sobersanity

E ?Hi guys,

Another post looking for your help thank you all for your advice and kind words one day of reading and 're-reading your suggestions has really helped.

It seems I may have chose the wrong sponsor ( well actually he chose me when I first started aa) he approached me at my 3rd meeting being quite nice to me and offering to help and I kind of felt obliged to start the steps with him.

Anyway, he has been saying some pretty hard to take stuff and not answering any of my questions ( I got more answers here in one day than he gave me in 3 months)

He suggested I stick with aa people and my old friends will lead me back drinking. He ( and others) have said I shouldn't be in a relationship in the first year of recovery either but I've been with my girlfriend 4 years and I only know these people 3 months???

I'll be politely telling this sponsor his suggestions are no longer required

Thanks to TSDDs post this morning for saving me from dumping my friends and girlfriend

tomsteve

i am thinkin you may not be hearing what yer sponsor is realy saying.
no new romantic relationships in the 1st year.
are you sure he wasnt referring to wet faces?

are ya lookin for someone to tell ya what ya wanna hear or someone whos gonna tell ya what ya need to hear?

sobersanity

Hi Tom,

By "wet face" Im presuming you mean a drinker ? Ive never heard that expression before


I live in Ireland and the vast majority of the population is a "wet face" Whether that makes 4 million of us alcoholics I dont know but Irish people do drink a lot more than a lot of other places and drink is a big part of our culture. Every single one of my friends drink.

Im pretty 100% certain he and others have said I need to change people, places and things on quite a few ocassions. By that they mean I need to change my friends, change my social scene and change what I do (as in drinking) I know I have to do the last one but Im not sure about the first 2.

If I leave all my friends and my social scene will I end up lonely like the poster his morning who has no friends left ?

Thanks Tom

Dee74

I'm not in AA* but I needed to change a lot of things in my life.

My old life was alcohol fuelled, alcohol sodden and revolved around alcohol.
It was a fine life for a drunk, not so great for someone trying to be sober.

More than once I tried tho and more than once I got pulled back into dinking. My friends meant no harm - it was just what they did.

So the last time I had to leave a lot of friends behind (actually most of them were drinking buddies...my true friends understood my drinking was killing me and supported my sobriety)

I also reconnected with old friends I'd lost contact with, and made a lot of new friends.

What I thought was going to be a great loss actually turned to be the door to a new life I could never have imagined.

Your sponsor may or may not be the right fit for you, but make sure you're not letting your fear about change stop you from doing whatever you need to do sobersanity - that would be a shame.

(*didn't realise this was the 12 step section when posting, but I'll leave it anyway )
D

pipparina

I think others have answered this already. No new romances in the first year. Not that you should breakup with your girlfriend.
Stay out of slippery places. This is because it is just plain easier to drink in those places.
Stay away from drinking friends. I don't think this means forever, but hanging out with your old friends who are drinking just makes it easier for you to pick up.

I am very close to my older sister, who drinks a lot. My first few months of sobriety, I had to limit my time with her. It was to protect me from drinking. Eventually I felt strong enough in my sobriety to hang out with her again, and now we have a deeper relationship.

So the short answer is maybe you need to heed this advice for now? You're pretty new to sobriety to be hanging out in bars

sobersanity

HI pippa, thanks again for your advice - wish you were in my local meeting :-)

Therein lies the problem, all my friends drinnk, I havent been going out to bars with them since I stopped drinking but my (soon to be ex) sponsor seems to think this isnt enough and I need to distance myself from my drinking friends full stop. Im not confusing this. This is what the man said.

Sorry, but I am sober for months while still having these friends Im not goin to cut them out of my life just because he says so.

Also, a lot of people seem to think that "I am misunderstanding the message" my sponsor suggests to me. Let me make it clear, if he says something I dont fully understand I ask again and again so I understand, sometimes he says something vague like "All will be revealed" he even said to me "No one is too dumb for AA but you may well be too smart" What the **** is that supposed to mean ?

How can you be too smart to recover ?
Is recovering from alcoholism not a smart move ?
Maybe I need to be stupid for this to work for me ?

Thanks again Pippa

Mark75

Easy.

I was too smart at first. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to make sense of that which really makes no freakin' sense.

AA is not an intellectual exercise, it is a spiritual awakening.

Until I surrendered and had a good 3rd step experience, I was miserable.... Then going on to the 4th step, once again I was spinning my wheels trying to intellectualize it, but when I just followed the instructions, I finally "got it" and haven't looked back.

