about but I began to accept that very first day that this lady had something and she was going to help me and she had also said that she had been sober 19 years and that alone was something phenomenal to me to meet someone who had been able to stay dry for that period of time I had never met anyone like that and so then she took me to this first meeting and when we were driving in the car I told her I wanted to get out and jump out the door because I was so paranoid and going through withdrawal and she said she understood should. And when we got to the AA meeting and I looked in and saw all those people, I also told her I couldn't go in there, and she said, That's okay, hold on to my hand. So the things that Mary did, the continual phone calls the first day telling me she was taking me to meetings, she didn't ask, she told me she would take me to a meeting. And then holding my hand and caring, just being there with a strong emphasis on support was extremely valuable to me. I really doubt if someone hadn't given me all that support that I would have made it. And I have not forgotten that sponsorship style of Mary. she also told me she was my sponsor. Again. And through that, you know, I have given back to others in my own style, my own technique, but I have been available for sponsorship. Also in my very early days I found that there were other people in my early sobriety who came up to me and said uh that they would help drive me to meetings because i lived kind of in a suburb area and there wasn't any bus line i didn't know how to drive and so about three or four people would take me to meanings so because they didn't go each night but they made sure that i went each night and they shared me and they all said that they were my sponsor So I didn't have just one, I had three sponsors and I thought, boy that's really fantastic! So one doesn't need just one sponsor. If you want you can have more than that, whatever you need. Some people I have heard have a spiritual sponsor, a loving sponsor someone that they can intellectualize with well someone that knows the big book well or the steps of the program well or whatever but you can use whatever you want you know it's open and for myself I've had one lady who particularly asked to speak to me every day on the phone and I told her that I found that a little intimidating for me, but I would be willing to try. And she slowly lessened that to calling me every other day and then maybe once every three days. And so we kind of met on and balanced that out to suit ourselves. I think for myself, I found someone contacting me every single they was a little much back to my uh my sponsor mary when i had been in the program i guess a couple months my boyfriend from san francisco called and wanted me to come for a visit and i already began thinking about i'll never make it to san francis i was living in seattle i'll never make it to san francisco without getting drunk i could i could not do that and because that's where i lived for 15 years and so i shared that with mary and mary said i'll go with you I mean that is really a sponsor and so I gave it some second thoughts because I said kind of I have married dragging along with me what's that going to be like so I didn't go and then there was the time in my early sobriety and my mother was still drinking my mother has been sober about 15 years now and she told me if I went to an AA meeting she was going to lock me out and I would not get back into the house and so that was very traumatic called Mary again and she said that's okay we'll work it out you can you can stay at my house it'll all work out you know what it did my mother did open the door so I could get back in that night but you know we all have our little ways of trying to get what we want and I really think sponsorship is so very important. I can relate to the doctor who was talking about a need to have a sponsor themselves, I have several times asked others to be my sponsor yet I've never really followed through and made close contact with them, but I have initiated it. And I know that's not far enough. I have a lot of... I have friends who I talk with, but they're not my official sponsor so I know that I need to do that. And and I'm very pleased that there we are having this session on sponsorship because it's absolutely important in this program. them. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. One of the things that is important that it be somewhat of an official relationship that you ask the person and they say yes or no, not that you just kind of assume and tell other people that you have a sponsor but you actually ask somebody and have sort of an official relationship. Yes. I'm Dave Morrison, I'm an alcoholic. I I'm one of those people who didn't find a sponsor until the sobriety of three years. My first sponsor, I found about two weeks or a week out of treatment. He found me. And to me, it's been a wonderful sponsorship. And I stress it because he got to know me and I got to known him. Out of treatment less than a week probably, this young commander young 45 walked into my office I was a Navy captain at the time he was a naval a aviator and I was the medical officer he was as nervous as all heck and he sat down and looked to me I looked at him I said what can I do for you he looked at me and says can I close the door and I said I I don't know who closed the door. I guess maybe I closed it. He blurted it out, I'm an alcoholic and the Navy doesn't know it. Mind you, I'd just been out of treatment about four weeks. Well, I mean, four days. What a relief. He became my sponsor. We had lunch together every day for three years, just about