Mr. SponsorPants

give/get

At a meeting recently I heard someone talk about going abroad -- they're visiting a country famous for its culture of carousing.  The person sharing has about six months sober again -- I don't say "again" with any snark, I just mean that they've been around AA's message for a while, longer than their six month clean-and-sober time.

As they talked about their trip, they described meetings in this country (they'd been there before).  "Low bottom people" and "very depressing" -- they "don't get a lot out of them." 

I listened, keeping my face impassive (though I caught myself shaking my head a little in dismay, and stopped it immediately).  Man, they just don't get it  I thought.

What about going to those meetings and seeing what you can give?  Seeing if you can take some of the positivity that you feel in your home meetings and share it with those people?

What about not approaching the whole thing as an opportunity to get but rather a chance to give?  Because, as it says in about a million places in the AA literature, when we give, that's when we get.

I don't blame them, exactly.  Alcoholics are by nature selfish people -- and I see myself in that statement, rest assured.  It was AA that changed how I view things, overall, seeing almost every experience as a way to be of service -- from crap jobs to bus rides to waiting rooms to supermarket lines.  When I approach those things as someone willing to be of service to the people around me, then suddenly the jobs aren't crap and the rides and waits and lines aren't so bad.

I'm not sure exactly when this change occurred in me, but it feels like I've been given the key to true happiness.  No one can do it perfectly of course, but my experience is, the more I live this principle the more joy I feel.

True for me then true for anyone...

Learning to say "you're welcome"

"No problem."

"Don't mention it."

"Happy to help."

They're all nice things to say, of course, and can be sincerely expressed and warmly received.  But it wasn't until I'd been in AA for a little while that I realized I really didn't know how to calmly, honestly, directly say "you're welcome."

I almost thought it was rude to acknowledge someone's gratitude -- that it diminished them.  What I didn't realize was that phrases like the above are, even with the best of intentions, a deflection of sorts.

When I deflect, it's worth looking under the surface to see what I'm protecting.  Eventually I had to ask:  What was operating underneath that, for me?  Did I think that my help wasn't worth acknowledging?  Or was it some kind of passive/aggressive twist to extend the thank-you exchange so I could feel more powerful?  Perhaps in some cases (probably most, in fact) it was just my regular old uncomfortable-with-any-form-of-human-contact (I am a people person by skill, but not by nature).

Alcoholics Anonymous encourages me to be of service, to literally be helpful to others.  Over time I've learned that honestly acknowledging someone's gratitude with a direct, sincere "you're welcome" is a sign of respect to them and to myself.  It places a value on each of us and a worth on whatever help has been given.  It punctuates someone's "thank you" so that they can feel heard, and move forward.

When I came to AA I didn't even know what I didn't even know.  That's still true for me today sometimes too.  I believe only by staying close will I continue to educate the ignorant parts of my nature -- shine a light into dark corners I didn't even know I had.

Last Monday night

It was a cool evening and I stood at the curb in front of my apartment, enjoying the air; looking at the stars, blunted though they were by the lights of the city.

A car pulled up and idled in front of me.  The tinted glass lowered, and the driver leaned his head down to see me more clearly through the passenger side window.

"Are you Mr. SponsorPants?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Get in."  He popped the locks and leaned over to open the passenger door.

Inwardly I chuckled, thinking, "Well, I guess my days of jumping into dark cars with strange men aren't over after all."

We introduced ourselves and he merrily cursed a driver who cut him off as he merged back into traffic.  "Sorry."  He said.

"No worries.  Are you a regular at this meeting?"

"I'm the co-secretary.  J. snaked you out from under me to speak, I was going to ask you next month when it's my turn.  We just got elected a little while ago.  I heard you speak at ..."

We chatted about meetings in the area, his day, my day.  Inconsequentials.  I was actually trying to get a fix on J., his co-secretary -- so far he was just a voice on the phone asking me to speak at a meeting.  I wasn't sure if I'd met him and forgotten, or hadn't met him yet, and the way the conversation progressed when we spoke hadn't left room for me to politely sort that out.  Didn't really matter, though. 

Never say no to an AA request.

We pulled up and he pointed to the meeting door, backside of a church (aren't they always?) easily identifiable by the Usual Suspects hanging out front, smoking and drinking coffee.  I thought that, apart from the vagaries of fashion and the progression of tech accessories, the look of a bunch of drunks outside an AA meeting probably hasn't changed much since the whole thing got started.

My driver went to park, and I headed in.  Down the stairs, turn right, down the stairs, turn right, down the stairs, turn right again.  Even I couldn't fumble those instructions.

Hanging over the stairwell was a giant portrait of Jesus, somewhat arresting in both its scale and subject.  I stopped, wishing I was more familiar with my Bible passages, to deduce what scene was on display.  An ornate frame surrounded the piece, with Jesus, I must admit, classically Caucasian and clean; brown haired and blue eyed (that is, the Jesus of my childhood), standing at a wall of some kind, facing partially away from the viewer.  With one hand He held aloft a candle (or maybe it was a lantern) and with the other He reached towards a door in the wall.  Something about His stance, the way He was seen in a kind of three-quarter profile, the lighting ... it made Jesus seem ... furtive.  I thought the artist was either unconsciously revealing something secretive about his own life in this work, or had stumbled across a long lost scripture, perhaps from the gnostic Bibles, entitled "Jesus Visits The Temple of Sighs."  Probably not that last one, but my giggle echoed up the stairwell behind me. 

The thing about going to a lot of AA meetings is that you become a connoisseur of church basements and playrooms.  This one was awesome.  Clean, with colorful walls, art supplies, and even a foosball table.  Cool!  Far end of the room, the chalkboard bore, in child's hand, the following declaration:

Good News!
We love God!
And our Church!
And Spiderman!

I didn't know this Parish, but I liked 'em already:  Sneaky Jesus, arts and crafts, foosball and Marvel comics.  Our Lady of the Not Too Uptight.

The meeting itself was a really mixed bag (my favorite kind), a true example of the Big Book's often quoted line, "we are people that would not ordinarily mix."

