[Pilgrim]

Hi all.

This is the first time I dropped someone I am sponsoring and Im feeling angry and upset.

Some of you here might know that I am a rigid Big Book thumper. I belong to a group that follows the Primary Purpose of AA - no open discussion format - we just work to understand how best to help the still suffering alcoholic. We use the book and nothing else for sponsorship directions. I don't go to open discussion meetings for fellowship. I tried that and I nearly died in the rooms because no one told me how to recover and I couldn't find a sponsor. That was my experience and it was as dangerous to me as the alcohol. Listening to people's problems day after day (same problems) is not an instruction for recovery I can find in my BB.

The people I have sponsored are my friends in AA and a fellowship has grown around me. Almost everyone I have sponsored (and there has been at least 10 this past year) got recovered and they are working with others themselves now. I am lucky - I found a sponsor who was sponsored by somone Joe Mcq sponsored. Joe was sponsored by Bill W.

For problems, I go to see a counsellor or I dump on my husband and talk through my stuff with my sponsor so I can find my part and discover more defects....I still seem to have quite a few...LOL. I also come here to vent.

Anyway - shutting up about all that and getting off my soap box now.

I have a friend that I took through the steps who just won't be honest with me. I know when she starts drinking again because she texts me to say she has the flu. Its always the same and it makes me feel sick when she does that. I then go through days of worrying about whether or not she is still alive. I try not to but I find it very difficult not to worry. I do care about her. I know I am powerless over her drinking but OMG - it's hard to switch off when you give a s**t.

She was in AA for two years just going to discussion meetings and not drinking. She didn't do the steps during those two years. I believe she is a real alcoholic and drank again, as we do. She got bad very quickly and had to go to hospital after her friends called for help. That has happened twice in the time I have known her.

During her two years in discussion meetings, I think she got the idea that she could control her drinking herself. She knows in her head she has a problem and she knows all the words to say that will make people think she is trying to recover. But she isn't OK and she isn't trying to recover. Her heart is full of dishonesty. I think she is good at lying and manipulating and I believe she is a complete fake.

She is using me and the group and her friends and her treatment centre (they love her there) to save her after each binge and her head seems to be telling her that she can get away with some drinking sometimes and just come waltzing back to her support network and pick up where she left off. She thinks we won't notice she drank. Does she think we are so stupid?

She has been drinking this past two weeks. Yesterday she rang to say she slipped one day last week and she wanted to be honest with me about that. I asked her if that was true (just one day) and she got upset. She said the person who told me she was drinking was not to be trusted. She finally admitted that she had been drinking longer than she said.

Her children went away for two weeks and they come back soon so she knows she has to try and sober up before they get back.

Last weekend she called me drunk early in the morning and demanded I go over to her house. I said I had a doctors appointment but that I would be over in an hour. She wasn't there because she was trying to hide her drinking from me. Later she said she must have been out walking the dogs but the dogs were barking when I went over. She was slurring her words when she rang. I presented this information to her last night and all I got was "please don't be angry with me". I said it wasn't a question of being in trouble or me being angry, but that she has a fatal disease and if she isn't honest, she won't make it.

I am prepared to do anything to help a sick alcoholic who wants to recover but I feel like I am being manipulated and I resent her. So this morning I told her I don't want to be her sponsor any more. I said I would be happy to talk to her about why if she wants. I also said I hoped we could stay friends.

The truth is - I am so mad with her. I don't want to see her. I don't want her to come to our meetings and sit there all prim and smiling knowingly about how her God is so important in her life pretending to be spiritual. I don't want her to sponsor people because I think she will kill sick newcomers with her dishonesty.

What does AA do when someone comes in who will not be honest and who uses the group and all the people in their life to help them drink/stop/drink/stop? Can we tell them to go away until they get honest? One of our traditions says we can deny no person who wants to recover. So can we deny them if they don't want to recover? If we are only thinking about those who are sick who want to recover, can we eject the fakers who might kill with their message of "I get away with it sometimes and I can show you how"?

Grumpy and a bit sad today but taking someone through a fifth step later. Someone who really wants it badly.

God bless.

Steph