Shoulder to Shoulder

“You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, page 152-3

It is very strange to suddenly have a number of sponsees and a couple more men I’m working with in the absence of a sponsor they feel they can work with though we haven’t formalized the relationship in any sort of way. First there was Joe who remains the most willing and wonderful spirit around me. I am seriously blessed to have had such a wonderful experience right out of the gate. Joe was followed in a couple of months by Justin, and two weeks later, Jake. I’ve also taken an interest in Jason but don’t sponsor him because my motivations are not exactly pure. Miss Nikki says the best way to get over crushing on someone is to sponsor them but I don’t want to take any chances. I also don’t want to get over the crush right away, even though respect and good taste require that it remain entirely concealed. I wonder if there isn’t something narcissistic about my attraction the the truly broken ones. And Tyler, sponsored by the IFX and feeling like he’s not getting what he needs there. I have to bite my tongue. It is certainly not my place to judge what is and isn’t good sponsorship for any particular alcoholic. I only know what has been working for me. I’ve learned a couple of lessons pretty quickly about doing this, though. Perhaps the most important, especially in light of the fact that there are suddenly so many requests for my help, is that for my own sanity and wellbeing I should only match their willingness. I don’t help anyone by caring more about their recovery than they do. We commence the journey ‘shoulder to shoulder’. We don’t commence dragging them, kicking and screaming though perhaps, sometimes, I’d like to.

I have also been thinking about sponsorship recently in terms of my experience choosing one. I got sober on January 15th and I didn’t get a sponsor until April sometime. First there was the time in the halfway house while I waited to go to treatment. Then the two rounds of treatment; the one I escaped from and the one that was so incredible as well as a couple of weeks in between. When I got home I almost immediately asked this big dyke to temp sponsor me while I looked for a real sponsor. That lasted 10 minutes because I ran into my old friend John W. at the very next meeting I went to. And then in late July John got drunk.

By then I had been around enough to have met a few people and heard their stories. Even though he intimidated the hell out of me and couldn’t have been a more different man than I, I asked him to sponsor me — I “capitualted entirely” when I “heard the story of some man whose experience closely tallied with” my own (p. 160).

I have reached out for help and reached out to help others and the experience amazes me. If you are reading this you know I reach out in secondary ways as well and I’m adding another project to that avenue. My friend Gary W., who has extensive experience in this field, is producing a multi-media theater piece for the Idaho Meth Project; something to take into schools across the state. He has spent time interviewing a number of us speed-freaks and he’s read most of what I’ve written here and on MethedUp (I need to renew the domain registration – it is down at the moment) and he has decided that my character gets to be the comic relief; the one you can’t help but love in spite of himself. For dramatic impact, because breaking a heart is a great way to drive a point home, he’s going to kill me. I’m delighted. I’ve always wanted to be martyred for show business. To help others recover or to never start I will die for them.

Taken together this is what I pray for. Every day.

God, let me be an instrument of your will,
a demonstration of your power,
a vessel of your grace and
a bearer your love
in the lives of everyone I touch today. Amen.

Two guys in front of Tiger Texico Gas Station, originally uploaded by postscriptedlove.