I recently had to let my sponsor go which was very sad for me. She was the first person who walked up to me in my AA meeting. She has been a wonderful sponsor.
The difficulty was we had a difference in opinion. I had sciatica which is mucho painful, a couple months ago. It happened on a Sunday, I live alone, and I wasn't able to walk more than to the bathroom. I have a prescription for Tylenol with Codeine in the house and was able to take one pill on Sunday and then after that switched to Advil. She felt that the only way I could take that pill was if I had gotten up and gone to a doctor to get it prescribed for the sciatica itself.
I do understand where she is coming from in terms of being careful about meds. However, when I suggested that in these extreme circumstance, the option could be that I call her and talk it over before taking the med, she replied that she would not feel comfortable taking that kind of responsibility, that only a doctor could say yes or no to taking any kind of pain med. I'm not talking about doing this on a regular basis, just in emergency.
I talked it over with many other folks in AA with long-term sobriety. Many thought the idea of checking in before taking a med like that was workable. Again, this would be only in extreme circumstances where I couldn't easily get access to medical care and was in extreme pain (you sciatica sufferers know what I'm talking about). I also talked to my drug and alcohol counselor about this as well.
I have no problem with my sponsor's stance on this, I just didn't feel comfortable with such a hard, hard line on this one issue. I told her that I had gotten into AA to get and stay sober not to be miserable. And frankly, getting up that Sunday morning and crawling in agony to my car to get to an urgent care center would have been misery. Especially if there was a compromise and help closer by.
So she and I have parted ways. I'm glad to say this was after we had talked about and I do respect her opinion, I just felt that approach was too hard line for me.
Luckily, I have a good network of long-time sober women I am looking at as possible sponsors and I don't look at my sponsor as my only resource.
I'm glad I handled this in a mature way and sad we have parted way. I'm learning there are lots of different approaches in AA and it's about what works best for you.