every day. He was the administrative officer. I was the medical officer. We helped start AA groups together on the base. We went through the Navy's NASAP program together and became facilitators. We went to a lot of meetings together. He got to know me so well, and then naturally I got to known him. And I might say my wife even got jealous. But he knew me so much well that after I moved away he came to visit me in Charlotte, North Carolina. He had no sooner got there than my wife wanted me to get something from the store. I said, King let's go to the store. And when we got to the store and parked he says, Dave what's wrong? He knew me that well. Something was wrong with me and I'd had an argument with Beth my wife prior just prior to his coming for the visit and he could see that what I'm stressing here is your sponsor has to know you the only way your sponsor can know you is being with you playing with you and working with you actually on several occasions we took our kids to the mountains together the girls stayed home they didn't get along too well but I'm stressing that you've got to know your sponsor and your sponsor has to know you and you've gotta know his phone number on the other hand I've sponsored some people and I hear I maybe I'm not a good sponsor but most of My people have gone back to it again. When I moved to Charlotte, I said to someone at the Florida meeting, I need a sponsor. And Don reaches in his billfold and says, here's the name of a man in Charlotte. Look him up. As soon as I got home, I looked him up He hadn't been to a meeting for six months. Now he's my sponsor and i have never been to a meeting there i don't see him we got back together he got back to aa so sponsorship works two ways i still have my primary sponsor i talk to him three times a week on the phone he'll always be my sponsor as long as he lives i have backup sponsors and i work at willingway hospital i have one in statesboro i have a sponsor in charlotte i believe in sponsorship but your people who sponsor you have to know you if it's going to work thank you thank you more volunteers yeah young men i say young because i'm probably 20 years older than you thanks hi my name is mark i'm an alcoholic and drug addict Hi Mark. Hi everybody. I really enjoyed what was said and, you know, the reason that I put the IDAA convention as such a high priority in my year, namely out of the six or seven times I've left home in the last three years, four of them have been for IDAA conventions. the reason is because there seem to be these issues that aren't addressed anywhere else, and I really need to hear about them. And what I was hearing from you, Jack, I really needed to hear. You know, a couple years ago as an intern, it was a little sooner for me, but my rationalization was that here I'm taking care of people all day every day more than I probably should in terms of the amount of time contributing to it toward it and and the rest of the time was exclusively for myself whether it was the best way to approach it I don't know but the bottom line was that as I was able to get through the year even though the hierarchy in my med school said that I would never be able to get through my intern year knowing that I was recovering alcoholic and feeling as though AA wasn't enough but the bottom line is that that I need to hear these issues my first sponsor was the one who six months before I got in the program was at a panel at our medical school as identifying himself as a recovering alcoholic and I thought that there's this guy, I swear, in the back of the room that I thought was an alcoholic. And I asked the question, how does one know when one is an alcoholic? Because I wanted this guy in the background to hear it. And I literally had absolutely no idea of the degree to which the problems that I was having. But six months later, when the school psychiatrist basically said, you know, this is the day you decide, you know. And he didn't even tell me about AA at the time, but when he told me that he was going to require one AA meeting, I went to that guy. You know, he was a pathologist. He has a very, if you will, atypical approach to the program, but it works for him. And the things that I heard from him and what I really needed to hear, He took me to my first meeting, and I kind of did a fourth and fifth step with him and grew out of it, if you will. I needed some more traditional, hardcore AA, which is what I really enjoy. But at that time, being a medical student in a small community, I needed a recovering alcoholic as my sponsor who was also an MD. and he really, I mean, my higher powers put him in that position at that time. And then I picked a woman who was 30 years older than me because she has had the most wonderful program that I had seen in the area over the first year and go into meetings in the area. And I still keep in contact with her, but because I'm in a different town, I had to move on. And before I actually got to the town, I knew where I matched for residency, and so I went there and started to go to meetings, drove two hours each way to get to a couple of meetings and asked this guy to be my sponsor who I talked to after the meetings. and didn't realize that he was, like, the most popular guy in the whole area in terms of sponsoring people or at least giving advice, whatever it was. And it's a very unofficial type thing. And what I heard about how it should be very official is probably a good idea. but I don't know it's obviously it's worked for two and a half years uh it just it's it seemed like it's been a uh a very convenient and a very productive situation because um he's a block away from my hospital