What we gonna do now is go back. Way Back. Back into time. Remember that song. The troglodyte. That was me. Always looking for a woman and I never found one until I learned to dance. I always thought dance was a noun. But it's actually a verb also. An action word. I think if AA was a word it would be a noun and a verb. Like, a lot of times I went to AA but I wasn't doing AA. I wanted what you all had but I didn't want to do what you all did. I was having a meeting after the meeting with a guy who got a year under his belt and he's doing good and a newcomer asked him to be his sponsor. My buddy wants to carry the message but he was feeling those old pangs of uncertainty, how do I sponsor him, what do I say, what happens if he has a slip. I been there and sometimes I can still go there.

I asked my buddy if he owned a big book. He gave me one of those well-of-course-I-do-you bought-it-for-me looks. Then I said, I guess you read that line "We will tell you what we have done." Because that's all we do. We tell you what we have done. What you do with what we give you is entirely up to you. I sponsored lots of people and not all of them got sober. In fact a lot of them are still drunk and some of them are dead. I used to blame myself for that. Until a few of them got sober and an oldtimer made a comment that I must be a good sponsor because I could get people to stop drinking. I said it wasn't me that got them sober. I just told them what I did. That oldtimer looked at me and said well if you didn't get these guys sober maybe you didn't get those other guys drunk. Those old guys are smart.

I think if we're doing what the big book is telling us to do - in sponsorship - and it's not working, then maybe that guy or girl isn't ready to start dancing yet. So we move on to the next one. This wasn't the story I had in mind and I shared this because I have been watching someone kill themselves. And I think it's time to move on. Obviously I won't turn my back on him. I will continue to offer him friendship and fellowship and if he decides he wants to start doing AA instead of just going to AA, my door is always open and the coffee is always on.