RumRadio I’M NO ANGEL NAMED MICHAEL

.  The Big Book terms it, “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.”  I lived in hell for the first twenty-five years of my life.  First there was the covert hell of living each and every day sure that I was broken in a way that no human being had ever been broken before; and then came the hell of spiraling in a sea of booze and chemicals slowly dragging me toward an alcoholic death.  My restlessness, irritability and discontentment were a perpetual state from which I deeply believed there was no escape.  Turns out I suffered from a very common illness to which there was a remarkably simple solution.

Theory: A.A. is so adrift in large part due to incompetent sponsorship We've lost sight of what the central task of sponsorship is meant to be Newcomers are provided little insight in terms of what to seek out in a sponsor When asked to sponsor, many A.A.'s fail to relay information they are charged to relay and freely demand things they are in no position to demand (page 94) Too many A.A.'s who take up the role of sponsor have no idea how to effectively take someone through the steps, but yet are more than happy to offer up medical, legal, therapeutically, and professional advice which they are in no way qualified to discern Too many sponsors believe that it is their job to dictate the rate at which a their sponsee takes the steps Too many sponsors fail to distinguish between genuine A.A. information and treatment center claptrap Many sponsors collude in setting up dependency relationships by failing to see to it that the sponsee takes up God as his main source for inspiration once the steps are completed People sit back hoping someone will ask them to sponsor, not realizing that they are meant to seek out prospects- many claim "We don't sell A.A." even though chapter 7 is essentially one long sales manual