Mr. SponsorPants

I was going to call you: The alcoholic version

 

 

 

 

Them:  Oh, hey!  I was thinking about you today!

Me:  Oh?

Them: Yeah! I was going to call you.

Me:  Oh, ok.

Them: But...

Me: But?

Them:  I started thinking about me and...

Me:  And?

Them:  Then I forgot about you.

it really does

 

 

The

painful part

is not that you fear people might be

thinking negative, critical things about you.

The

painful part

is that you fear they might be right.

 

Let it go.

Sobriety is a gift

we work to keep and we are privileged to pass along.

It ultimately does not matter what self-criticisms and self-loathing and self, self, self, self we are tangled in.

All that self obsession will eventually

evaporate in the sunlight of the spirit

of service

and sobriety.

 

Don't take yourself so seriously.

It works.

It really does.

 

 

5 Quotes on Alcoholism

 

 

 

To dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house.

-- Publilius Syrus

 

When you go out with a drunk, you'll notice how a drunk fills your glass so he can empty his own.  As long as you're drinking, drinking is okay.  Two's company.  Drinking is fun.  If there's a bottle, even if your glass isn't empty, he'll pour a little in your glass before he fills his own.

-- Chuck Palanhiuk, "Invisible Monsters"

 

I always drank, from when it was legal for me to drink.  And there was never a time for me when the goal wasn't to get as hammered as I could possibly afford to.  I never understood social drinking, that's always seemed to me like kissing your sister.

-- Stephen King

 

Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.

-- Thomas Fuller

 

We are not cured of alcoholism.  What we have is a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition.  Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our daily activities.

-- William Griffith Wilson

 

we pine

 

 

 

 

Without gratitude

my take on my life

is pretty much bullshit,

since it's stained with entitlement, wildly unrealistic expectations and self involvement.

(Which, as toxic as they are, can be quite subtle, sometimes.)

Alcoholics don't own these things of course -- but alcoholism uses them as the building blocks of profoundly twisted thinking -- all in the service of getting us alone,

then getting us thinking only of ourselves,

then getting us drunk,

then getting us dead.

 

Like  the yeast in bread dough,

gratitude is the essential ingredient to

make my spirits rise

above my petty, "poor-me's"

and break free of alcoholic thinking.

 

Without gratitude,

real happiness

may always elude an alcoholic.

 

a practical element in the application of Steps 6 & 7

 

 

 

Although in Step 7 I ask God (as I understand God) to "remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness [to God] and my fellows..." this does not mean I am passive in the process.  For me, I am a partner with the Divine in creating these changes.

a question of degrees

 

In any given day ...

 

the degree of my comfortability is in direct relation to both my acceptance and my willingness

 

the degree of my happiness is in direct proportion to the depth of my gratitude

 

the degree of my sense of purpose in the world is linked directly to my level of service

 

and the degree of my recovery is completely dependant upon my honesty, my connection to other recovering alcoholics and the vibrancy of my spiritual life.

 

 

 

you only have to get through one day sober. this day. that's it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions via Email: I secretly think small AA meetings are a waste of time

 

 

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

I live in [a major city] and am blessed with many AA meetings to attend. Some of them are quite large.  I like the energy in these large meetings and feeling like I am a part of something big.

I have [a lot of time] but I have a guilty secret about meetings.  It's not a big deal but it does get under my skin.  Before I tell you, let me say I know it is fear and ego but I can't seem to make any headway on this.

Sometimes when I go to an AA meeting if it is small I feel like it is a waste of time and because of that I sometimes leave early.  If I am asked to Chair a meeting and it is small I secretly feel like I am wasting my time.  Praying and writing have not helped much yet.

I like your thinking on a lot of AA (but some of your ideas I do not agree with at all).  Can you share anything which might help?

Meeting Judger

 

Dear Judger,

Maybe you've heard this one before.  Maybe it will help you think about this differently:

A man was vacationing by the seashore.  He had been working hard and long and was greatly looking forward to a holiday of sun and sand, so on his very first day of vacation he was up early, almost the crack of dawn, and decided to go for a walk on the beach.

He strolled along the water's edge, savoring the morning.  It was so early he was nearly the only person up and out, save for a few lone joggers in the distance.  He watched the waves fling themselves onto the shore and then recede, and as he walked he noticed the water mark and, comparing it to where the waves were striking, decided that the tide was going out.

He paused and closed his eyes, tasting the salt in the air and feeling the sun upon his face.  Early as it was he could feel its strength, and knew it would eventually be a scorching hot day.