I spoke for half an hour.  It was what it was.  I never know what I'm going to say before I speak, and at this point I'm not too worried about how it's received (though there was a time when I lived and died over that.)  Along the way I've spoken at meetings behind bars and meetings IN bars, giant and tiny, rowdy and tame.  My job is to tell my truth and try to carry the message and to smash through the ego fears and vanity that inevitably rears its head.

Afterwords, on the ride home, my driver asked me to clarify something I had spoken about, and (somewhat alarmingly I must confess) abruptly pulled over and turned off the car.  Truthfully, I was kind of beat, and looking forward to getting home, but I composed myself and we sat quietly for a bit.  Might have been a minute, might have been five.  I already understood that this was the reason I was here tonight.  Not the meeting, not the speaking.  Whatever this man was going to say in the quiet of his car, traffic whizzing by us a few feet away.

Staring straight ahead, he told me a secret.

I shared my experience.

We said a prayer.

I observed that there was a time in both our lives that the idea of saying a prayer with an almost-stranger in a parked car of a Monday night was ... unlikely.  He ruefully agreed.

We finished the drive in companionable silence for the most part, and after we said our goodbyes and he pulled away, I thought about his courage, and his willingness to go to any lengths to stay sober, and I was pretty much awash in gratitude to have been allowed to witness it.

So I guess tonight this is just a declaration, scrawled in my own childish hand, that I love God, and AA ... but while Spiderman is cool, I'm really more of a Batman guy.

If you have a secret, and you are carrying it with you in sobriety, I can assure you from personal experience, both in my own recovery and as a witness to others, that the pain of carrying it is far greater than the pain of sharing it.

And if you do not eventually let it go it will kill you.

Courage.

The Pitcher Plant

I was fifteen years, three hundred and sixty-four days sober.  It was probably about 9:00pm, and I was standing on the sidewalk in front of a dive bar.

Now, in my experience of bars (which, if I do say so myself, is vast indeed) this was the "just right" kind of dive bar.  Cheap, strong drinks.  Couple of pool tables (probably missing a ball or two, but it didn't matter, they were just there to lean against, mostly).  Rough crowd, but not in the sense of how they came at you.  No, this rough was the result of how life had come at them -- just right for not feeling judged and secretly considering myself a wee bit superior; in essence, perfect drinking companions.  People went to this bar for the sole purpose of getting drunk.  Even if they told themselves they were there to get laid, I'm pretty sure that was merely a plausible excuse -- a smoke screen to preserve some final shred of denial.  In a bar like this, cruising was just what you did to pass the time between drinks and smokes -- for all the scenes in films and on television of drunks staring with maudlin intensity into their drink, let me tell you, that gets boring pretty fast -- so a little sloppy footsie was merely cheap entertainment.  The agenda was drink and the objective was drunk.

I was pretty sure, standing there on the sidewalk, that it was a bad idea for me to go into that bar, but why exactly it was a bad idea seemed a little ... distant ... right then.

If I had to guess, the way I felt right at that moment is probably the last thing a little bug feels before it slides down into a pitcher plant, and discovers at the bottom that the sides are too slippery to get back up.  Apt, huh.

As I type these words I have been sober for 7834 days.  So many of them have been full of joy and gratitude and fellowship that I am often dazzled and humbled by the embarrassment of blessings I feel I've experienced... and the stories of those days I am always happy to share.

But tonight, after talking on the phone with a good, old friend, far away, who is heartbroken over the relapse of a longtime sponsee who had had many years sober, ("I thought he was okay! He was okay! We had just talked and everything was normal and now..."  And now he's in the hospital.  Sometimes it feels like I type "in the hospital" a lot on this blog.  Don't know why that should surprise me, now that I think of it.  After all, at heart this is a blog about a terminal illness) I can't help but think back to that night, the evening of my sixteenth sober anniversary.

God, that sounds so dramatic.  I'm sorry, I wish there was a way to describe these experiences accurately without sliding into what I fear sometimes are overwrought prose, but... I think milestones, like anniversaries of any sort, bring to the fore things which are unavoidably dramatic in their way; comparisons, reflections... and, beyond the "milestone effect," I suppose a life and death struggle is always going to be dramatic.

Which, for those of you reading this who may be less familiar with the threat of relapse, the challenge of long term sobriety, and how alcoholism is like being afflicted with spiritual termites, forever working under the surface to eat away at your foundation, is what I was engaged in, standing on that sidewalk on the eve of my sober anniversary:  A life and death struggle.

But the most terrifying part of the story (for me anyway) is that although I was indeed fighting for my life, at the time I wasn't entirely convinced of that fact.  Which is, at the risk of piling melodrama upon drama, how it gets you I believe.

That night, what I was actually thinking about, standing on the sidewalk, considering the door of the dive, was my name badge.

At the time I was just a little over 40, and I had the kind of a job in which you wear a name badge.  Now, it is a saying I've heard around the rooms that there is absolutely nothing wrong with good honest work for good honest pay.  This is certainly a beautiful and true spiritual axiom, shot through as it is with a kind of puritan work ethos which always makes me want to both salute the flag and iron a shirt, but it in my observation it is said more often by people with big jobs and larger salaries than it is by those with smaller jobs and humbler salaries.

And earlier that week I had sat in a meeting and heard a lot of men who I happened to know drove very expensive cars and lived in rather grand homes, pat themselves on the back and heartily congratulate each other for their rigorous honesty, as evidenced by how they always returned the extra if a cashier gave them the wrong change.  Both as I sat in that meeting and listened, and then later, standing in front of the dive (and even now, for that matter) I didn't want to take anything away from those men, many of whom I held in great high regard.  But in the meeting I couldn't help but feel a slow sour roll in my belly, as I considered that it is one thing to return the change when it is a solely spiritual exercise, good and right though that is, and quite another to return the change when it is the equivalent of the rest of what you have in your pocket.  In theory, of course, on a spiritual plane these acts have the same beautiful value.  Sadly, however, I do not live on the spiritual plane, I am stuck here on the physical one, with the rest of the name badge wearers.

