We have a local women's only treatment center / home that has been coming to my home group. They needed to call someone in the program, so they called me.
I'd get a call with someone saying "I just need to check in with a member of AA. Thanks, bye".
Ohhkkkayy.
Then I was asked to drive some of them to a meeting. OK. Picked them up as instucted on a street corner, took them to the meeting, and on the way home got a little slip of paper from the treatment center saying who they were and that I wasn't allowed to make any stops and who to call if they didn't come back with me.
Had already said I would drive the next week, so I did. They were late and I called the # from last week. Not in service.
Get a call that one of them can get out for the day, would I like to take them shopping and to lunch? Next call was a request to drive another to the library. I declined on both requests. Yesterday I was asked if I wanted to drive them to a meeting. Again declined. As far as I can tell this business is using me for transportation. There is nothing that I am doing that isn't better done by a cab. So, I've bowed out.
Learning to think and make choices for myself was a prime achievement in sobriety. Learning to say no and understand that NO is a complete sentence also was rocket science for me. Checking my behavior next to my feelings and then changing my behavior so that I felt better about myself and what I was doing was the same. AA is not affiliated. You can be personally but you cannot represent AA while doing that. I've seen your situation happen before and can find it going on in my neighborhood now and when we find that the service is "using" the membership and not the program we stop quick...have a sit down and draw up the protocols make our requests for compensation...gas etc and then wait for the program to respond. I've helped start non-profits and have sat on the board and been part of administration for a few...I participate with my program and if what and how they do their thing doesn't meld with how I work my program I won't do it...thanks for the sameness.
For me it's not a 12th step. The check in phone calls? I make one call and tell them to take my number off of the list and give me a time when we can talk about it.
Locally some of the recovery programs will have meetings done "in house". They will release the client to a "committed sponsor not a sponsor designee" and will the client to all behavioral agreements, courts, POs, recovery program, social law etc., or they go back to whom it was that recommented them to the program...usually a judge with a holding sentence in between.
