My first sponsor
 

Sponsors come in various shapes and sizes. Here's an anecdote about my first.
I was in the rehab and I looked at the bulletin board one day and it said we all had to get a sponsor. At the AA meeting that evening I approached a nice looking guy and asked him if he would sponsor me. He graciously accepted and an evening or so later took me to a meeting. He was a commercial airplane pilot and the meeting was in one of the hangers at the local airport. There were a lot of pilots there and many of then had served in the navy. As the meeting went on they took to reminiscing about the drinking they had done in the navy and how exciting and challenging it was to try to land on an aircraft carrier at night with a few drinks under their belt! The ship pitching and tossing, the wind blowing sideways across the deck, maybe a little fog... They even said they had made some movies of that.
Talk about DUI's! Wow! Was this for real or were they bs-ing the "new guy"?

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Yikes!

Having, um, socialized quite a bit with guys who wound up being pilots, I can believe it.

Hopefully they all maintained good sobriety if they kept flying!

I would guess they were telling you the truth! Get some more stories out of them. If they have video of it then it probably is true! WOW!

Did they also focus "a bit" on how they got sober and where they are today? I definitely do not prefer the meetings where there is too much talk about all the negativity or the glorifying.

Well that was a long time ago. Nearly 22 years in fact. Thinking it over it occurs to me that there may have been a message in their stories. Do you think that an alcoholic, as his or her addiction progresses, is a little like someone completely out of control who is careening along on a dangerous path which might well end up destroying not only the addict but also possibly injuring countless others in body or in spirit? I think I recall having seen a message in those stories and it gave me something to think about when I returned to the rehab.
I never saw those folks again. They were commercial airline pilots so I assume that they had all sobered up. On all the flights I took in the future the crew seemed very sober indeed. But again, there was that commuter flight out in San Francisco, bound for Eureka. Didn't I overhear the pilot and the co pilot chatting:

Co-Pilot: What happens if I push this button?
Pilot: Don't push that! Don't ever push that button without my telling you!
Co-Pilot: Sorry! I was just curious. But what happens if I push this other one???

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