Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How Does Sponsorship Help the Newcomer?
How Should a Sponsor Be Chosen?
The process of matching newcomer and sponsor is as informal as everything else in a support group. Often, the
new person simply approaches a more experienced member who seems compatible, and asks that member to
be a sponsor. Most recovering addicts are happy and grateful to receive such a request.
An old group support saying suggests, "Stick with the winners." It's only reasonable to seek a sharing of
experience with a member who seems to be working in a productive manor. There are no specific rules, but a
good sponsor probably should be a year or more away from the last relapse, and seem to be enjoying their
recovery.
Should a Sponsor and Newcomer be as Much Alike as Possible?
Often, a newcomer feels most at ease with a sponsor of similar background and interests another physician or
another homemaker, another churchgoer or another agnostic, another Irish-American or another African-
American. However, many say they were greatly helped by sponsors who are totally unlike themselves. Maybe
that's because their attention was then focused on the "most important" things that any sponsor and newcomer
have in common: addiction and recovery.
Experience demonstrates that it is best for men to sponsor men and women to sponsor women. This custom
usually promotes quick understanding and reduces the likelihood of emotional distractions that might take the
newcomer's mind off of their recovery.
What Should a Newcomer Expect From a Sponsor?
A sponsor should not provide any such services as those offered by a social worker, a doctor, a nurse, or a
marriage counselor. A sponsor is simply another recovering addict helping a newcomer solve one problem: "How
to stay free from the bondage of addiction. A sponsor it often not a trained professional, but a person who
explains their own personal experiences and makes observations and offers suggestions.
More on What‘s a Sponsor?
A sponsor is someone who acts like a "guide" for you in your recovery program. Picture yourself about to
journey into a very big forest that is thick with trees, hills streams and many paths...and on the other side of this
forest is a beautiful valley that you want more than anything to get to. But, you have no map, no compass, no
experience and absolutely "no tools" to help you travel through this forest. And, most everyone that you have
heard of has tried to go this journey alone through the forest, didn't make it.
So, the choice becomes yours. You can either try to go through the forest alone, without any direction or utilize
the experience of someone else who has been on the journey already, or you can get yourself a guide to lead
you through the forest, helping you out all the way.
If you look at your recovery in this way and are able to admit that it would be much easier, safer and much more
humble to let yourself be helped by a Sponsor “ guide" in the program, you will find that the journey is going to
be a lot less lonely and in many ways easier for you. "When you don't know where you are going, it is much
easier to follow than it is to lead!" You will be back even deeper in addiction’s grip if you tell yourself; I can do
this myself, or I don't want anyone telling me what to do, or I can't find anyone that I can really relate to, or I do
not trust anybody and I'm not going to start now. This is complacency at its best, just waiting to run afoul!
Because I lacked an understanding of the difference between religion and a relationship with God early in my
recovery, finding a like minded sponsor was a rather odd endeavor for me, as God found my sponsor for me.
One day I used a key recovery phrase to an old acquaintance of mine. He then looked me in the eye and said
you are one of doctor Bob’s kids ain’t ya!
As we began further discussion, I asked him to help me to work the steps were we became friends and I began
working on accountability to another. I did not care for his lifestyle, but after I learned to over look our
differences, I surrendered to his care, and today I am very glad that I did. This man’s personal life had been a
real mess. He was still struggling with a love affair with a young girl less than half his own age, but his
understanding of the recovery program was well intact. He put my nose to the grind stone and, as long as I
refused to give up on myself, he refused to give up on me.
Later I discovered that he was also the same sponsor of several of the people in my own group. The ironic part
of this was that he lived thirty miles away from any of us, and he never came to our town. He often sat quietly in
this own group causing one to never realize that he was a recovery guru.
Today as I think back to this experience I now realize why he kept telling me to take what I needed from this
experience and leave what remained. I do believe he knew that I had an issue with his desire to have a marital
relationship with that young girl.
He often spoke of the thirteenth step. As I reflected back to this experience, I now realized that most people who
come into recovery, come with an ulterior motive. Some are just trying to humor a judge or family member, who
the addict often feels, in the beginning, that this person(s) is totally out of step with reality. Some come with the
intentions of learning how to better manage their addiction so they do not get caught again. Where as, there are
some people who come to meetings as if they were a dating service.
Later I realized my motive was not so much to find freedom from my addiction, or any of the above, but rather,
mine was much more sinister. I was looking for an excuse to divorce my wife. Today I realize that my
subconscious mind, much as I had done before, I was now hoping that she would not change. This then gave me
the excuse I needed. She did not wish to change and I had her believing that I did. O’ the sick games that we
play and the lies we tell ourselves!
Yes, it appears if God does use our evil and sinister motives to lead us where He requires us to go. Many did
come into the rooms of recovery with ulterior motives, just as many are taken to recovery center in handcuffs.
However, after hearing the same messages over and over, and with abstinence, many do start believing the
fundamental truths that allowed for moral health.
It was months, and often sometimes years, before I was allowed to realize the validity of many of the common
sayings that I had heard in twelve step meetings. In these meeting God appears to plant seeds that often took
years before they begin to show fruit. “Just keep coming back,” I can still hear my sponsor say.
As ironic as it appears to my pastors, I found that personal relationship with my Creator, not in Sunday school,
but rather, with a bunch of former dopers and drunks! Most of whom had grown up in the church! As ironic as it
may seem, in my first year of attending 12 step meetings, I witnessed more people spared from their adverse
behaviors than from the twenty years that I had attended a non-denominational evangelical church!
"If one is only accountable to himself, he is accountable to no one." - Travis Knight
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