I didn't know this when I was you know driving two hours and asked him but he's actually walked to the hospital talked to me when I Was on call and couldn't leave And then something really special happened three or four months ago. He's 50 years older than me, and he's been using a... Well, the bottom line is just that he got sick and had to come into the hospital. And I walk into the Hospital at 8.30 in the morning and got at this page to the emergency room and you know i answered it and i wasn't on call to get emergency room admits that day it was very strange and uh uh and they go uh mark just a minute and uh they give the phone and all of a sudden it's my sponsor and he's he's like i don't know what they're doing here but no one will listen to me no one will do this no one'll do that and it was yeah i mean he was sick he He had had 103 fever. He had pneumococcal pneumonia, and he was just miserable. And it meant something real, real special to me because at that time already I was a senior resident at the hospital and I could get things done. You know, I knew the place and the relationships that I cultivated over the year or two with nurses and personnel and stuff. i finally had something to give you know it wasn't that i just took and took and took and i don't know how many times i went to him after getting out of the hospital at seven o'clock at night on my intern in my intern year and just said i just can't take it you know this and that and the other and and you know he didn't know a lot about medicine but it didn't matter because you know he's like so you know are you smiling when you're doing these things and you All that kind of stuff that I don't want to hear, but he knows what to say. The last thing that I'm going to mention is just that I would go to lunch with him every once in a while when I didn't have to do Saturday morning rounds and stuff, and he very seldom tells me what to do. I tell him what it is I'm thinking a lot of times. I try and bounce things off him, and I try to be very good about him knowing everything about me. I really agree with you, John, that my number one problem is self-delusion. I'm a master at it, and if I don't have someone else that is able to break through that when needed, I'm in trouble. The story is, though, that instead of just pointing this one finger at me, he pointed both fingers at me. And he says, you need to, and I figured it was going to be something like take another four-step or something. You need to exercise. You know, this was his, after two months of hearing about all my shit. And it was amazing, you know. It's like, it's just been a wonderful situation. And, you Know, in a year when I move away and get a place to work, it is going to Be Hard to Leave Him. But that episode where he was just in the hospital for a couple of days and I arranged for him to change doctors to someone who was responsive and get the things done that needed to be was something that I really treasure, and it really gave me the opportunity to pay back some big favors. Even though when I'm doing good, I know that I don't need to pay it back, but it still felt nice to at least have it go the other way a little bit. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. Another volunteer? Yeah. Hi, I'm Bill, and I'm an alcoholic. Glad to be here. Jack, I found that lots of times when one person triggers some things in me that I want to share that some other people in the room enjoy hearing it too. And I really did identify with some of the things you said. I, too, am a director of a program for recovering alcoholics, have been for the last three years. And I'm a very lonely person a lot of the time. Before I got into recovery, I was the head of my own practice, my own corporation and so on. And I often found myself wondering, you know, who can understand me and who can I go to? There isn't anybody that could possibly understand what I'm going through. And so alcohol took care of that on a daily basis for many, many years. I think some people tried, like my ex-wife and an Episcopal priest that I used to share a lot of time with. uh but uh that was a real problem for me uh right from the beginning in recovery i i the first person that i consider was a sponsor for me was a nurse in recovery um and uh it was really tough for me because she cared for me i had a terrible time with caffeine withdrawal headaches in my first five days of recovery and of course I didn't accept the diagnosis either I knew that I must have a sub-barrel hematoma that everybody had missed and you know as a terrible patient but this nurse night after night would sit and hold my head and I think at first it made the headaches worse it was terribly uncomfortable but in a lot of ways she was a sponsor i don't even know what her name is um my first uh sort of official sponsor was a physician that i had met at a professional aa meeting and an id aa meeting a year a month before i got into the treatment center i'd gone to three aa meetings with him and i wasn't drinking but my drug use had really escalated and i was running out of drug I'd had a run on some Demerol and there wasn't any more left in the office and I went to see Dan and I think I went to see him because I thought he'd give me some Demorol but he didn't he told me I needed to go into treatment and that's what I did after that I stayed around that area for three months and went to lot of AA meetings. And then went back to work and I moved out of the area and my new family and we've been married eight months in and I'd acquired four more kids and I had eight, four of my own and four stepkids. And I did everything you shouldn't do in