So there I was, later that same week, and I had been walking along, quite possibly muttering to myself, when I came upon the dive bar.  I was feeling jealous, and ashamed of feeling jealous.  I was feeling resentful, and I was judging myself for feeling resentful.  I sternly accused myself of being self obsessed, and then grieved my all consuming ego, and the never ending tug of war it engages me in.  In a handful of hours I was going to be 16 years clean and sober. Whoopee.  And where had it gotten me?  I was over 40, 16 years sober, and wore a name badge at work for God's sake!

STOP.  Right there, for those of you that missed it?  That's not me talking anymore.  That question is the moment in the story when the killer enters the room.  "And where had it gotten me?"  That's alcoholism, talking to me with my own voice, pitch perfect in its impersonation and unerring in its aim for the jugular.

Snap your fingers, because just like that, the mental fog rolled in, and against that backdrop, with wicked craft, alcoholism rearranged the pictures of my life into a mosaic both pathetic and cruel.  The conclusion I reached (and I remember this part clearly enough to give me the shivers now) was that AA had become kind of a joke, and that it didn't work for me anymore.  Sly, huh?  Not, "AA doesn't work" -- no, it was "AA doesn't work for you anymore."  Lost in that fog, my life of gratitude and service became an exercise in futility.  Suddenly, the only logical conclusion -- against a resume which included too many name-badge jobs in the past several years, and what that night seemed like a wheel-spinning life of trying to give back "what had so freely been given to me" -- was that I had been duped, or was stupid, or was too stupid to see I'd been duped.  And now it was too late and I was all used up -- and while maybe AA was great in general, it "didn't work for me anymore."

So there I stood, more sad than self-pitying I believe, though to read it now you may not agree, teetering on the edge of the pitcher plant.

It is often said that there will come a time in the sober path of each recovering alcoholic where all that stands between you and a drink is your relationship with your Higher Power.

Unfortunately, standing on that sidewalk, I did not believe in my Higher Power. 

Turns out I didn't have to believe for Something to throw me a rope.  Because although my alcoholism had performed its dark magic, and suddenly every good thing in my life had no value, the very next thought I had was about some of the men I sponsored at the time (and some of whom I sponsor still).  I didn't believe AA worked for me anymore -- but I did believe it worked for them.  I believed wholeheartedly what I told them about sobriety, what we read together in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book), the transformative process of the 12 Steps -- I believed all of that was Right for them, and would help them, and would ultimately save their lives in ways they couldn't imagine.

Thus, while I couldn't see any point to staying sober for me, I could see it for them.  And I knew that if I drank, which, if I went into that bar that night I most certainly would, then it would put the lie to every true thing about recovery I had told them.  And although I was in the depths of despair, consumed with sadness and jealousy and resentment and self pity, I just couldn't do that to them.  Even though (on that night) I didn't think I was worth saving anymore, I believed my sponsees deserved their chance at saving themselves.

So I didn't go in.

In that moment when we each stand on the edge of the pitcher plant, I think there's always a rope.  Today I do not believe that God picks and chooses who gets thrown a lifeline and who does not.  The problem, perhaps, is that we cannot see it when we most need to -- so what is it that clears our vision in that terrible alcoholic darkness?  For me it was my connection to the men I sponsored.  God works through other people, and it was from the threads of all my sponsee relationships, which grew from being of service, as AA taught me, that a lifeline was fashioned and my life was saved that night.

Too dramatic a turn of phrase?  If you think that, all I can say is, buddy, you've never seen me drink, and you've never seen what happens when an alcoholic with long term sobriety picks up again.  And God willing, one day at a time, if I stay connected to the people in AA, you never will.

I went home that night, and called my friend, the one who had called me tonight, heartbroken about his sponsee.

And by the time I got home, the fog had started to lift, and just talking to him dispelled the last of it.  I didn't even really get into what had happened earlier that evening.  I just basked in the camaraderie of an old sober friend, who spoke the same language and fought the same fight and had his own scars to prove it.

Things don't look too good right now for his sponsee.  But what I know is that from working with him, my friend will have his own rope, his own lifeline, when he needs it, there on the edge of the pitcher plant.

Stay close, and do not spurn these relationships which AA offers, as odd and clumsy as they first appear.  In my experience God works through these connections with other people -- so you better give Him something to work with.

Actually, this isn't so far off from what my prayers are really like, lately...

Mr. SponsorPants:  God?

GOD:  Yes?

Mr. SP:  Thank you.

GOD:  You're welcome.  Anything special you're grateful for right now?  Or is this another one of your blanket, sweeping "I'm working on my attitude and my gratitude" kinds of prayers.

Mr. SP:  No, I'm grateful for something specific -- deeply grateful.  But, you know those general thank you's -- I always deeply mean those, too.

A pause.

GOD:  You sure you want to go with that?  Gonna let that statement stand, are you?

Another pause.

Mr. SP: Wellllll... how about I often mean it, and when I don't, I'm sincerely trying to mean it, and very occasionally -- I would go so far as to say rarely, even -- I am mmmaybe saying I'm grateful -- or willing -- to try to get You or the Universe or Whatever to give me something I want -- but only rarely!  Usually I really mean it.

GOD:  Okay.  I'll buy that.   What, right now, are you specifically grateful for?

Mr. SP:  Today, really -- and I suppose after all this time it's silly to make a big deal out of it -- I'm grateful for my sobriety.  I don't mean it's silly to be grateful for being sober, I just mean I've said 'thank you' for my sobriety so often that ... well, it's a gratitude constant.  But I just ... I have maybe never been more aware of how, without the Grace that You have given me, I wouldn't stand a chance against my alcoholism.  Alone I wouldn't last a week.  Maybe not even a day... an hour...

GOD:  Five minutes.

Mr. SP:  Hey!

GOD:  You started the countdown, I was just keeping with the theme.  But I must say, Mr. SponsorPants, it is quite deft of you to be able to go from gratitude to indignation so quickly. 