Resuming his stroll he noticed, just a short ways down the beach, a number of objects in the sand, near the edge of the receding waves.  It didn't look like trash exactly... he walked a bit faster, propelled by curiosity, and drew close enough to see what it was.

Starfish.

Many starfish, dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds even, lying in the damp sand, feeling the last touch of the sea as the waves' reach diminished under the cyclical pull of their eternal mistress -- invisible for now -- the Moon.

He looked at all the starfish, both beautiful and ugly in the way of some things, with their cartoon symmetry and their strange, almost prehistoric skin, bumpy and golden in the increasingly hot sun.  Some few were low enough on the tide line to be pulled back into the sea, but most of the others were too high, and would soon die in the baking heat of the oncoming day.

Maybe it was Nature's way, but he couldn't just walk by and leave them to their fate.  He began picking them up and flinging them back into the sea, as far as he could

Unnoticed till now, one of the lone joggers in the distance had reached him and, watching for a moment, asked the man what he was doing.

"Well," the man said, pausing, "if I just leave them, they'll die."

The jogger looked down the beach at the number of starfish.  "There's no way you can save them all.  I mean, ultimately, what difference does it make?"

The man cocked his head and looked at the jogger, then looked down at the starfish in his hand before giving it a mighty throw back into the sea.

"Made a difference to that one."  He said, continuing on.

 

 

From the super fun, brilliant site "I Love Charts"

 

 

 

AA makes the red part really, really big, so that the orange part grows too.

(And remember, it's easier to feel like it's going to be okay if you stay.)

xo

Mr. SP

 

25

 

 

 

 

 

Regular readers will know I am pretty committed to the anonymity piece when it comes to AA -- for all the reasons I've discussed here over time.

So when I started writing Mr. SponsorPants the name was not just an attempt to be maybe a little cute, and show I wasn't going to take myself too seriously, it was also a deliberate construct so that I could address AA very specifically but still retain my personal anonymity.  And, as other people and events have entered my writing, I have purposely blurred specific details -- dates, places, even genders -- at the cost of some really clumsy sentence construction I fear -- so that there would be no way someone reading might be able to go, "Hmmm... I bet he's talking about so-and-so."

People in my life who know me and know I write this blog -- both in AA and not -- have sometimes observed that I'm a little over-the-top with some of that.  And I have considered that while they're likely not far off (though you're always on pretty safe ground when you suggest I'm over the top on anything -- hardly need to be a psychic to make THAT call) I was comfortable doing what was right for me.

This morning, though -- all morning, in fact -- I've felt a little >ping< in the back of my mind that I was being disingenuous not sharing something on the blog today.  It felt less than honest with my regular readers to not mark this occasion.

So while it bends, in only a tiny way I hope, my commitment to anonymity online by being quite so specific, I would like to share with gratitude, amazement and near disbelief that today  -- this day -- marks 25 years of being clean and sober and honest about it. 

March 1, 1988 is my sobriety date.  (A friend last night at dinner wished me the cheery sentiment, "Many happy returns of the day!"  While I knew what they meant I had to laugh and observe, "God, I hope not.  I think I want to turn 25 years sober just once -- I know I can keep moving forward but I'm not sure I've got it in me to do it all over again.")

So I mark this day -- and share it's acknowledgement with whomever is reading -- with a feeling of profound gratitude, and maybe the right-sized amount of humility too.  Because I assure you, there is no way I got here without the love and support and wisdom and charity and experience of so many people I know -- and let's face it, many people I've never met.  That is the overwhelming beauty which, after a while in AA you begin to perceive.  This whole vast, life-saving (life transforming) enterprise is built completely upon the foundation of one alcoholic helping another.  That's all.  That's all it took at the beginning -- from Ebby to Bill, and then from Bill to Bob -- and that's all it takes today -- among each of us in any given moment on any given day -- to create a tidal wave of healing and miracles.

To be working my own program in AA, and thus to be a part of helping someone else to work theirs, makes me -- makes all of us -- not just links in a chain; maybe the better image is loops in a net.  A huge net which caught me in freefall 25 years ago, and continues to save me today.

Dear AA, all of you -- all of us -- thank you for my life.  I make a shoddy job of it sometimes, and I am certainly prone to being more than a little sensitive when things don't go my way, but truly, deep down, there is not one single day where I don't know what a gift I've been given, and am grateful for it.  Under the occasional tantrums and bouts of self pity there is always now a bright and beating connection to a Power Greater than Myself; and through that, all of you.

Today I am 25 years clean and sober.  I know I owe it to the Grace of God and to every single loop in the net -- to every single one of you.

Thank you.