“I’m Glad You’re Not
My Sponsor”
“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
George R.R. Martin
“I’m glad you’re not my sponsor.” A patient recently
said this to me and I smiled. I had been
talking about one of the steps and mentioning that I had called out one of my
sponsees for calling me late for their daily check-in. The same thing happened to me when I was
working the steps so I am simply handing down the process in the same way it
was handed down to me.
I
was asked if I was willing to go to any length in working the steps and I said “yes”.
My sponsor told me she wasn’t going to ask me to do anything that she herself had not
done. I was to pick a time to call her
each day. I had about 5 minutes lee-way
before and after that time and I needed to call her then. I made it a while before I was late. I was a half-hour late. She answered the phone and said, “You’re late calling me.”
I was in a recovery house at the time that had only one phone and even
though I had a note on the phone asking that no one be on it at 8:00am, someone
had grabbed it while I wasn’t looking. I explained this to her and her answer was, “If your recovery isn’t important to you, then why should I make
it a priority of mine?”
Some
people will read that and think it harsh.
It stung a little at the time, but I knew it was coming at 8:30 when I
dialed. She had warned me. She had told me she was serious about my
recovery and she was. It takes time and
effort to sponsor someone and it isn’t a job to be taken lightly. It is a life and death battle you are
fighting and your sponsor is your sergeant major.
Tough
love is so hard to reconcile. It is
distasteful in the extreme to the people doling it out and to the people meant
to swallow it down. It is, however, an
essential nectar. People attempting
recovery are in their situations because they have an illness that sends them
to the depths of “self-will run riot”. Our thought
process will constantly be whispering in our ears that we can control our
using. Our thoughts tell us we can handle
it. Our thoughts tell us we aren’t that badly off.
Our thoughts tell us we weren’t as bad as some other addicts we know. Our mental illness tells us that we should be
in control when in reality our taking control of the ship lead to its
sinking.
I
had another patient tell me that the kind of sponsor that he needed was someone
who would celebrate his successes with him but not to get on his case when he
slacks a bit. I smiled and said to him
that that was exactly the opposite of the kind of sponsor that he needed. If you want a cheerleader, then look to
family members and friends (if they are still speaking to you). If you want to truly get better, then you
need a drill sergeant. You need someone
that is going to hold your feet to the flame to make sure you get through this
process in one piece. There is no reason
this can’t be done, it has after all, been done by many before
us. But you can’t get through it alone. And if I am lost in the wilderness, then I
want a guide who is a survivalist and knows the terrain. Someone who will get me out alive, not someone
that simply knows how to make a comfortable campground in the midst of the void
so we can sit in seeming luxury while we wait for the apocalypse.
So
I will move forward making sure that the people who ask for my help get the
same kind of help from me that I got from others before me. The kind of help that enabled me to be where
I am today. Tough love is a beautiful
thing, it just isn’t for the faint of heart.