Mr. SP:  Uh, yeah.  Sorry.

GOD:  Don't mention it.

Mr. SP (mutters): Well, actually, You mentioned it.

GOD:  Eh?

Mr. SP:  Nothing.  Nothing -- never mind.  Look, we're off track, and truly, I am profoundly grateful for being sober today.  All week I have witnessed the breathtaking scope of addiction; its cunning, its insanity, the dark magic it works in peoples' minds, to make the very thing that will destroy them the only thing they think they want -- or the only choice they think they can make.  Today I am so humbled and grateful that I am sober... just ... just, thank you, God.

GOD:  You're welcome.  But...

Mr. SP:  But? You have a 'but'?

GOD:  But I hear the other thing.  I hear the question, Mr. SponsorPants.  I hear it even though you haven't asked it.  I hear it chanted in your secret heart, over and over sometimes.  Go ahead, Mr. SponsorPants.  Ask.

Mr. SP:  Won't You be mad if I do? 

GOD:  Do you believe in a God that gets mad at you?

Mr. SP (laughs):  Actually, no.  I haven't believed that for a long, long time.

GOD:  Then ask.

Mr. SP (whispers):  Why me?

GOD:  'Why you' what?

Mr. SP:  Why did You extend Grace to me?  Why did I get such a precious gift, when all this week -- hell, for more than 20 years, really -- I have seen men and women who seem, to me at least, equally deserving (if not more so) than I am of receiving your Grace?

GOD:  The best answer I can offer you, Mr. SponsorPants, is actually to ask you a question in return.

Mr. SP (mutters):  Great.  Gonna be cryptic.  I hate cryptic.

GOD:  What was that?

Mr. SP:  Not important.  Sorry.  So You are answering my question with a question.  Right.  Okay.  Shoot.

GOD:  What makes you think that I didn't give those people Grace as well?  Their path -- and their choices -- are between them and Me, Mr. Sponsorpants.  I'm afraid you haven't the capacity to fully grasp more than that.  Your job is to be helpful to people on their path, not to try to understand their path.  But more than that, tell Me, what makes you think, deep down, in all these comparisons with others you seem so fond of some days, that you aren't every bit as deserving of My Grace as anyone else?

Mr. SP:  Well, I never really... hey!  Waitaminute.   That answer was actually 2 questions.

GOD:  Yes, but since you're not good at math, I didn't think you'd notice.

Mr. SP:  Could You make me good at math?

GOD:  Make you good at math?  Oh, come now, Mr. SponsorPants, some miracles are too much even for Me to perform.

Mr. SP:  Hey!  Okay, now that was a cheap shot!  You know, I can always choose another Higher Power if I have to...

GOD:  Go ahead.  Be My guest...  (mutters) still won't make you good at math.

Mr. SP:  I heard that!

It's incredible.

Remember this guy?  After almost ten years sober he relapsed.  And then, only a few short months after picking up, he misfired a self-administered injection into an artery, resulting in catastrophic damage, eventually leading to the amputation of four fingers on one hand, down to the second knuckle.

He called my sponsee today, and told him that while on a trip out of town he had started using again, but it was okay because "he was having fun."

Think about that call for a moment.

Visualize the fact that simply to make the call in which you say such a thing requires you to hold the phone in your one "good" hand, because the other is literally maimed from the consequences of your addiction.

It's incredible.

But not that he relapsed.

It is not incredible that, in the face of such shocking, tangible and literally ever-present, in-your-face consequences to his first slip, he is using again in so short a time.

What's actually incredible is that I, or any person in recovery reading this right now, is sober.

Via either a too early, often ugly death, or a pathetically withered and diminished life, the fact is, that in one form or another, addiction claims most addicts.

In the face of a disease which warps your perspective on reality itself, and uses your own thinking against you, to be clean and sober, one day at a time, is incredible.

So today, if you are suffering from acute fear or self-doubt, if you are feeling that uniquely 12 Step double-whammy from the consequences of a particular character defect coupled with the self awareness that those consequences are so often created by your own hand; if you can't let go of your anxiety about tomorrow, or, try as you might, a regret about yesterday ... please, just stop.

Stop, and consider who you were, and how addiction rode you, and how today -- which is literally all we have -- just for today you are free from that.

Sure, sure, we have to work like hell to keep it, and we get mugged by all kinds of alcoholic thinking and behavior even after we set down the drink (or the crack pipe, or whatever you used) but the lumps and bruises acquired in sobriety are as nothing compared to where we were.  The toughest day clean and sober is actually not so very tough next to who and how we were and what we were driven to do.

The consequence for this particular addict was the physical amputation of his fingers -- but the consequence for every addict when we use -- or use again -- is the amputation of our spirit.  The maiming of the full, real, essential you -- the person you were meant to grow into being.  That's not just poetry -- I imagine there is not a member of any 12 Step program reading this right now who cannot think of someone they knew who had been clean and then relapsed, and how when they did the light which had come to life in their eyes flickered and went out.  What is that but an amputation of the spirit, a maiming to the fullness of who we can be?

If you are an addict of any stripe, recovery is hard won and no small thing.  It's the paradox of a gift of Grace which we work to keep.  Let go of the should's and the what if's and the oh no's today.

Think of how different you are now.  Savor the freedom of being clean and sober today.

Truly, it's incredible.

The Scariest Sponsee on Earth -- Or -- The Only Valid Reason To Let Go of ("Fire") a Sponsee

Physically he was all angles and long lines.
Square head, sharp cheekbones and what would have once been called a lantern jaw.
Shoulders so wide it looked as though he might have to turn sideways to get through a door.  But lean.  And tall.  On a good self esteem day when I stand up straight I'm over six feet, and he had a good bit on me.  From across a room you might have thought, "Hmmm, leading man type."  Up close though, he read as ... off.  That ineffable something that the animal part of us picks up on -- that instinct that says, in short, "Uh oh.  Careful here."

