Sponsor danger
Two current threads garnering a lot of steam in recent days had to do with relative newcomers being exposed to AA for the first time -- one with several months, the other with a few days -- and both have had bad sponsor experiences.
One basically was approached at her first meeting and roped into a stalker-like relationship, complete with uninvited surprise visit to her home and saddled with advice regarding finances and her sex life.
The other adopted a sponsor who had been in the program for eight years but had eight months sobriety at the time, and the newcomer felt off-put by the clique-like nature of his home group.
Both, understandably, are very wary of the program, yet both newcomers have the wherewithal to recognize that it is the people they have dealt with and not necessarily the program itself that has resulted in a negative experience.
That scares the hell out of me. To think that a newcomer could enter the rooms and be stalked, and for another to feel shunned for not falling in step with a relapsing sponsor who hasn't completed the 12 steps after eight years of exposure to the program, and these two "sponsor'' are the face of AA is tragic, to say the lease.
So I thought I would ask for others here to post their positive sponsor experiences.
I'll go first. I'm a dude, and I latched onto a guy in the program who was approaching 30 years of sobriety and told him I was having problems finding a sponsor and he uttered four words that, to me, meant the wold to me at the time: "I will help you."
And he did. I was a mess, having quit booze and benzos at the time and still reeling from a 10-day hospital stay after the cold-turkey benzo whammy hit full strength at about three weeks sober. This man couldn't have been more of an opposite from me on the surface: Republican, scarred Vietnam Vet, former NSA-type spoke. We didn't sit down and begin immediate step work, but he was there for coffee, telephone calls, and to share his experiences. HE never hit with me any controlling behavior, just always related to my issues through is experience, sharing what happened to him, what he did about it, how he reached out for help.
I was living overseas at the time and he had to return to the states, so I searched the rooms for another sponsor, and found a woman, also with 30 years sobriety, who as a retired linguistics professor, having taught in China and South Korea.
With her I started serious step work at about eight months sober. It was mostly written work, and we shared meals, talked of our expat experiences, and spent a lot of time talking of spiritual affairs, her more of the Buddhist variety. I actually did my fifth step with her. I know the man-woman sponsor-sponsee relationship is frowned upon, it worked for me. It wasn't a perfect relationship, but she was the positive hand of AA when I needed it most. I subsequently moved back to the states and have hooked up with my first sponsor.
I've been sober for three years and I attribute a lot of it to having very positive sponsor relationships.
But reading of the negative sponsor experiences of newcomers here, it makes me realize why so many are chased out of AA, how dangerous it can be for newcomers to hook up with a bad sponsor, and how devastating that initial contact to AA can be. I am grateful mine was nothing but a positive, supportive experience.
Perhaps if we share some similar experiences on the 12 step forum, we can repair some of the damage others have wrought.