One Drunk to Another You Had to Be Sponsored
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Illustration · A diner counter at night, two places set side by side with the Big Book between them. Imagined, not drawn from a photograph.

You Had to Be Sponsored

Getting a sponsor

From before the job had a name to AA’s own pamphlet today: how one drunk came to take responsibility for the next.

“Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.”

Dr. Bob, on why he passed on what he had learned · Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939

In AA a sponsor is a member who shares the experience of getting sober, one to one and over time, with someone newer. The Big Book of 1939 describes that work in its chapter “Working with Others” and never once uses the word.

This piece follows the job from Ebby T.’s call on Bill W. in 1934 to AA’s own pamphlet: Cleveland’s flood of newcomers in 1939, the hospitals that would take a drunk only with a sponsor, the first manuals written for sponsors, women sponsoring women, sponsors who drank again, and AA’s own books taking up the word. Legacy ends with what it has become. The newcomer asks, and by AA’s count about four members in five have a sponsor.

It’s built from AA’s own books, chiefly Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Pass It On and the stories in the Big Book, with the Grapevine, the early pamphlets from Akron and Cleveland, Living Sober, AA’s pamphlet on sponsorship and its membership surveys, and biographies of early members. Where the sources disagree, these pages say so.

Start with 1 · Working with Others

Sponsorship, year by year

  1. 1934In November Ebby T., sober about two months, comes to Bill W.’s kitchen table and tells him how he got sober.
  2. 1935In June Bill W. and Dr. Bob call on Bill D. in Akron’s City Hospital. Bill has been sober about six months, Dr. Bob about two weeks.
  3. 1939In April the Big Book’s chapter “Working with Others” tells how to carry the message to another alcoholic, without the word “sponsor.”
  4. 1939Hospitals in Cleveland and Akron start taking alcoholics if a sober member will sponsor them. That fall a newspaper series floods Cleveland’s small group with calls, and members sober a week go out to sponsor the newcomers.
  5. 1940Akron’s members print a manual for newcomers with “A Word to the Sponsor.” Histories date it 1940 or 1941.
  6. 1944Cleveland puts out a pamphlet of its own, A.A. Sponsorship.
  7. 1953Bill W.’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions puts the sponsor into the essays on the Steps.
  8. 1959AA’s own pamphlet, Questions and Answers on Sponsorship, is in at least its second printing.
  9. 1975Living Sober gives the sponsor a chapter of its own.
  10. 1976The pamphlet, rewritten at the request of AA’s General Service Conference, is usually dated to this year.
  11. 1994The pamphlet gains a section on service sponsorship.
  12. 2022In AA’s membership survey, 81 percent of members say they have a sponsor.
  13. 2025AA revises the pamphlet again in June.

Walk through sponsorship, 1934 to today

Each part has a short story, a one-minute audio stop, and a closer look for anyone who wants to go deeper. Read them in order, or start anywhere.

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