He materialized in one of my meetings, vibrating like a tuning fork.  I had never seen him before.  Nothing about the meeting itself stands out in my mind, and I recall very clearly that I just sat -- didn't read anything, share, speak... nothing.  Put a dollar in the basket when it went around, listened, that was it -- no different than the 30 or so other alcoholics in the room, really.  But after the meeting, he walked right over to me.  "Hello. Will you sponsor me?"

"What? I ... Uh, yeah, we can talk about -- I mean, yes.  Sure.  Sure, right, absolutely.  Yes."  I was a little flustered, but I got my feet under me and landed squarely on "Never say no to an AA request," even if I didn't quite "stick the landing" as the gymnasts put it.  To be fair, I was more used to "how are you" as the follow up to "hello."  Plus, he was really in my space.  Almost nose-to-nose.  I have a big personal space -- I like everyone to be no closer than about a hoop-skirt's distance away from me on all sides at all times (I've not taken to wearing one to enforce this, yet.  Don't think it hasn't occurred to me though -- probably serve to keep people at a distance a lot farther than a hoop-skirt's width, now that I think of it -- and cut down on the sponsor requests too.  Hmmm...)  So the sudden literal in-my-face also rattled me some.  But the reason you say something a zillion times is so that when you're thrown you don't screw your line up, and I'd been well trained in "Never say no to an AA request" by years of meetings, several terrific sponsors and countless repetitions to my own sponsees up till then.  So I stumbled for a moment, but I did not falter.

"Why don't we go out for coffee and talk?"  I suggested.  "What's your name?"

He told me.  I introduced myself and we shook.  He had a hand like a shovel with fingers.

"I don't have any money for coffee."

"My treat, no problem."  I picked someplace close that I was familiar with.  Off the beaten path and no table service, so we could sit for as long as we needed and not take up anyone's station.

Thus began my sponsorial relationship with The Scariest Sponsee on Earth.

We walked to the cafe, and I made with the small talk to get us there.  Long before I'd learned the secret to small talk, and so we had a pleasant enough stroll, though I did the majority of the talking, and eventually I found myself sitting at a table with what could only be described as a somewhat intimidating almost-stranger.

I got a muffin so that if he hadn't eaten he could have something to eat (I couldn't get a read if he currently was homeless or not -- he was clean, and the clothes fit and matched, but as I said in the beginning, there was something "off").  I put the muffin between us on the table.  "Help yourself." I offered.  I remember this very clearly:  He looked at the muffin for a minute.  Then he looked at me, and I got the distinct impression he was evaluating the sincerity of the offer.  He made up his mind.  "Thank you." he said, and picked up the muffin and put it whole into his jacket pocket.

Blackout alcoholics -- and I am most definitely one -- "come to" in some strange places and in the middle of some strange scenes.  In my case I might "come to" in the middle of a conversation, or an execution, boarding a plane, or assisting an exorcism -- in fact I'd already "come to" in the middle of a terrible beating, singing on a stage and having sex with, um, several very unlikely candidates for such an activity -- not all at the same time of course -- but when you're my kind of drinker you just never know where you'll wind up, so I had mastered the lack-of-reaction as a survival skill, till you could figure out what was going on.  In the grand alcoholic scheme his muffin pocketing wasn't that bizarre, anyway, so my only response was to say, "Napkin?" and offer him one from the pile I'd grabbed when I got the muffin.  "Thank you." He took one, and placed it in the muffin pocket.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you ask me to sponsor you?"

"I knew you'd say yes."

"Have we met at a meeting, or, I mean, I'm sorry, I can be terrible with names and stuff sometimes..."  I knew I'd remember if I met him, but I was trying to make sense of this.

"No."

"Then how..."

He shrugged, and looked at me. "Just knew."

I'm not trying to make him sound simple or the exchange spooky -- it's how I remember it.  And him.

We talked some more, I suggested that we start going through the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" together and he was very eager to start.  Turned out he'd been sober once before.

"Oh? When?"

"A while ago."

"Oh.  What, um ... how did you relapse?"

"I want to get to the 4th Step fast."

"Well, okay, it's actually in Chapter Five -- you probably knew that and we can..."

"There are some people I hate" he leaned in very close across the small table -- not big with physical boundaries, this guy, "I HATE them and I want to work on that."

"Uh ... okay.  Well, the 4th Step will..."

"What time is it?  I have a curfew.  I have to go."  And up and out he went, like a shot.  I had to chase him down.

"Wait! Do you want to exchange phone numbers or ..."

"What's your number?"

"Do you want to write it down?"

"What is it?  I'll remember."

I told him.  He did.

He called a lot.  Sometimes he called and didn't say anything -- took me a couple of those to figure out it was him though.  (This was long before Caller ID or Cell Phones, kids).  I'd listen to the silence on the line and I'd ask,  "Scary?  Is that you?"  Nothing.  I have no idea what prompted me to do it, but I started to fill the silence with encouraging words.  Not big soliloquies or anything ("Really, Mr. SponsorPants?"  I hear you ask.  "Are you sure about that? 'Cause I would have thought, you..."  "In the back there! Quiet you!  Usher, check their ticket please.  Usher!")   I would just say things like "Scary, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Scary.  Just remember, easy does it."

But that first night, after going out to coffee with him, I called my sponsor and started laying the groundwork for getting out of this.  (I prefer a hasty retreat, followed either by excuses or recriminations, but I'm perfectly capable of playing the long game if I have to.)

"Not too sure about this one."  I said.  "Might be more than I can, you know, handle."

"That's okay, Mr. SponsorPants," my wise Sponsor said.  "God gives us what we need, and just last night, if I recall, you said 'I'll do anything' -- and here's your anything."

"Right.  Right -- I'm just not sure I'm the right sponsor for him ... " After receiving miracles I have been known to try and weasel out of whatever I'd promised God, too.

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants, there's really only one valid reason you ever let go of a sponsee," my sponsor chuckled, all warm and knowing, like I was in on this great jolly secret with him.

"Oooh, yeah.  Right.  Right."  I said, playing along.  Bluffing.  Had no idea what he meant.  What this 'one reason' might be.

