Sponsorship - Pick the Right One

Hi, guys. Chris Edrington here. Wanted to talk a little bit about sponsorship today and a real sort of 500 foot view of what a sponsor is, why we do it, and how it works. So, generally speaking, the way I like to concisely talk about sponsorship is the twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous are incredibly useful to help you take a look at who you were, which enlightens you about who you want to be. Right. I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to be this person. How do I get there? The steps, to me, serve that purpose.

Serve that purpose as a bridge, as a path, however you want to look at it. I don't personally think it's guided by anything specific in terms of religion or God or spirituality. I think it's just a purposeful thing to do for anybody. It's sort of a house cleaning. Let's reset the perspective. But the way that it's set up in the twelve steps, if you get a good sponsor, it's incredibly helpful and useful, and it's something you'll refer back to over and over again. So I like to think about, at least for the first seven or eight, nine steps, I guess, is we're going to clean house, we're going to take everything out of the closet of who I am today, and we're only going to put back what we want to keep.

Right. We're going to get rid of all the stuff, making amends, cleaning house, that kind of stuff. To me, it's about, let's take everything out. Let's really hold on to who we want to be and what we want to have in our lives and how we think of ourselves as a person. Because I really think that if you think about the sort of clandestine, sneaky hiding lifestyle that we do when we're using, you cannot function as the person who you would really want to be in that realm. It's just not possible. And I think that's where the damage gets done to our psyche, to our self image, right?

Is I'm not the person I want to be. I don't behave like one, I don't talk like one, I don't show up as one. So when you get to recovery, this idea about, I want to change all of that stuff. And, you know, a lot of people around us who watch us get sober feel like, my God, you're different, you look different, you sound different, you're really different. That is, from our perspective, as actual alcoholics and addicts. That's the way we're going to be perceived. That's the change that people are going to see.

The way we talk about that change and the way we experience that change is very personal. It's you and your voices in your head. We all have a committee in there, right? And there's way too many people on the committee, and we're trying to narrow that down to just a couple of smart people, hopefully. So I think sponsorship is absolutely essential. I think you should pick the right one. And if you don't think you have the right one, you don't have the right one. Because when you do have the right one, you'll know.

So the first thing I would say, and you hear this often in Alcoholics Anonymous, is pick somebody who has what they want right, or has what you want right. And you go, wow, that guy looks really calm and together. I want that. And I would say a step further would be, pick somebody who has what they want in their life. So they've transitioned from a life where they don't. As a using person, you have really nothing in your life that you want it to be. You don't necessarily. When I was using in Boulder, I didn't even have the clothes that I chose.

I stole them from consignment stores. So they were doubly not mine. Right. They weren't mine to begin with. They belong to someone else because they're at a consignment store. And then I sold them. So they're twice not mine, which is so. Such a statement about where addiction will take you. But when I say what they want in their life, I mean, they've worked to get a life full of things and perceptions and feelings that they want, right. The right people, the right situation. I like to think about life in recovery is every day I start in recovery.

It's really almost everything is up to me. When I was using, it was up to the dealer. Everything was not. I had no control. I had no power. The powerlessness, the lack of control. These things that we talk about in recovery, you really have no creative control of your life. You don't get to decide who's in it, what you do. It's so controlled by the drug and by that lifestyle. And when we get into the recovery lifestyle, I think it's really important to recognize the difference. And the best way to do that is to get somebody who's done it ahead of you and to help mentor you through that.

So the sponsor is a mentor, someone who has done the twelve steps and can walk you through that, and why and how to do it correctly. And then after that, meet as many people as you can in the sober community. Listen, watch. Pay attention to people who are sober longer than you. Watch how they behave, how they react. Get close to as many of them as you can, and you'll start to pick up all of these ways of changing your perspective and the way you think of yourself in recovery. And pretty soon you'll turn around and say, man, I am not that person anymore, and I am this person now, and I am proud of that person.

That is rocket fuel to get and stay sober, to get yourself to look at your own personal journey and look, listen to your own voices and what's driving you and who you think you are goes from this person who you had no respect for and you really couldn't live with yourself to someone who you're actually proud of. And that whole self love thing, I mean, it's an incredibly powerful change. And we're looking for real change in recovery. We're looking for serious change. A sponsor can help you get there.

It's just one of the tools. There's a million of them. I'll do the other 900,000 videos on all the other tools. But for this one, with sponsorship, I think it's really important to one. Prioritize it because it's important. And make sure you get the right person because you'll know if you have the wrong one. And you'll know if you have the right one. Thanks for hanging out.