Most of my friends drink, they are not falling down drunk, well, most of he time LOL, I am older, in my 50's, so most of my friends lead relatively normal lives. Sadly, or not, depending on your perspective, I don't see some of them nearly as often. I have some new friends, and I spend more time with family. I also spend more time with AAs and working in my garage.

Your current sponsor is not wrong, but he may, or may not, be wrong for you... we can't tell in this setting. Like you, I have found SR very helpful and I get questions answered that I don't talk to my sponsor about.

Stick around!

sugarbear1

The big book says we shouldn't avoid those who do drink. It's rehabs that tell us to stay away. Look for it in the first 164 pages.

paul99

Your sponsor sounds like he has your best interests at heart, to be honest. Like what others said here already, I too not only had to distance myself from the (very few by then) friends I had who were really drinking buddies, but whenever one of my treatment center pals started to drink again, I would no longer talk to them...all in the name of protecting my own sobriety. And that was my own choice, because I knew myself too well!

I had a few of those "all will be revealed" answers. I remember asking my sponsor something and he said "you'll know when it happens". I remember being a little frustrated, but now that I sponsor, I understand totally why he said those things - I wasn't ready for the true answers. He was also teaching me to trust God on things, to release my control on certain things.

The comment about being too smart for AA - that's a well used line that basically tells us that overthinking things or complicating things stalls our program. It's just another way of saying keep it simple. As for your questions...you're overthinking...haha. Keep it simple - follow the program as outlined in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

As for your sponsor - well, that's your choice. Sometimes they tell us things we don't want to hear, and they do it because they've been down the path before us and can see where our thinking may lead us - regardless of how much sobriety time we have.

Good luck!

jennikate

I've heard the too smart for AA comment too. I think it means that you are overintellectualizing the program. A lot of the oldtimers in my meetings say "take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth" and "your best thinking got you here". In other words, listen more, talk less. And that's just what I do. I wouldn't blindly follow anything my sponsor suggested but I would definitely give it a lot of thought. She has succeeded where, in the past, I have failed.
As for answering questions, maybe your sponsor wants you to come to your own conclusion. My sponsor can't give me all of the answers but does try to lead me in the right direction. It is a delicate balance.
However, all that being said, I don't know you or your sponsor and it could be that you just don't gel. Or that your idea and his idea of sponsorship are different. I've seen sponsors where all they do is call once in a while. Maybe that's enough for some but not for me. Luckily, my sponsor and I are on the same page regarding expectations. If you and your sponsor aren't, it might be time to move on.
Just give it some thought and make sure that you are not rejecting him because he is not saying what you want to hear. Some of his ESH (besides dumping the gf) sounds appropriate.

sobersanity

Thanks Mark.

Ok this bit was not really explained to me. Maybe if Im not a spiritual person it isnt going to work ?

Im having problems with the HP concept and have been advised to use the group as my HP. Are the group going to lead me to this spiritual awakening to cure me ? At first I was told all I needed for AA was a desire to stop drinking. The goalposts seem to have changed a bit according to my sponsor.

You HAVE TO BELIEVE IN A HIGHER POWER for it all to work ?

If I have doubts or dont believe in this fundamental (in fact what seems to be the whole) part of the program am I doomed to fail ?

Also, the guy who encouraged me to go to AA in the first place has been sober for 4 years, now talks constantly about God. He never spoke about God like this when I knew him before ?

He genuinely seems to think that God leads everything in his life and that God "tells him" what to do on a daily basis. As if he as a person is not in control of his own decisions/life/actions (I am not exagerating here)

Will this be how I end up after 4 years cos its a bit weird to say the least. Im all for being sober and not drinking but if every second word out of my mouth is destined to be God or Higher Power. Id prefer to hang on to my vocabulary and remain "too smart".

Deep questions I know but if you could clarify any of this it would be really helfpul.

Thanks again

Mark75

God, as you understand Him.

I have had my own experience with God. It is different, at least on the outside, from others. There are those who discuss their experience with their higher power, how they bring Him into their lives... and it is not how I will tell you I bring God into mine... I sometimes wonder if we are all that different in our individual experience, although certainly our outward expression of it is very different....

I would not say, for example, that God "tells" me what to do... I will tell you that when I need to understand something or get myself into action, that I do spend some time in prayer and meditation seeking what His will for me is.... It is my seeking that is the action in that experience, not His telling.... He doesn't just tap me on the shoulder and whisper in my ear with my next set of instructions, LOL.... but sometimes He needs to get my attention....

Oh I don't know... Get your own Higher Power, not someone else's...

Identify, don't compare...

There is a guy in my meeting, spiritual AND religious... and when I "take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth" and try to see the commonality of our experience, not the differences in the telling of it, I find that we are not that different.