Scary Sponsee and I met once or twice a week.  I always arranged to meet him at the same cafe, I never offered to have him over to my apartment -- what can I say?  He scared me.  He never made mention of it, and it didn't seem to phase him at all.  And strangely, I never mentioned the silent phone calls.

I learned his story.  It humbled and frightened me and shook my newly refound faith in God.  He was raised by animals, is the most I will say about it.  Strangely (to me at the time) though, he held no anger towards his family.

That night I called my sponsor, "You know, he has all this stuff in his childhood and I don't -- I mean, not like that -- he should have a sponsor who ... "

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants," came the now irritating chuckle.  "You know having a similar childhood isn't that important in the grand scheme -- it might be helpful, but there's really only one valid reason to stop working with a sponsee."

"Right. Right. Of course."  When I start a bluff I see it all the way through.

Scary Sponsee was not good with boundaries.  Or impulse control.  Or people.  Once, while we were working on his much-anticipated 4th Step, while talking about one of the people he HATED he picked up his pencil and shouted, "I want to ... to... to stab him in the eye!"  And plunged the pencil forward, stopping an inch or so in front of my face.  God was right there, since I didn't flinch or move -- and let me tell you, that was DEFINITELY God working, that's not my typical reaction to something like that, I assure you.  I just drank my coffee and he lowered the pencil and I said, "Scary, that's not good.  When you do things like that it frightens people."  "Did I scare you?"  "Yes."  "I'm sorry."  "It's okay."

Over the years I have discovered that often, when you sponsor people, you grow to care for them very much -- to love them, in a way -- and I'm afraid Scary Sponsee was no exception.  Even as he indeed frightened and intimidated me, even as I was trying to find a "legitimate" AA reason to stop meeting with him, I grew to care very much about this broken-winged bird.  (Though he was more ostrich than sparrow, as that imagery tends to go.)

He'd been homeless twice ("I haven't been homeless, not really" I told my sponsor "But that's not the reason to stop working with someone, Mr. SponsorPants, is it?"  "Oh, right -- no, no, it's not.")

Scary had worked himself all the way up from a childhood that gave him nothing -- nothing -- to a real career, then lost it all to drinking and drugging, and wound up living in the park.  Got sober, and rebuilt his life -- relapsed, and wound up back in the park.  I was sponsoring him on his second trip back in and up from the depths.  Sadly, during his relapse he had clearly done something to his brain.  I had nothing to compare it to, but he was legitimately not quite "right."

"He's a really, really low bottom, and not right in the head and..." I told my sponsor, "maybe I ... "

"There's only one real reason..."

"Right."

And all this time, I was getting the silent phone calls, and I kept whispering encouragement into the quiet on the line.  "Scary, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Scary.  Just remember, easy does it."  I've never -- until writing about it right now -- told anyone that part before -- even my sponsor, when I was madly trying to find a way to get out of working with the Scary Sponsee.  For some reason I kept it to myself, and so it became this strange, sacred, precious, intimate thing, these calls in which I was moved to try and pour all the love and support I had gotten from AA over the years into this blank, silent line.

And then one day, he didn't show up, and the calls stopped.  I went to the cafe at our regular time for several weeks afterwards, just in case, but he ghosted.  AA is strange, (in a lot of ways, actually) in that you can develop intense, powerful, intimate connections with people and share deep, personal information with each other -- but have no real connection outside of that, and depending on how you bond, no way to reach someone if they ghost.  We'd been meeting for almost ten months, and had made it through the 11th Step, and ... he was gone.

You get closure in stories -- in life sometimes all you get is the dot dot dot . . .

Finally I cracked, and after resigning myself to the fact that I was unlikely to hear from him again, I broke down and asked my sponsor what the "real reason" was that would have made it okay for me to stop meeting with The Scary Sponsee.

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants,"  he clucked his tongue, "let me ask you something.  Do you need to have similar backgrounds, or the same using patterns, or have had the same problems and hardships to sponsor someone?"

Trick question, I'm good at spotting those, "Oh no." I said, even though that was a nice summary of all the reasons I'd tried to get out of sponsoring Scary.

"And do you think you should stop sponsoring someone if they don't do what you suggest, or you don't like them, or they frighten you, or they're not the kind of person you'd hang out with?"

I was uncomfortable with the potential inference there, but I was on a roll with the first question, and I'm enough of an ass kisser sometimes to want my pat on the head.  "Oh no."

"And let me ask you, do you think, over the course of the ten months, that you helped The Scary Sponsee?  And did you feel differently too?"

"Yes.  Yes, but ..."

He waited, and I folded my hand and showed my cards.

"But what is it?  What is the reason you think is the only valid reason to stop sponsoring someone?"

"All that other stuff is window dressing people use as excuses, Mr. SponsorPants.  The only real, valid reason to stop working with someone is if you honestly, deep down, don't believe you can be of any help to them.  That you cannot in any way help them get and stay sober.  That's the only valid reason."

"But..."

"No.  I'm sorry, the 'But What About' Window is closed today."  He said, not unkindly, and ended the call.

----------

If you are new to AA, please believe this, and if you are not new, and are afraid to ask for help, always remember:  We are happy to help you, and I believe our help is valuable because it will really work -- but you owe us nothing -- nothing -- for that help, because we are infinitely healed in ways we ourselves don't always know in the act of helping you.

So by all means, please, let us in, and let us help.

----------

One last thing, in an already perhaps too long post -- but I have to share this with you:

Not long ago, last year, I had a very scary day.  It was unexpected, and it was medical, and I was scared in a way I hadn't been for a long, long time.  For some reason I flashed back 12 years ago to The Scary Sponsee, and those silent phone calls.  And in the midst of my fear, I opened my cell phone, and I said into the silence of the unconnected cell, "Mr. SponsorPants, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Mr. SponsorPants.  Just remember, easy does it."

