Q: Do you have any tips about how to pick a sponsor?

Funny you should ask, yes, yes I do.

Ideally they should be experienced and competent, and you need to be able to fit in practically with the system and schedule they offer. Other than that, it doesn't much matter.

If you feel particularly drawn to someone, that's probably a bad idea. If you feel particularly repulsed by someone, that's also a bad idea. If you feel particularly repulsed by everyone except one person, then you need to buck your ideas up. If you're in crisis, that's no time to be picky.

Pickiness comes in lots of forms, but is a red flag. For instance, people have shopping lists of requirements, or go to someone competent for recommendations but reject the proffered help of the person from whom they are looking for recommendations. This is particularly the case in Al-Anon, where it can be hard to find a male sponsor, so most men have female sponsors. This is not about sex or gender. It's about the killer disease of alanonism. This is about emergency nutrition; you're not at the Bellagio Buffet.

A sponsor certainly does not need to be a one-stop shop for all personal or recovery needs. Personal needs: find some friends. Recovery needs: get a network. The sponsor is for the Twelve Steps, Traditions, and Concepts and the application of these principles. 

If you are feeling particularly drawn to someone, you're probably after a Special Relationship, and you're bound to be disappointed, because, if they're worth they're salt as a sponsor, to them you're just the latest fodder for the sausage machine of the Steps.

To quote The Velvet Underground & Nico:

'You're put down in her book / You're number 37, have a look'

Yes, they care about you as a person, but as they would anyone else. Not because you're you but because you're a person who is suffering. It ain't personal.

If you start off with some kind of personal attraction to a sponsor (I'm not talking sexual, but that too), the process usually grinds that out of you, but the attraction sets up an extra impediment to get over.

This is about principles, not personalities, so it should not matter hugely who sponsors you as long as they have the principles to hand and are systematic and clear about presenting them and guiding you through the process.

You do not have special problems that require special skill.

Sometimes people who think they have special problems go to someone particularly experienced, but, if they failed with an entry-level sponsor, they'll surely fail with the super-duper sponsor, unless they're really willing to get rid of their specialness. 'Special problems' (i.e. knotty psychological doo-dahs) almost invariably boil down to complex worldviews and narratives that the individual is tied to, because they represent the person's identity. Unless the individual is willing to climb down out of the castle in the air and board the Big Yellow AA Bus with every other bozo, a boss-level sponsor won't be of any more use than an entry-level sponsor.

Maureen said to me: 'You're a common or garden alcoholic. Climb down off your ladder and join the group. We're all on the same level, here. It's just some of us have been at it for longer.'

Do people sometimes need someone with particular skill or experience?

Yes, later on in the process. If you're sponsoring 20 people or if you are heavily involved in the service structure, you absolutely need someone who is further ahead on the same path. But that's for later.

But if you're an entry-level person, emotionally immature, incompetent, disorganised, and narcissistic, then good, old-fashioned simplicity and discipline is the order of the day, and you can get that from someone who is a year sober and competent.

Entry-level does not necessarily mean new. People can be entry level with twenty years of sobriety. Sometimes people want a Special Sponsor because they're sober a long time and have been through the Steps many times but are still royally jiggered. Here's the thing, though: you can go through the Steps many times and miss the point. I thought I'd been through the Steps many times, at around fifteen years, but I'd not learned the lessons, so I might as well have not been through them at all, beyond their assurance of my physical sobriety.

What lessons?

There are lots.

But here's one: Trusting God per page 63 of the Big Book means trusting God. If I'm still frightened after page 63 and the solution to fear on page 68 has been presented, I've not turned my will and life over to God. I have not bought the idea. And that's on me. It's not because a Special Person has not explained it carefully enough. It's because I have Different Ideas.

It's possible to go through the motions endlessly and miss the point. Just because the chimpanzee is hitting the keys of the piano does not mean he is playing the piano, let alone playing it well.

This all sounds rough, because it is. Alcoholism is rough, and don't underestimate alanonism, either. Let's face this head on, and get on with it.