Old-Time AA: God Centered Sponsorship & Co-Sponsoring

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Early Days

Alcoholics Anonymous began on the first day of Dr. Bob’s sobriety – June 10th, 1935.

Several years later, 1939 to be exact, the book Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism was published. This volume has come to be affectionately called the Big Book.

In the almost eighty years since A.A.’s founding, it’s helped millions of people recover and spawned countless other fellowships. Today, a woman trying to get sober has her pick of fellowships, meetings, and sponsors. It wasn’t always like that.

I’m not so sure the explosive growth of twelve-step based recovery is such a good thing. Let me be clear, I’m beyond grateful for this program. When I think of all the lives A.A., and other twelve-step fellowships, have touched, my mind boggles.

Still, a lot has changed since Bill and Dr. Bob set out to help other alcoholics. Sponsorship, and in a larger sense recovery, isn’t treated the same.

god centered sponsorship and co sponsorship

Success Rates from the Early Days

The second edition of the Big Book contains a forward. Published in 1955, it reads “Of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with AA showed improvement” (The Big Book, page XX).

50%, or 75% depending on how you look at it, isn’t too shabby! Imagine if half to three quarters of those walking through the doors of AA today got sober!

So, why’d rates of recovery drop from those lofty numbers to today’s approximate 1%? More importantly, how do we get back to these astounding numbers of recovery?

Well, it could have something to do with sponsorship.

Sponsorship from the Early Days

“Though three hundred thousand have recovered in the last twenty-five years, maybe half a million more have walked into our midst, and then out again. We can’t well content ourselves with the view that all these recovery failures were entirely the fault of the newcomers themselves. Perhaps a great many didn’t receive the kind and amount of sponsorship they so sorely needed. We didn’t communicate when we might have done so. So we AA’s failed them.”

–Bill W., excerpted from a 1961 volume of the Grapevine

During the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, a different type of sponsorship was practiced. First, there was co-sponsorship. Before we get into that, though, let’s discuss God centered sponsorship.

God Centered Sponsorship

This is the idea that rather than running to your sponsor with any and all problems, you take them to God.

Remember, nowhere in the Big Book does it say we should rely too much on our sponsor. In fact, nowhere in the Big Book does it mention a sponsor at all. This idea will be explored in detail later.

Anyway, God centered sponsorship is simple. We pick a sponsor, a woman who’s been through all twelve of the steps. We work through them with her. Then, instead of besieging her every time something bad happens, we pray and meditate over it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s vitally important to communicate with your sponsor. Hell, I call mine four or five times a week. Still, I don’t bring my problems to her (unless, of course, it’s a problem she’s had personal experience with).

I bring my problems to God. I pray to God, letting her (yep, my God is a woman!) know what’s going on. Then I meditate, listening for an answer. Often, God speaks to me through other women. For example, if I have a problem with money, I’m going to call my friends who’re good with money. That’s God speaking to me.

Want to know something funny? Often, after meditating on a problem or issue, I’ll call my sponsor about it. That’s another perfect example of God speaking to me through other women.

I think it’s important here to point out the difference between practicing God centered sponsorship and simply being lazy. Being lazy is not working steps, not communicating with your sponsor, and not living life on spiritual principals. God centered sponsorship is working steps and then communicating with your sponsor as needed rather than 1,000 times each day.

Co-Sponsorship

If God centered sponsorship sounds radical (and I hope it doesn’t!) then co-sponsorship is going to sound crazy! This is the idea that the sponsor should take her current sponsee with her to meet other newcomers.

Okay, that sounds kind of confusing, right? I had to read it twice and I’m still not sure what I wrote. Thankfully, Clarence S., an old-timer, had a much simpler explanation. He wrote,
“Additional information for sponsoring a new [wo]man can be obtained from the experience of older [wo]men in the work. A co-sponsor, with an experienced and newer member working on a prospect, has proven very satisfactory. Before undertaking the responsibility of sponsoring, a member should make certain that [s]he is able and prepared to give the time, effort, and thought such an obligation entails. It might be that [s]he will want to select a co-sponsor to share the responsibility, or [s]he might feel it necessary to ask another to assume the responsibility for the [wo]man he has located.”

