There’s a lot of things that being a sponsor in 12 Step recovery means for me, mentor, guide, teacher, role model, friend, and the like, but there’s also a number of things that being a sponsor definitely doesn’t mean for me, chauffeur, banker, doctor, meal ticket, and most recently, housing authority.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had two newly sober individuals call me separately between the 10pm to 11pm time frame asking if I could put them up in my home for the night or if I knew of any options where they could sleep. When I asked what happened with their former sober living I had met them at, both had excuses why they left. One was due to girlfriend issues he felt the need to attend to. The other was simply tired of the rules that came with sober living. Either way, my answer was swift because I have a boundary in my life that does not entertain the notion of having strangers stay in my house for the night, especially addicts of any variety. I know of some sponsors who have a similar boundary, but instead offer to pay for a night in a local motel. Given my limited funds and given the many stories I’ve heard of addicts taking things in the motel rooms to sell, I simply have made a firm line in the sand surrounding me not being a housing authority for anyone.
While I felt guilty in some sense letting these guys know I didn’t have any option for them for housing, I’ve come to accept that I need to maintain this boundary, especially when it comes to addicts, because most addicts who get an inch will most definitely try to take a mile. In other words, once you open the door to an addict by giving them some form of a handout, in this case housing, they will keep coming back and come to rely more upon you than do the work themselves to change their situation.
While I love being a sponsor, truly I do, what I don’t love as one is fielding countless phone calls from addicts who keep doing nothing more than looking for handouts instead of wanting to do the 12 Step work. As a sponsor, my main objective is solely to teach the 12 Steps to another. And through that objective, it’s my hope and goal to help them find a deeper relationship with their Higher Power. What I’ve come to learn is that the 12 Steps and my relationship with God are the only two things that continue to keep me sober and working on being selfless. But addicts who become newly sober and choose not to focus on the 12 Steps or finding a Higher Power often make terrible decisions that lead to them seeking handouts like housing at a potential sponsor’s home.
The bottom line is that sponsorship isn’t about giving out handouts to addicts. It’s about helping them learn how to do the work and live their life on their own two feet through the 12 Steps and their Higher Power. Trying to offer an addict anything but the 12 Steps and God will typically lead to nothing more than heartache and frustration, and everything but living a life of true recovery from their addiction.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