And I thought about Scary, and how far he'd come, and I wondered what happened to him, and I wished him well with all my heart.  I was full of gratitude for the 10 months I'd had the privilege of knowing him and working the Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with him.  And as I thought of all that I knew that no matter the outcome, it was going to be okay.  I was going to be allright.  And I felt so, so much better.

The Scariest Sponsee on Earth: Prologue

1996

I was so, so sad.

I wasn't feeling sorry for myself.  I was sad.

Fortunately I had a wise sponsor (who has since passed but who I still hear, in my head -- or my heart, maybe -- and without who's patience and guidance I would likely not be alive today -- or at the very least not be the man I am today) who was able to understand the difference between sadness and self pity.  At that time he'd already sponsored me for several years.  He'd heard -- and clocked rather ruthlessly -- my self pity when it showed up.  He knew in this case I was not indulging myself.  This was no tantrum.  It was not the voice of King Baby inside me, wailing away over all he hadn't got.  No, this was deeper, and slower, and more dangerous than self pity.

"This too shall pass."  He told me.

"Don't quit before the miracle."  He told me.

I was maybe seven or eight years sober, and it felt like "quitting" was most definitely on the menu, though what form that might take was up for grabs.

"It's almost worth being where you are when you come out the other side.  God didn't get you this far just to drop you on your ass now."  He told me.

We lived in different cities at that time, but spoke on the phone every day.  Sometimes twice a day.

"I don't believe you anymore."  I told him.

"I know," he would say, "but do you trust me?"

I had to think.  "Yeah, I do."

"Okay, that'll have to be enough then."  I look back from today at the patience and kindness he gave me and I am humbled by how generous he was with his time.  With his spirit.

I still went to meetings -- a good amount even.  One doesn't shrug off a habit of give-or-take 8 years standing very easily.  I was even too sad to hate the meetings, though it seemed a pointless exercise to me.

It went on for a while.  My sponsor listened.  He suggested I pray.  I tried, but it too seemed pointless.

Truth:

Finally, late one night -- it's always "late one night" in these kinds of things, isn't it -- lying in my bed, I said to the God I didn't believe in anymore, "I don't believe in you anymore.  But ... help me. Please.  I'll do anything."  And in that moment I meant it.  Sometimes I think that's what makes the difference.  People ask God for help all the time.  Asking is easy.  Being willing to do anything to accept that help -- well, that's a very different proposition, isn't it.

My hand flopped down on the nightstand, and came to rest on a book there.  Of all things Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."  I'd bought it to look smart, more than anything, and it had made its way to my bedside in an effort to impress some repeat offender of a one-night-stand ("Wow, he must be good sex, he reads Whitman!") -- and also because while the language was beautiful in places I really didn't understand it, and thus a lot of it bored me, so I used it to try to fall asleep.  So much for the classics.

Truth:

Without any real thought I opened it at random.  The poem I started reading was split, part on the bottom of the page I'd opened to, and part on the next.  This is what I read:

O me! O life!
The questions of these recurring.

Of the endless trains of the faithless
Of cities filled with the foolish

Of myself, forever reproaching myself
For who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?

I had to laugh at that.

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renewed,

Of the poor results of all
Of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest, me intertwined

The question, o me, So sad, recurring:
What good amid these, o me, o life?

Then came the page break, and before I turned it I understood the mystery of poetry, that it wasn't about comprehending the words necessarily, though these spoke clearly and directly to me -- it was about understanding the feeling -- just like sharing, actually. 

I turned the page and this is what I read:

Answer:

That you are here; that life exists, and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

And just like that, my great deep sad was over.

Across a hundred or so years Whitman had echoed my feelings and my questions -- life can seem false and empty, people even more so -- what's the point?  Why go on?

And he answered it with the only real answer there is to those moments:  That there is you, the only one of you there is or ever will be, and if you choose to, you may help, you may make a difference -- and so I understood what my job was again -- my real job, not the fancy bullshit corporate job I had at the time.

I was free from the horrible, soul-sucking swamp of a sadness I'd somehow stumbled into.  My sponsor had been right.  God, The Universe or The Great Whatever hadn't gotten me that far just to drop me on my ass -- that this, too, had passed.  I felt free.  For whatever mysterious reason, of all things, as pretentious as it may sound today, Whitman's poem had reawakened within me a clarity of purpose, and I felt like maybe I could help someone -- anyone --  I was ready to try to contribute again.

I heard once in a meeting that ultimately all we have to offer each other is our stories, and they are unique to each of us, and it is possible to help -- even to save lives -- by sharing them.  It is not for us to judge, but for us to do.  "O Me! O Life!" brought that idea back to me and made it sing.

To make sure this new freedom stuck, though, and to give me a chance to get busy "contributing" right away, God sent me The Scariest Sponsee on Earth the very next day.

Service is magic -- a damn near perfect day.

9am -- AA meeting.  At meeting give a sponsee her 11 year chip.  Also catch up with different sponsee on work issue that had been plaguing them all week.

10am -- Go out after meeting to celebrate 11 year anniversary with sponsee and friends.

11am -- Speak with another sponsee about issue with their sponsee letting them go.

12am -- Talk on the phone with a sponsee about the difference between making a move and pulling a geographic (in short, I believe that if you're moving to start or stop doing something you don't need to move to start or stop doing, then maybe you're pulling a geographic -- but maybe not.  In some of his best writing,  Emmet Fox  discusses the Divine Discontent a creature may feel when a healthy change needs to happen, using the caterpillar/butterfly example, and it's worth considering that some moves are perhaps Inspired.  We look at it from that angle as well.  Finally I ask, "Ultimately, are you moving towards something or away from it?"  The sponsee answers with the most honest response there can be to something like that, which is, "I'm not sure, let me think about that.")

1pm -- Meet AA friend for coffee.  Other AA friend joins us.  Several AA peeps wander by and stop to say hello.  The conversation is tough, as I share about my friend  who seems to have lost his brave fight to get his health back, and is likely not long for this world.  Hard, sad, tough stuff.

