One Drunk to Another You Had to Be Sponsored
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · A park bench at dusk today, with two cups of coffee, the Big Book and a phone. Imagined, not drawn from a photograph.

The U.S. and Canada · 1976 and after

Legacy

Today the newcomer does the asking, a group can arrange a temporary sponsor while you look, and by AA’s own surveys about four members in five have one.

“An A.A. who has been in — or ‘around’ the Fellowship for many years often finds that getting a good sponsor, talking frankly, and listening can make the whole program open up as it never did before.”

AA’s pamphlet, on whether it’s ever too late to get a sponsor · Questions & Answers on Sponsorship, revised June 2025

You ask

In Cleveland in 1939, as Bill W. told it, “Each prospect was assigned an older A.A.” (part 2). AA’s pamphlet today has it the other way around: “Often, the new person simply approaches a more experienced member who seems compatible and asks that member to be a sponsor.”

The group still has a part. Among the things the pamphlet suggests a group can do is an announcement at meetings: “If any person here does not have a sponsor and wants one, please see the secretary, who will arrange a temporary sponsor.” It suggests one sponsor at a time. “Many feel it is best for a newcomer to have only one sponsor.”

The pamphlet has been revised more than once since its rewrite, usually dated 1976. In 1994 it gained a section on service sponsorship, for members new to AA’s service work. Besides that section, its revision of June 2025 asks and answers 34 questions, among them whether a member can sponsor someone in custody. “Yes. Sponsorship can be provided in-person or through the mail.”

And AA counts. Its membership surveys, taken periodically since 1968 at randomly chosen meetings in the U.S. and Canada, have reported on sponsors since at least 2011. In 2022, of more than 6,000 members who answered, 81 percent had a sponsor, and 73 percent had found one within 90 days.

Listen Legacy About 1 minute

AA’s own count

Four in five

AA asks members at a sample of meetings in the U.S. and Canada to fill in a questionnaire every few years. These are the three surveys this page found that report on sponsors. Each bar is the share of members who said they had one.

From AA’s membership survey pamphlets of 2011, 2014 and 2022. AA says the results “are not intended to be used to project figures for either the Fellowship of A.A., alcoholics in general, or the population.”

2011More than 8,000 members answered. 72% had found a sponsor within 90 days.

81%

2014More than 6,000 answered. 74% had found one within 90 days.

82%

2022More than 6,000 answered. 73% had found one within 90 days.

81%

Not required, and kept

Nobody has to have a sponsor now; Living Sober leaves it to the newcomer, “if one is wanted.” In each of these surveys about four members in five had one all the same, and most had found one in their first three months.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How long a sponsor should have been sober; the other jobs the word has come to name; and what researchers make of sponsors.

A year or more

Cleveland in 1939 couldn’t wait that long. With hundreds of calls for help, Bill W. wrote, members “sober only a month or even a week” had to sponsor the men in the hospitals (part 2). In Washington, Jackie had been sober a month or so when he brought Jim B. in (part 6).

The pamphlet doesn’t make it a rule. Asked whether any member can be a sponsor, it answers, “Yes, any A.A. member can become a sponsor.” Asked when a member is ready, it starts with AA’s primary purpose, “to carry the message of A.A. to the alcoholic who still suffers.”

Other sponsors

The pamphlet’s section on service sponsorship, added in 1994, opens with Bill W.: “A.A. service is anything whatever that helps us to reach a fellow sufferer — ranging all the way from the Twelfth Step itself to a ten-cent phone call and a cup of coffee…” A service sponsor helps a member learn the Traditions, the Concepts and how AA’s service structure works. The same section quotes Dr. Bob’s four reasons, from the Big Book of 1939, for passing on what he had learned.

Other jobs took the name too. Loner Sponsors write to members far from any meeting, through AA’s Loners-Internationalists Meeting; so many have signed up that it isn’t adding more for now (Legacy, in Jittery and Alone). AA’s Corrections Correspondence Service “connects A.A. members in custody with A.A. members on the outside” (Inside the walls).

And every Alateen group, for the young relatives of alcoholics, has adult Group Sponsors, Al-Anon members certified by their area. “Alateen groups cannot meet without certified Alateen Group Sponsors present.” (Learning not to hate, in Captain of My Soul, tells how Alateen began.)

A lay therapist?

Researchers have taken up the sponsor too. In 2015 John F. Kelly and four colleagues wrote that in Twelve Step fellowships a sponsor plays a role “analogous to a ‘lay therapist’, serving as a role model, support and mentor.” “Research shows,” they wrote, “that attendees who have a sponsor have higher rates of abstinence and remission.” Citing AA’s surveys, they put the share of members with a sponsor at 80 percent.

Their own study followed 302 young adults, aged 18 to 24, from the time they entered a private residential treatment center between 2006 and 2008. For the 157 who had a sponsor during the year that followed, the stronger the bond they reported with the sponsor, the more meetings they went to, and the more of their days they stayed abstinent, over the next few months.

Living Sober sees it differently. “An A.A. sponsor is not a professional caseworker or counselor of any sort,” it says, and the sponsor “has only one tool to use—personal experience, not scientific wisdom.”

Sources