by Sally Rosa | Apr 9, 2015 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
The Roast of Justin Bieber
The roast of Justin Bieber. Ah, the roast of Justin Bieber. It was funny…but not very helpful. This guy, the Bieber, actually needs help. So, I decided I would roast him from the point of view of a sponsor…that he will one day need!
Listen Up, Justin
Thank you for having me here tonight, Justin. It’s really not an honor to be here because if you’d lived your life in a different way, no one would care enough to spend two-hours making fun of you.
You drive too fast, say stupid stuff, act like people you aren’t, and think that you’re God’s gift to twelve-year olds. You act the same way Michael Jackson did. He had a monkey. So did you. Michael Jackson is dead.
The point here, little buddy, is that if you don’t change your actions, thought, and behaviors, you’ll die too!
I know from the top of the mountain everything looks pretty great. Why stop now, right? Well, see you can shut down that part a few years early and start building credibility, respect, dignity, and a life of purpose. You can start being of service and making those around you and the world a better place.
I mean you could do all that and use your immense popularity to solve problems. But why do that? It’s much easier to run around looking like six-year old doing an impersonation of an adult, wearing adult close, and making ten times an adult’s salary.
Keep it up buddy! If you wear a cool looking hat, tomorrow millions of kids will be wearing that hat. That must make you feel good. You could wear a t-shirt with a logo of the American Cancer Society on it, tweet about donating money to fighting cancer, promise to match the donations of your followers, and actually bring some good to this world. That, though, probably wouldn’t make you feel as good as a fat wallet and huge ego.
We have two choices, Beebs. We can chose to take what God has given us and help other or we can take what God has given us and help ourselves.
You chose the “I’m going to be a tiny famous mess route.” That’s cool. A lot of people went that way too. I’m talking about Judas, A-Rod, and Hitler. I guess you feel it’s better to have it all for a couple of years than to have dignity and respect forever.
Again, it’s your choice Beebs. If you’d chosen to do the right thing, we wouldn’t be here tonight. If you’d chosen to do the right thing, you probably wouldn’t be rich. If you’d chosen to do the right thing, your mom wouldn’t have money. So, I can see why you chose selfishness.
If you did choose the right path, though, you’d probably have more money in the long run, more respect and dignity, and your mother would have money and a son that people respect.
Goodnight and God Bless!
by Sally Rosa | Jan 30, 2015 | 12 Steps, Addiction Articles
My Experience Switching Sponsors
My first sponsor had around six months when she started taking me through the twelve-steps. Despite not having a ton of time, she’d been through her steps, had a spiritual experience, and was ready to spread a message of hope and recovery.
We didn’t have that much in common, aside from both being alcoholics. She was much older than I was, although at nineteen almost everyone was much older than I was! She taught Social Studies and coached baseball at a local high school. She was married. She had money in the bank.
I could continue this list, but I think you all get the idea. We were brought together by the twelve-steps and the need to live our lives on spiritual principles. She began to take me through the steps. Six months later, I’d finished my steps and she’d picked up her one-year medallion.
It was around this time, when I started sponsoring women, that I began to think about switching sponsors. Don’t get me wrong, my original sponsor saved my life. I’m going to spend the rest of my days working off that debt by helping other women.
Still, we didn’t have much in common. I wanted a sponsor that was closer to my age and had similar experiences, both in active addiction and recovery. So I started “shopping around” as my friends call it.
On the Hunt for a New Sponsor
All of a sudden, meetings took on a whole new meaning. Not only was I going to spread the message of recovery, I was also going to see what other women had to say. Of course, that’d always been one reason for meetings, but now it took on a new importance.
I reached out, got a ton of phone numbers, and put together a list of potential sponsors. I prayed, meditated, and asked God for guidance. I also ran some of my potential ideas by another alcoholic.
God works in mysterious ways, my friends! Guess who I ended up asking to sponsor me? The woman I ran my list by! I’m getting ahead of myself though.
I called this woman up and we talked for a couple of hours. She gave me a piece of advice that’s stuck with my ever since. This is also the advice that made me realize she was the perfect sponsor for me.
She said, “Whoever you pick, make sure they’re someone who’s always been there for you in the past.” That was God talking to me through another alcoholic! That was what I’d been praying and meditating for. Those were the words I’d been waiting to hear.
Actually Switching Sponsors
After we got off the phone, I said another prayer. I then called the woman who’d taken my through the steps. I was so nervous! I thought she was going to be angry and never talk to me again!
It turns out, like most things in sobriety, that I was up in my head for nothing. She completely understood and even acknowledged some of what I’d been thinking. We ended the phone call closer than we’d been previously! God certainly does work in mysterious ways.
I then called my new sponsor (though she didn’t know it yet!) and asked her to sponsor me. She said yes and the rest, as they say, was history. That was almost six years ago and I haven’t looked back since.
I heard a simple and profound saying early in my recovery. It went something like “if you don’t think you have the best sponsor in the world, you picked the wrong woman.”
I’ve been blessed in my sobriety with two amazing sponsors. What more can a girl ask for?
by Fiona Stockard | Dec 12, 2014 | 12 Steps, Addiction Articles
Written By: Fiona Stockard
The Big Book Broken Down – Part Fifteen
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).
Today, I’ll be finishing the chapter Working With Others.
Working With Others
Picking up from last week, Working With Others goes on to offer advice on how we can act when we’re someplace where people are drinking. It says, “Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it” (p. 102).
The idea of contributing to an occasion, rather than simply trying to have a good time, touches upon a central theme of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was a taker my entire life. I was selfish to the extreme. After getting sober, it was time for me to start giving!
Say I’m at a friend’s birthday party. People are drinking and having a good time. I can have a good time and try my best to make the birthday gal have an even better time!
In fact, Working With Others says as much. The chapter reads, “If it is a happy occasion, try to increase the pleasure of those there; if a business occasion, go and attend to your business enthusiastically” (p. 102).
Sounds simple. Of course, like most of AA’s principles, it’s much easier said than done! After all, it takes time to break habits we’ve had for years or decades.
The chapter then goes on to talk about how we interact with “normies.” It advises us not to infringe upon our nonalcoholic friends’ right to drink. It says, “Let your friends know they are not to change their habits on your account” (p. 102).
It would be pretty selfish of us to impose on someone who wants to drink (who doesn’t have a problem with booze). Remember, we’re trying to get rid of this selfishness! We’re growing as women from selfish to selfless.
What about keeping booze in our house, though? Maybe we have a boyfriend or husband who likes a beer with dinner. Maybe we live with our parents and they like a cocktail before bed. What do we do?
Once again, the Big Book has us covered! Working With Others says,
“Many of us keep liquor in our homes…some of us still serve it to our friends provided they are not alcoholic…we feel that each family, in the light of their own circumstances, ought to decide for themselves” (pp. 102-103).
Thanks AA! You have an answer to every question that crosses my mind! This chapter ends with two key ideas. First it advises us recovering alcoholics to avoid prejudice. It says, “We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution” (p. 103).
Sounds good to me. There’s no reason for me, as a sober woman of grace and dignity, to hate on people who drink. Of course, if someone is struggling with alcoholism or addiction, I’ll be quick to share my story with them.
Working With Others ends with a quote I hear repeated often in the rooms of recovery. It goes a little something like,
“After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol. Besides, we have stopped fighting anybody or anything. We have to!” (p. 103).
Sounds about right to me!
by Sally Rosa | Dec 3, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
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.
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!
