You did not have to speculate about Bobby or wait to hear his voice to know he was a smoker. There was always a cigarette in his hand or in his mouth, sometimes both. He was 6’ but he looked taller than he actually was. Lanky is the word that comes to mind. He wore the clothes of a man from another time and place in 1994, but it was a uniform I was familiar with. Dark grey pressed slacks with no cuffs, cowboy boots, a plaid short-sleeve dress shirt with pearl buttons, and, of course, a belt with a polished belt buckle. 

Bobby had an imposing personality. He would greet you with a smile and a firm handshake, the kind that drew you closer to him and always seemed a bit too enthusiastic. He was loud, the stereotypical man of his generation and background. In a former life, Bobby was a West Texas oil tycoon, as he called themselves. He had made millions in the early 70s during the West Texas oil boom. 

This was, in fact, Bobby Ewing, the real one, not the TV character from the show ‘Dallas’. He was my friend and my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous in October 1994.

Sit down, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth, and you might learn something. I swear if I could take the Big Book in one hand, the 12 and 12 in the other and shove one down your throat and another one up your ass, it would be doing you a favor because you need to learn this, boy! You need to listen and learn this, or you’re going to die!

That was my first AA meeting. 5:30pm Sunday, October 30, 1994. And for a time, I assumed Bobby was in charge.

The Archetype

Bobby was not my sponsor; he was, however, my friend and my mentor, even though no one used that word constantly in 1994. Bobby passed away two years after I met him. I was on the phone with him and his wife while he was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack. It was sudden; death always is in the end. This was my first experience with loss in AA, it was one I would grow very accustomed to quickly. I overheard once, if you’re going to stick around AA, you better get a good suit because you will attend a lot of funerals because we bury them often around here.

While Bobby was not my sponsor, he embodied the archetype of an AA old timer that you hear about in rooms all over. Every room I’ve ever been in for more than one meeting, in fact.

I would go on to have several sponsors during my time in AA in the 90s, and all of them would teach me something new and valuable. All of them, however, would teach me the same thing over and over: working with others is the key. This is the lesson we learn in Bill’s story, both in A Vision for You and Bill’s story, the first chapter in the Big Book. It’s the central theme that is first mentioned in the foreword to the first edition.

So how did we get here? The current state of the micromanager sponsor who monitors and approves every interaction of the newcomer and demands devotion to the dogma of its sponsorship lineage. To the idea that you must be at a meeting every day or you’ll drink. This idea that independent thoughts should be suppressed and laid bare before the tribe for inspection and approval. And more importantly, to me at least, is this an evolution of AA or is this a fundamental flaw in autonomy at a group level? I’ll do my best to avoid making any direct judgments. I’m not interested in telling anyone what to believe, only what I’ve seen and experienced personally. You can and should decide for yourself and then act accordingly. 

The Rulebook

If you’ve ever been in a AA group, you’ve undoubtedly seen the sign or heard the acronym K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). Kelly Johnson, an aircraft engineer at Lockheed Skunk Works (the team behind aircraft like the SR-71 Blackbird) coined the acronym in 1960. From an engineering perspective, it’s a beautiful statement. Albert Einstein often receives credit for saying, “If you can’t explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough”. While there is no direct proof of this, the origin of that statement more likely traces back to Ernest Rutherford (the “Father of Nuclear Physics”) or possibly it was Richard Feynman. No matter who deserves credit, the principle stands: keep it simple. Even the origin of AA’s favorite slogan is mythologized.

There is a good reason for this being adopted as an AA slogan, at least at a group level. While the slogan did not originate in AA, the principle stands the test of the original intent and message from Dr Bob. Dr. Bob was famous for preaching simplicity. In his final brief address to AA members in 1950, he famously said: “Let’s not louse it all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind, but have very little to do with our actual A.A. work,”  Bill W. recalled in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, “he was walking out of the house, went down the steps, and turned back to look at his partner one last time. Dr. Bob was standing in the doorway, tall as ever, with his famous broad smile.

