Monday, January 5, 2009

A Random Thought

Most of my thoughts are pretty random, so this isn't something out of the ordinary for me.

I went to a local Back to Basics meeting a few days ago. I had never been to this particular meeting and I thought it would be good to meet some of the newer clients in the recovery program I am involved with.

The chairperson for this meeting was a substitute and has evidently been assisting the regular chairperson. The topic was sponsorship. Everything was going along good until the chairperson started talking about the length of sobriety of the people whom he sponsored. Earlier in the meeting he had mentioned that he had just a little over a year of sobriety, which I thought was just a little too early to start sponsoring people. He said that two of his sponsees (is that spelled right?) had less than 90 days and the other two had 3 and 4 years each.

You know in movies where someone says something odd and you hear the sound of screeching tires? Well that is just what I heard when he made that last comment.

I had brought a friend to the meeting with me, who has been in the program for the same length of time as I. He and I both looked at each other like did we just hear what we thought we heard?

My point for telling this story is this: Am I wrong for being critical of this person for 1) being a sponsor with only 12 or so months of sobriety and 2) should he be sponsoring people who have 2 and 3 times the length of sobriety of him?

I would like to hear everyone's opinion on this. I have had a couple of people in our recovery program approach me about being their sponsor and I declined because in no way do not feel that I am ready to be a sponsor.

Let me know what you think.