JOE AND THE PROGRAM | 2006-07-18
Joe seems to be familiuar with alcohol and drug recovery, but I doubt he has ever been IN it.
But Joe is a wise old bastard, so he understands. He says:
"A sponsor's first responsibility is to lead a pigeon through the 12 Steps. It is not the sponsor's responsibility to prevent the pigeon from falling down. If they fall and you blame yourself you are not fit to be a sponsor. That, by the way, is not an unusual occurrence. There's a lot of sponsors who don't know what their job is and it shows. "
I have never heard a sponsor refer to anybody in the program as "a pigeon." You are a sponsor only if you live in the same glass house, so you don't throw stones. But your point, because you understand things by now, is dead accurate.
Bob's Blog is written from Bob's point of view. So I knew a lot of people who had been brave in combat but who died because they could not handle drugs. So to me the kid fighting drugs is more impressive than the old fart bragging about how heroic he was in Nam or WWII. To keep anybody from getting all choked up abouthow I respect these young folks, please remember that I am expressing a deep personal loathing for grown men I have heard moaning about what heroes they were in The War. If the old guys sitting at the alcoholics club were the heroes they claim they were, iuf they couold handle everything by Personal Valor the way they say they can, they wouldn't be in a recovery program.
And for every one bragging old bastard in the recovery club, there are ten who dies because they didn't have the guts and the humility to get there. The old AA members are a pain in the keester. They kept bragging about how they were alcoholics but they were too good to touch drugs. I found the perfect reply:
"You know, you should thank us junkies. Who else on earth can an old drunk look DOWN on?"
I was in Narcotics Anonymous mostly. In that group, I was the second oldest person, and I have always been in politics, so I threw myself into helping out. Contrary to popular myth, people in politics are mostly people who want to help people out. As a result of this combination, I got asked to be sponsor by a LOT of people. Even my counsellors in recovery would ask me how the session went when I was new.
As a result, I got sponsees long before I was ready for them. No matter old and wise you are, you go through the same phases when you, personally, are a drunk and a junkey. No matter how old and wise you are, no matter how many episodes of combat you have been in, you are still deep in the same hole with everybody else. In fact, if you are older it just means you stay in the early phases LONGER. A kid who was clean and sober for a year after a decade overusing was in his next phase. I had been overusing for decades, and at the end of the first year I was still a complete wreck.
In other words, when I took sponsees I had the requisite year but I was still in the "pins and cushions" stage. I still did not have the perspective not to FEEL I had let someon down. I knew the program, but that doesn't mean I understood the concept. But I didn't let it make me a bad sponsor. It just hurt ME.
But I keep saying that the mistakes I condemn are the ones I have made myself. This is just anohter example of that. If I say you are acting like a neo, you may be sure I have acted like a neo many, many times before I caught myself. If you think I condemn YOU, you should remember what I said to myself. The last persojn we Aryans forgive is ourselves.
To repeat what one German wisely said, "If we said to others what we say to ourselves, we would be considered sadists." Remember that is very true of ME. That is why you are willing to take from me a lot you wouldn't stand for from someone else.
And that is why Ole Joe enjoys battling it out with me.