the first year recovery, I think almost everything. I changed jobs, I changed wives, I change families, I sold everything I owned and moved from Seattle to California, and went to work in a military organization where I was working seven and a half hours a day, four and a half days a week. Prior to going into treatment, I'd been working about 12 hours a day, six days a week. And I was living in the BOQ, and there was a beer machine in the lobby, and I was a half a block away from the officers club and on and off base i had to drive past a liquor store and i literally survived in aa and i really was looking uh for a sponsor but i was afraid to ask because i afraid somebody would say no you know and and i knew no way could understand me the fellow i settled on was um it hit me mark when you said your sponsor is 50 years older than you i I was, what, I was 48 then, I guess. And I think Leo was probably close to 70. And he struck me because of sort of his medical story. He'd been in recovery for 10 years. And then the way he says it, he took a drink and he was drunk for 10 years. And in that 10 years of being drunk, he'd had three psychiatric hospitalizations and three series of electroshock therapies and been diagnosed as hopelessly psychotic and then got back into recovery again I thought he was such a miracle that he must have something that I could learn from and so far and Leo still is alive and I still do see him and share with him as a sponsor several other times I have asked people to be sponsors and there's been sort of a short relationship like you kind of talked about mark share with them a little bit and then it goes away since I've been the director of a treatment program Jack I've really found it tough I there's a director another director of another treatment program and he and I tried to sponsor each other for a while and it just didn't seem to be time I guess what I do now more than anything else is I try hard when I feel the need of a sponsor to get to the home meeting and to share. The other thing I found that I do, Jack, is I share a lot with my own staff and it doesn't go two ways. It seems to work for me. I know there's a lot of things going on. Most of the staff is recovering. I Know there's things going on with them. They very seldom share back with me, but I share with them one-on-one and we do have a once-a-week staff group where we bring in an outside facilitator and supposedly take off all our labels and often I'm the only one that does much sharing. The staff says it's very important but they don't share back and I kind of look at some of those staff members as sponsors too but it's an informal relationship. Going the other way, i too have had very few people ask me directly to be sponsored the ones that have um it hasn't lasted very long they've come back and said how meaningful it was but you know it hasn t lasted for six months or a year and i don't know what that's all about i've often wondered about it so I just share those things with you thanks one second one of the things you said about sponsorship or the program or things like that there just wasn't time for it it took me a while it was my third rehab before I got my priorities straight first things first my first thing to do is to work on staying sober after that other things will fall into place and they will continue to fall into space but if I don't take care of staying sober other things are meaningless and we talk about hitting bottom I think I hit bottom finally and I stopped or didn't bounce and it was then that I realized I don' t bounce anymore, it's not going to work I better work on recovery and putting first things first finding time for what is not just important but essential it's one of those things now okay hi my name is ray i'm an alcoholic i'm from bc and i'm this is my first time at an idaa meeting and i am standing up here i'm really scared right i'm standing up here because I think I should be standing up here, because I've been feeling like an outsider ever since I arrived. And I've always had this thing about being at doctor's meetings. I wore a stethoscope and a white coat for years because it was a masquerade and I was afraid somebody would really see that I was just faking it. So I'm trying to stop feeling alien right this minute, but sponsorship is an important topic to me. Sponsorship darn near cost me my life, the fact that I didn't get a sponsor. In December 1984, I went to treatment for alcoholism and I was an ideal patient in treatment. I figured it out pretty quick what they wanted. And I had all the right stories, and there weren't a lot of physicians in this treatment center that I went through, so I became co-therapist. And terribly empathetic, and I was really good at letting secrets out, but I just talked about my alcohol. And there were a couple other little things, like Demerol and cocaine and a few other things that weren't worth talking about. So I really graduated with flying colors and came back and joined AA, but I was in a little town of 1,800 people and AA there consisted of two guys. Neither one of them had ever done anything beyond the first step and there was no sponsorship. They didn't believe in that and I was the family doctor in this little town so I consequently over the next couple of years went to, drove three, like Mark drove three or four hundred miles a week catching enough meetings and I quickly got weller and people in town said isn't that nice isn't Dr. Baker just amazing and I started to like AA real well and we just didn't talk. Me and the little fella in there just didn' t talk about that problem what we hadn' t quite dealt with but for some