2pm -- Email sponsee from 11am to respond to questions and discuss issue further.  After clicking "send," begin to wonder if I really answered their question or was of any help at all -- have an "ah ha!" moment and tell "wondering" voice in my head: "I know you, you're just all my self-doubt in disguise.  Get out of here! Beat it! Piss off!"  Self-Doubt Voice squeals in shock at being recognized and scampers back down to the dark cellar in my head where he usually hides out.  Hopefully warns the other denizens of that region that I'm on my game today, so don't bother pulling any crap.

3pm -- Go to market before it closes early (need DVD watching snacks) and run into another sponsee who's ultra busy with grad school and work stuff -- get caught up and check in on how he's balancing meetings with other responsibilities.  Then run into AA friend who is not sure if he should splurge on the chocolate chip cookies.  I am the wrong man to ask whether or not to buy cookies.  I encourage the cookie slip -- he leaves happy and proceeds, I'm sure, into a sugar coma of bliss.  On the way out of the market run into a newcomer from one of my regular meetings (6 months sober) who is just coming to work there -- have the chance to tell him how great I think he's doing and how much I enjoy listening to him share at our regular meeting, and give him some back slaps for beating his brutal relapse cycle by hitting the 6 month mark.  On the way out the door laugh to myself that today it seems like I live on Magic Planet AA.  All I need is for little animated birds to come and carry my groceries home for me (Except the snacks.  I'll carry those, thank you -- no one gets between me and the snackage.)

4pm -- Run into an AA friend on way home from market.  No animated birds, though.

4:15pm -- Run into two other AA friends while still on way home from market.  Go to a lot of meetings, you get to know a lot of people.

5pm -- Check messages, three voice mails from different sponsees, start returning calls.  Have great conversations with all three about how they're keeping some sober plates spinning.

6pm -- Little Voice tells me to go to the 6pm meeting near my house, even though I'd hit a meeting earlier.  Went and heard something I definitely needed to hear.  Rare for me to hit 2 meetings in one day -- very rare -- but I've learned its a lot easier to listen to the intuition than not to, and then sit around thinking, "I wonder what I'm missing by not having listened to my intuition?"

7pm -- Got home, got message from sponsee about the passing of a parent.  This relationship, while clean and amended, had been difficult.  Call them back to talk about how they're doing and discuss how to best be of service to surviving parent at funeral next week.

8pm -- Do some writing.

9pm -- Phone rings -- it's a sponsee who's re-entering the dating arena, and we talk about a few questions from the Sexual Ideal part of his 4th/5th Step -- it becomes a very interesting discussion about finding the turning point where healthy daydreams and hopes become future tripping and projection, and excitment and interest become obsession.  (My guess is that if you find when Fear enters the picture you find that turning point.)  We agree there are no clear-cut easy answers on that front.

10pm -- Phone rings -- a sponsee checking in -- hadn't had the chance to catch up, we spend 20 funny minutes getting up to speed, and he is awash with gratitude for the simple joys his life if full of today, from good health to an actual (growing) savings account.

10:30pm -- the 9pm sponsee calls back with a "further development" on the dating scene.  We talk more about how this is hard for all of us, and basically how we're pretty much all scared 12 year olds inside when it comes to this stuff.

11pm -- Realize I never got to the DVD and snacks.  And further realize I actually couldn't care less, am suffused with joy from this kind of day.  If happiness is predicated on feeling useful, if a man's wealth is measured by the people in his life, then I am the happiest, wealthiest man you may ever meet.

This kind of day is not about me being busy or special -- it that's what you see when you read this then either you are missing the point or I am not explaining it clearly enough, and I apologize.  This kind of damn near perfect day is a thing of joy -- but this joy comes not from feeling like I'm anything special, not from feeling like I've got to do these things -- but rather seeing that I get to do these things.

Logic tells me that to feel like I'm getting "more" in life I need to take more, get more, have more.  Logic is wrong.  If I reverse the flow, if I give, then I get more.  In fact, the more I give, the more more I get.

But practically speaking, how do you give?  How do you have this for yourself, in your own recovery?  Simple -- you need only remember to open -- open your hand, open your ears, open your mouth and open your heart -- which, again practically speaking, means welcome people, listen  and share -- the heart part will take care of itself.  Even if right now, as you read this, you feel too tired to try, too damaged to help, too frozen to feel -- that's some of those voices from the cellar in your head selling you fears and lies as truth.  Don't listen.  Don't listen -- you'll miss out on a life filled with days like this.  Days of gratitude and joy -- even through the tough stuff -- days of gratitude and joy.

___________________________________________________________________________

photo by the amazing Jill Greenberg in her book "Monkey Portraits"

 

 

 

like water to a goldfish in a bowl

What if God is to you like water is to a goldfish in a bowl ... always in it and of it -- surrounded, supported and sustained by it.

So then, if God is anything like that -- anything at all -- then maybe you can stop torturing yourself with the question of what is God's Will vs. what is your will.

Because if there's no "wrong" place to be in the bowl for that goldfish (and how could there be, since there's no place in that bowl for the fish not to be in the water) then there's no place in your world you can not be in, of, surrounded, supported and sustained by God -- whatever the idea of "God" means to you. 

_________________________

Underneath the question of whether something is "God's Will" or "my will" is really an attempt to make sure I make the "right" decision -- and underneath that is not a desire to make the right decision, but the fear of what will happen if I make the wrong decision.

And isn't fear of making the wrong decision merely the fear that I'll not get what I think I want?  Isn't it just the fear that if, in the Cosmic Game Show of life, I "guess wrong" then my path will be hard not easy, full of lack rather than abundance, and I will discover that, spiritually speaking, I took a wrong turn, and thus, wound up in the wrong place?

But if I am maybe like the goldfish, then there is no wrong place.  There is no place my will can remove me from God's Will. 

_________________________

I'm sorry, I know that's a lot for a Monday -- but sometimes I get an idea and I can't get it out of my head so I just shrug and figure either maybe I'm crazy -- very likely -- or maybe someone somewhere is supposed to read something like that and I should stop evaluating and just write it down and click Save and move on.  And there you have it.

Cheers!