He looked at Bill and said, almost jokingly:”

“Remember, Bill, let’s not louse this thing up. Let’s keep it simple.”

So how simple was AA prior to 1950?

The Evolution of Sponsorship

When AA began, sponsorship did not exist, not in the form we recognize it as today, not at all, really. There was no rulebook in fact, there was no book at all. When the book was first published in 1939, there was an urgent necessity to manage the wave of inquiries that were flooding in, primarily in the Cleveland area. Clarence S. of the Cleveland group came up with a brilliant, decentralized solution. He decided to pair up one sober man with one newcomer. Prior to this, it had been a group effort. When a new prospect was found, they all went. With an overwhelming number of new prospects, however, this approach no longer worked.. Under this new system, an older member would visit the newcomer in the hospital. They would explain the program, bring them copies of the freshly printed Big Book, and literally drive them to their very first meeting upon release.

The older member was personally responsible for helping that specific newcomer navigate the early days of sobriety.

Clarence’s experiment was a staggering success. By delegating the work one-on-one, Cleveland’s recovery rate skyrocketed. In fact, Bill W. later acknowledged that Cleveland achieved a success rate of nearly 93% by some accounts during that period, proving that intensive one-on-one work was the key to handling rapid growth.

By 1944, the idea had become so fundamental to AA’s survival that the service structure in New York published the very first official pamphlet on the topic, titled simply: “A Sponsor is Someone Who Cares.”

The relationship changed from a casual friendship to a vital spiritual obligation. It protected the older member’s sobriety just as much as it helped the newcomer. Over time, it changed from the initial “hospital guide” role into the modern mentor relationship we see today, where a sponsor guides a sponsee directly through the 12 Steps. But it all started because 20 guys in Ohio had to figure out how to save hundreds of lives at the same time.

The Big Book, as members call it, the book titled Alcoholics Anonymous (where the fellowship gets its name) is the program of AA. Ask anyone who has been around for some time and they will agree with this. What few talk about, however, is why the book was written. The first 100 wrote the book for several reasons. The primary purpose of the book is stated as“to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem” on page 45. The first 100 were aware of how a message gets diluted over time and by word of mouth. They wanted to safeguard what had worked for them by putting that message in print. They wrote it for someone to read on their own. This is called out specifically on pages 162 and 163 in A Vision for You. They wrote it so you could work the steps and then help someone else do the same. This was because they knew they could not meet with everyone one on one. This idea is rarely, if ever, talked about in the rooms of AA. The idea that a person can or even could work the steps on their own is laughed out of meetings and recovery chat rooms. It is tantamount to AA blasphemy. 

When I sobered up for the last and hopefully the last time in 2018, I lived in a new state and the world, including AA had changed drastically from 1994. Actually, this last journey for me started in 2014. We have to start there. In 2014 I was not ready to stop drinking, not honestly. This is an important question laid out at the opening of We Agnostics “if, when you honestly want to”. The truth was, I didn’t honestly want to quit drinking yet. I honestly wanted to not lose my kids, and to not get divorced, but to quit drinking, not really. But there I was, in AA and not drinking. After my first meeting, I was approached, or rather cornered, by two members. One of whom had been chairing the meeting. I had been in and around AA for twenty years, ‌so I was ready for the spiel, even though I did not want to hear it. I left that night with a sponsor, somewhat against my will. He was a nice guy, and I still consider him a friend today, and I’m grateful for him. I did not know it at the time, however. I had landed in one of the largest AA groups in the area and, maybe by default, one of the more controversial ones as well. I would be heavily involved in this group for the next ten years. 

We talk a lot about the principle of attraction rather than promotion, and the 8pm meeting at this group was attractive. The people laughed, the meetings were huge, standing room only most nights, especially weekends. It was full of younger people, something I had never seen in the 90s. There was a feeling of camaraderie and fellowship unlike anything I had ever experienced. I would have never guessed, at the onset at least, that it was so tightly manufactured and designed.

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If you want to know more about how I ended up here doing what I do, maybe check out the book: Fragmented

~ Ryan