Addendum... Oh yes, AA is a spiritual program... and to get AA recovery a spiritual journey is necessary.

paul99

Short answer - yup. Or at least willing to believe.

"We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." BB pg. 85

Yup, in many ways. In step 3 we relinquish our will (our thoughts) and our lives (our actions) to the care of God as we understood Him. Or Higher Power.

What you are asking about are things that are covered in Steps 2 and 3 mostly. These are the things that you will need to go through with your sponsor. Those kind of conversations are best had face to face. But you don't have to worry - you're not going to be shaving your head and chanting at airports (unless you want to!)

This is a spiritual program, not a religious one.

sobersanity

Hi jenni,

Yup these are phrases Ive heard a few times aswell ? As for overintellectualizing ? Is that to say that I need to stop being inquisitive and asking questions about a program that they say is MY program ?

Yes my best thinking got me here, but does that mean I have to STOP thinking altogether ?

I want what all those guys in the rooms have, but am I prepared to stop asking questions, stop thinking and stop having friends that drink ?
I just dont know on that one. I honestly dont know.

But you people are genuinely helping me decide what to do, with very honest answers and it feels like I am getting further on this site than I have with any questions I have asked in rooms or after meetings. In Ireland AA is how people recover, thats the done thing.

Im very afraid that it wont work for me, I really want it to, I dont want to I end up in Jail or Dead like the old timers tell me if I will if I stop going.

You guys are the best :-)

sobersanity

Mark/Paul,

Great explanations there cheers.

What is the difference between spirtual and religious ?

Is God not religuous ? So many people talk about God in their shares, but yet they say the program is spiritual not religious. What are the differnces ?

I think I have to go back and do the first 2 steps with a new sponsor. I have a guy in mind.

I think I'll tell the old sponsor later, He will probably be relieved he doesnt have to answer my questions anymore anyway haha

Cheers

Mark75

My take on the question, and I am not real eloquent here... Is that religion tells us what and how to experience spirituality or God... Religion provides a framework, a common language, a moral code... all that.

Spirituality is at the core... It is the essence.

Like I said, I am not real eloquent here. But... can you believe that there is a power greater than yourself...

sobersanity

OK I just googled the definition:

re·li·gion/riˈlijən/Noun:
1.The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
2.Details of belief as taught or discussed.

Is this not what we do in AA ? religon and spirtuality/One and the same yeh ?

This religon/spirituality thing seems to me like they are just different words to describe exactly the same thing.

the definiiton of religon above is basically a belief in a personal God (Higher power) and the details of this belieft as being taught/dicussed (Meetings/the steps) ?

Am I over intellectuallizing again hahaha :-)


They seem to be the same thing ?

tomsteve

wow!! sober, yer askin questions that are some drarn good ones. good on ya!!

What is the difference between spirtual and religious ?
religions for people afraid of goin to hell. spirituality is for people who have been there.

Is God not religuous ?
not the God of my understanding. i know a man whos HP has been a squirrell for 24 years or so. been workin good for him. all that is necessary is to become willing to believe there is a power in this universe greater than you that can help you will all yer problems, which is what the BB say it was wriiten for us to find that power.

I want what all those guys in the rooms have, but am I prepared to stop asking questions, stop thinking and stop having friends that drink ?

yeah, dont think....that really got me. was told dont think, dont drink, go to meetings. i went to meetings and saw signs sayin "thinkthinkthink".. made me crazy!!

sober, its gonna get easier, please trust us about that. you have a genuine desire to work the steps and are asking very good questions. i hope yer new sponsor puts ya right into the BB and the steps and asnwers yer questions.
one thing to remember: you can have a sponsor, but that doesnt mean he/she is the only one to listen to, talk to, or to ask questions. you dont have to agree with everything a sponsor says. some things you may not agree now, but give it time and you will, some things you'll never agree on, which happens, and then theres occasions when, after a lil time, a sponsor may even change his mind and agree with a sponsee.

pipparina

IMHO, spirituality is between me and my HP. Religion is between me, my fellow worshipers, and God. So I guess the line is fuzzy.

I think you're getting yourself into a mental twist with all of this. My I suggest for now, just worry about staying sober, going to meetings, finding a sponsor you can relate to? I'd hate to see you talk yourself out of something that is doing you good.

Seriously, I had a lot of the same questions, and hated the standard lines I was given as answers. But what I did was trust that most of these people had years sober and I only had months. So I tried to stop arguing and just do it their way.

tomsteve

religion is man made. spirituality is from the God of my understanding.

Im very afraid that it wont work for me.
it will if ya keep asking questions and work it. if ya werent asking uestions, i would be concerned.