–Clarence S., excerpted from a 1944 pamphlet on sponsorship

Leaving out the use of male pronouns (seriously, were no women getting sober back then?!), that makes a lot of sense. I cringe when I think of how I sponsored my first newcomer. I didn’t send her to God at all!

If my sponsor had been there, guiding us both, maybe things would have turned out differently. Or maybe not, who knows? God works in mysterious ways, my friends!

Could These Techniques Lead to More Women Recovering?

Ultimately, I don’t know! I think there are a lot of benefits to things like God centered sponsorship and co-sponsorship.

I think there are also other beneficial tactics women with time can take to help newcomers. For example, why make a sponsee call us? Shouldn’t we be calling them? Isn’t that how Bill found Dr. Bob in the first place?

So, will this sort of proactive, in-depth sponsorship help newcomers? There’s only one way to find out! I’ll see you out there in the trenches, ladies!

Faith Facts Friday With Fiona

Written By: Fiona Stockard

The Big Book Broken Down – Part Ten

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who help each other to recover from alcohol and drug addiction. It was founded in June of 1935, just celebrated its seventy-ninth anniversary, and boasts over two million members.

AA’s central text is the Big Book. With a sponsor and a Big Book, AA members work the twelve steps, and “recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body” (title page).

Big Book

Today, I’ll be breaking down a section of the chapter Working With Others.

Working With Others

This chapter, as the name ever so subtly suggests, is about working with other alcoholics. This usually takes the form of sponsorship, though there are many ways to be of service to our fellow drunks!

The chapter opens by saying, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail” (p. 89).

That’s the truth! Sponsorship, or even generally helping other alcoholics, is the heart of AA. It’s the only way to stay sober no matter what.

Guess what else? Working with newcomers has a lot of other benefits as well. Case in point, Working with Others reads,

“Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends – this is an experience you must not miss” (p. 89).

The chapter then goes on to offer suggestions for finding active alcoholics. Remember, the Big Book was written in 1939. There wasn’t a multibillion-dollar rehab industry around then!

Most of these suggestions are pretty outdated. They do offer a few good points, though, like –

“…cooperate; never criticize. To be helpful is our only aim” (p. 89).

“If [s]he does not want to stop drinking, don’t waste time trying to persuade him [or her!]” (p. 90).

“If [s]he does not want to see you, never force yourself upon him [or her!]” (p. 90).

And finally –

“Tell him enough about your drinking habits, symptoms, and experiences to encourage him to speak of himself…give him a sketch of your drinking career…when he sees you know all about the drinking game, commence to describe yourself as an alcoholic” (p. 91).

Those all stand the test of time pretty well! It doesn’t matter if it’s 1939 or 2014, those are solid ways to approach, talk to, and help newcomers.

So, what about once you’ve approached a new woman? How do you convince her you know what you’re talking about? How do you make it clear that you have a solution to active alcoholism?

Simple! Working with Others says, “Show him [or her!] the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree…If [s]he is alcoholic, [s]he will understand you at once. [S]he will match your mental inconsistencies with some of his own” (p. 92).

That’s identification. If I’m talking to a newcomer and she starts nodding her head and saying, “yeah, yeah, that’s me!” I know she’s identified with me. I know that, despite being new to AA, she’s found some hope in what I’m saying. And hope, my friends, is what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about.

Working with Others offers some more ideas on how to foster identification. The chapter reads,

“Show him [or her!], from your own experience, how the queer mental conditions surrounding that first drink prevents normal function of the will power…Continue to speak of alcoholism as an illness, a fatal malady. Talk about the conditions of body and mind which accompany it” (p. 92).

This installment of Faith Facts Friday, with your lovely host Fiona, ends on one of my favorite passages from the Big Book. Remember that idea of hope? Here Working with Others spells it out explicitly,

“…he has become very curious to know how you got well. Let him ask you that question, if he will. Tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a Power greater than himself and that he live by spiritual principles (p. 93).

Tune in next week for a breakdown of the rest of Working with Others!