Choose Wisely

TWELVE STEPS

AND

TWELVE TRADITIONS

STEP FIVE

(pp. 60-61)

Our next problem will be to discover the person in whom we are to confide. Here we ought to take much care, remembering that prudence is a virtue which carries a high rating. Perhaps we shall need to share with this person facts about ourselves which no others ought to know. We shall want to speak with someone who is experienced, who not only has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other serious difficulties. Difficulties, perhaps, like our own. This person may turn out to be one's sponsor, but not necessarily so. If you have developed a high confidence in him, and his temperament and problems close to your own, then such a choice is good. Besides, your sponsor already has the advantage of knowing something about your case.

… It may turn out, however, that you'll choose someone else for more difficult and deeper revelations. This person may be entirely outside of A.A. for example, your clergyman or your doctor. For some of us a complete stranger may prove the best bet.

~

Bill's advice on this subject has to be one of the most overlooked and this oversight often has tragic consequences. So many people, new to AA, or other programs, are pressured to find a sponsor before they have hit bottom or know even the basics of the First Step. Still unable to admit powerlessness over alcohol and certainly unable, or unwilling, to grasp the extent to which their lives have become unmanageable, they are compelled by house managers or program directors to seek out anyone… anyone at all to sponsor them. They are even encouraged to sponsor others while still in this condition. In the dark, it is the blind leading the blind. More often than not, the new prospect will choose someone just as sick as his/her self to be a sponsor.

            The example often used by those who promote this foolishness is that our co-founder, Bill W., certainly had no extensive experience, or time in sobriety, before he made that phone call and met with Dr. Bob. Contrarily, if I look closely at what had occurred, Bill W. had a spiritual advisor, was already convinced of the first two Steps, had already acknowledged his powerlessness, that his live was insanely unmanageable, surrendered to his Higher Power and believed God could restore his insanity, before the two met.

            In other words: Choose wisely… as though it were a matter of life or death… because it is!

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