Topic: The Importance of Sponsorship

Topic: The Importance of Sponsorship

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This Kitchen Table AA talk from 2009 puts sponsorship right at the centre of long-term sobriety, with several seasoned members sharing how working with others keeps them sane, sober, and surprisingly useful. The main speaker, sober since 1979, keeps going back to the Big Book as the foundation of sponsorship. He urges people to work directly from the current edition with sponsees, joking, “This is a very good opinion.

It should be yours,” while pointing to the vital passage in *Dr. Bob’s Nightmare* about passing the message on as “a most wonderful blessing” and “a little more insurance… against a possible slip.” You’ll hear strong emphasis on action rather than theory: daily prayer and meditation, taking calls, going to meetings, and especially sponsoring others.

One speaker explains, “The only way that I live free and clear is by giving it away in order to get it.” Another recalls a warning from old-timer Paul M: if you’re not in the book with other alcoholics, not going to meetings, and not telling someone the things you wish weren’t true about yourself, “you will go insane.” The episode also looks at how sponsorship shapes family life and emotional growth.

Stories range from learning to be a better parent and partner through sponsoring, to turning to Al-Anon to stop controlling a sick spouse. A powerful hospital visit with a dying alcoholic shows how showing up, even when you don’t want to, can “enlarge your spiritual life” in ways you don’t expect. By the end, sponsorship is presented less as a nice add-on and more as the core of AA life.

As one speaker puts it, there’s really “only one job” here: picking up the phone, saying yes, and being willing to help the next alcoholic. If you’re wondering whether you’re ready to sponsor, or scared you’ll do it wrong, this talk might leave you asking a different question: what happens if you don’t?