This article was written to stimulate further discussion among sponsors and sponsees about what is working for them and how we may help another better seek humility and the more complete surrender to our Higher Power as we grow in recovery. It is based on one paragraph from Sexaholics Anonymous: “Get an SA Sponsor. I needed someone who could see me better than I could, even though he might have had some problems of his own. (Everyone I used as a sponsor had imperfections big enough to turn me away if I wanted such an excuse.) It was my reaching out and taking direction that worked. I made regular contact and followed directions. It helped make me teachable and saved me a lot of grief and time.” (pp. 162-63)

Many of us come into SA with multiple addictions and myriad character defects, which we soon begin to encounter as we work on our SA recovery. One of those defects for many of us falls under the category of problems with authority. We first find we have a difficult time surrendering to a Higher Power because we have seen ourselves as so much “in control” of our lives, even when we were in fact totally out of control. The idea of surrendering our will and our lives to someone or something other than ourselves smacks of former conflicts we had with parents, bosses, and other authority figures where we defiantly set ourselves against them on the pretense of preserving our own autonomy and selfhood. Words such as “obedience” or “yielding” or “submission” were fighting words for us—something we needed to shield ourselves against if we were to be whole persons.

In my own story, I became rebellious over authority by the age of six. When my father told me he was going to send me to a military academy where they whipped disobedient boys like me into shape, I violently protested that if he did, I would never stay there but run away. When I grew up, it was no wonder I chose a course of study that exempted me from military service even when all my friends were being drafted. So, I avoided authority figures at that stage of my life.

Meanwhile, I discovered a better way to deal with or avoid authority figures. If I could use my mind to master much of their subject or expertise, I could earn their respect to the point where they would begin to relate to me as a peer and an equal rather than as someone subordinate to them. This strategy worked amazingly well in college and graduate school, where professors would ask me to assist them with professional projects rather than criticize and reject my work as inferior to theirs. Later, I noticed this strategy even worked with therapists who, because they knew or had heard of my work in areas of psychological and spiritual development, seemed to give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that I merely needed reminding, encouragement, and support rather than confrontation, intervention, and a refusal on their part to cooperate any longer in my sham of willingness to grow when in fact I was in denial of my fundamental problem of ego and control.

Now, in SA recovery, I am afforded an opportunity to deal with this problem as I work under a sponsor and am a sponsor. I am convinced some of us never get a sponsor because, like me, we rebelled against authority. Recently, a respected SA member with long-term sobriety and recognized recovery told me the reason he never has had a sponsor is because they end up telling you what to do when all you need to follow is the direction of your Higher Power. His view was that they are as fallible as the rest of us, so why listen to them.

Sponsorship has been increasing in many of our groups where a renewal of emphasis on sobriety and a positive solution-oriented meeting has been adopted. Listening to participation one evening, I heard clearly half of those referring to work undertaken under the guidance of the sponsor during the past week. I have done a study of every occurrence of the word “sponsor” or “sponsorship” in both the SA White Book and the Big Book of AA. From that reading, I conclude sponsorship was originally envisioned as the norm, not the exception to the program of recovery.

Coming to submit ourselves to sponsorship, however, reopens all those authority conflict issues from our past. We wonder at the outset: “Will this person try to tell me what to do in my life? What if he asks me to do something I feel would be detrimental to me or my family, such as abstaining in my marriage or attending a meeting every night of the week, or giving up my golf game to work with others?”

We knew that for sponsorship to work, it meant developing the ability to take simple direction. We came to believe that having ourselves for a sponsor was having a blind fool for a sponsor, and anything could be better than that! So, we fired ourselves and sought someone more mature in sobriety and recovery than we were. We intended to have that person direct us in the ways we should work our steps and carry out our service to others. That willingness to accept direction worked fine for a while, perhaps a long while. Then, for some of us like me, the day came when that sponsor did or said something inappropriate or unbecoming of recovery. To complicate matters, when we expressed concern about that, we were sharply rebuked and perhaps shamed.

Any number of situations brought us to a moment when we had to decide to continue to be obedient to the sponsor we had chosen or to fire them on the basis of their defects, attitude, or inappropriate behavior. Many well wishing and even sober SA members may have encouraged us to leave that sponsor to work his own program. A few may have pointed to a harder, more difficult path. Those of us who have an acknowledged authority problem in our lives have an opportunity to work through that problem perhaps for the first time. Whereas all we may feel at that time is anger and resentment towards the sponsor (“How dare he act so disrespectfully and ignorantly in light of this and that justification for myself!”); whereas the sponsor may in fact be flawed and wrong in his judgment or determination about what is best for us (see page 163 again); whereas we in fact may not need to take the steps recommended to remain sober or gain deeper recovery, the fact remains that we could make a significant spiritual breakthrough were we to submit to the direction and carry it out without questioning.

Training in following a sponsor’s direction is practice for following the light and direction of our Higher Power, especially for those of us who do not easily take direction out of sheer obedience. We know this is a spiritual program and that we must pray “only for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out.” How will we know God’s will and be ready to carry it out unless we can first submit ourselves to a human will in the form of our sponsor? God’s will so often comes through another human that we need to learn to listen to and follow them.

My conclusion about obedience to my sponsor and his authority is that until and unless he asks me to do something that is clearly unreasonable, shaming, humiliating, illegal, dishonest, or harmful to myself or others, I should follow his direction as a means of growing in obedience to God. I cannot work his program or take his inventory. If his life needs correction, that is the responsibility of his Higher Power and his sponsor, not me. I have only to take my own inventory and humbly learn to submit myself to an authority greater than mine. That makes me angry and resentful at times, even spiteful that I cannot claim “higher authority” through some grievance procedure. When I surrender that anger and resentment, perhaps a thousand times before I give it up, I regain my serenity and set out to learn what my Higher Power can teach me from the difficult tasks assigned me.

[Please give feedback from your experience: Do you have a sponsor? Do you sponsor others? Does your group provide temporary sponsors to newcomers? Responses will appear in Feedback Corner. Ed.]