In my obsessive reading of Alcoholics Anonymous I have found out that one of the key ingredients of your AA Success is:
- Attending Meetings
- Finding an AA Sponsor
Apparently according to Dr Google, the traditional role of an AA sponsor was to pay for an alcoholic to undertake treatment or rehabilitation. However today, the role of a sponsor is for a recovered alcoholic to provide support to another alcoholic in order to assist them in seeking sobriety.
How do you find an AA Sponsor?
initially when I started exploring my attendance at AA, I couldn’t find any information about how I could get myself a sponsor. At my second meeting, whilst I sucked down a cigarette with other meeting attendees I found out that you get a sponsor at a meeting called the ‘Beginners Meeting‘. You don’t have to go to a beginners meeting as your first meeting, but these meetings have a different format than other meetings. in my early experience they:
- Usually have a larger number of participants
- Participants are given a list of topics to choose as talking points throughout the meeting
- There are resources on the ‘cycle of addiction’ and the disease of alcoholics
- At the end of the meeting, people who are interested in being approached as sponsors are asked to identify themselves.
At my first meeting I heard a lady speak and her story resonated with me, at my second beginners meeting I asked if she would be interested in being my sponsor.
My Sponsor
So after a few text messages back and forward I’m getting ready to meet my sponsor for the first time tonight. We have had a phone call and I’m heading to her house for the first time to meet her. Apparently all I need to do is bring a copy of the ‘Big Book‘ and we will work through that.
I must say the closer towards the end of the day we get, the more I am absolutely shitting myself about meeting with someone one-on-one to discuss my alcoholism. But after our meeting tonight, I will write back and update my journal on what we went through and how I can move forward in my sober journey.