reason I didn' d use any Demerol for some time and then one day I got tired and I was feeling really on a high and I got bouncing around and I wa s going past a little hospital and thought it would be a good idea to go in and shoot up so I did and I didn't see it coming but I didn''t have a sponsor And my problem all along had been that I was God. You know, it was as simple as that. And I got partly healed in treatment. You know when people say when you relapse you start over well nobody could take from me all the stuff that I'd gained. I did discover a higher power in treatment and so I kind of got off the pedestal of being perfect for a little while. and as a family doctor that was what I said for myself it's perfection you know and people wanted me to be that way but I get all messed up and all confused about who was God and to make a long story short I ran into Jack of all people Jack's the reason I'm at this meeting but it took me three years to get here I ran in to him three years ago at a conference in Utah on, one of the first things he said to me was to go to IDAA. So it took me three years and it's kind of neat seeing Jack this morning here. And apparently he's been away from IDAA for about three years, so it's really beautiful to see him. Anyway, when I darn near died from my relapse, I knew that something was wrong and that I had to stop being in control. I had to stop being God, and I knew that this thing inside of me was bigger than me, and it was kind of a beast that was willing to take my life if it could keep on using. So I asked somebody to be my sponsor, and for me it was a submission. It was a submissive act. It would stop him being God. And so I formally asked him, and he took me through the steps and just recently in the last four months i've moved away from that little town i've to the city and i'm really busy you know and too busy to have a sponsor and this this meeting's been kind of bothering me so i think i know what i gotta do thanks everybody Thank you, Ray. Yeah. Jackie? Can't read your name back. Pardon? Can't reading your name. Oh, I'm Leah. Okay. Leah Williams. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, this has been a good meeting for me. I started trying to sober up in Pueblo, Colorado, where I was in private practice. Pueplo is about 60,000, 70,000 people. When I started going, I was the only physician that I knew of. I wasthe only physician I ever saw at meetings. um and you know it's i i mentioned this earlier but the the description of an alcoholic that fits me so well is the egomaniac with the inferiority complex because i i really did i always felt like a fraud that if anyone ever knew me they would they wouldn't like me uh if they knew the real me um they'd realize my worthlessness and yet on the other hand i had this incredible ego that that i hid in and that tends to grow back when i don't go to enough meetings um and when i first started in a.a um i picked a sponsor to honor her uh i figured she needed me You know, I mean, I picked a sponsor who was bright and clever and witty and well-read and kind of sophisticated and rather arrogant and not well-liked. And I figured I could help her out. She was misunderstood. She'd been sober several years. And in that first year, and I really do not mean this in a bad way, in that First Year I had many relapses. and um one of the hardest things i ever did was to make the decision that i wanted a different sponsor and and i talked to this other woman who was a very earthy puerto rican lady who was tough and i asked her if she would be my sponsor and she said yes if you fire your first sponsor oh that was so hard i mean i really loved this woman and i didn't want to hurt her feelings and i knew she was like i was that is you know she was all appearance of being tough and strong and bright and capable but i really knew she Was fragile and it was one of the hardest things i ever did was firing my first sponsor and she cried and she was angry and i cried and And it was a long time before we could sort of be friends again. But I did fire my first sponsor, and I got another sponsor, and I decided it was time I worked the program. I was tired of relapsing. And my second sponsor was very tough on me, and she was very big on service. And she said, if you want to be sober in this program, then you get into service. and tomorrow night we're going to a prison meeting. We're going drive an hour and a half to the women's state prison and you're going to attend this meeting and so I started going to prison meetings and she assigned me things to do frequently and she did not allow me if someone asked for me to sponsor them no, I was not allowed well, I didn't have any sobriety anyway but I would have still accepted I'm sure, but she wouldn't let me. And she was a good sponsor and she was hard on me. And today I do have a couple of young women whom I sponsor and I consider it an honor and a privilege and a big responsibility and hard work. And I need to do that. I need to give back some of what this program has given me or I know I won't keep it. It's the only way is to give it away and and then i guess god sort of replenishes it replenishes what i'm able to give away and as a sponsor what i ask is that i can be um a channel a channel of aa love and and that i Can Be A Good Listener and and just channel some of the stuff back that that I've been given so freely in this program, and it's really good to be here. It's been a good topic. Thanks. What the answer is supposed to do, and I hadn't thought of it until you were talking about it, is to be part of the process of the ego deflation at depth that's necessary. Yes?