Originally Posted by Gottalife

Tatsy, I get your point and wonder the same thing. You would have a good friend in Clarence Snyder, the guy who founded the Cleveland group. He explained that an individual works steps one to nine once and never goes back there. Then they move to steps ten-twelve which involves sponsoring others. The only time they go back to those early steps is when teaching someone new. The process was sponsor, steps, sponsoring. Cleveland group was so successful that many people thought that was where AA started.

Ebby was Bill's sponsor, so Bill said. He was the guy that showed him the original program and took him through it. But Ebby didn't stay in AA, and Bill never had another sponsor. Instead he went a sponsoring. Luckily for us.

Archive show that Doctor Bob sponsored about 5000 newcomers. That works out as one for every day of his sobriety. Same deal. There is no way he could have maintained the life coach nonsense with that number of people. Yet his efforts helped AA grow phenomenally, luckily for me.

I hear some people introduce themselves as having a sponsor who has a sponsor. I don't get it. In my observation these dynastical structures can become quite harmful and introduce a whole lot of opinion, diluting the original message in the book. Why work with God and the book when you have answerman for your sponsor. We had the lady super sponsor, had seventy women under her wing, all running on stupid cliches, all afraid to change their socks without talking to this old gal first. She meant well, never said or did anything that wasn't out of love and concern, but when she died, about half her flock fell off the wagon.

I think there is far too much emphasis on being sponsored, which can be relying on human aid, something that doesn't work for us. Even the research shows we need to be sponsoring, that being sponsored iisn't near as likely to keep us sober.

Nothing wrong with wise counsel, spiritual mentors etc, in fact the book encourages us to grow spiritually and use resources outside of AA. But life time sponsorship? Sometimes looks like co-dependency, not at all attractive.