AA’s own books began to name the sponsor: in the Steps, in new stories, in a pamphlet of questions and in a chapter of its own.
“At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors come to the rescue.”
The Big Book of 1939 never used the word “sponsor.” Bill W.’s second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, put the sponsor into the essays on the Steps themselves. It came out in 1953 (Wit’s End, in Suggestions Only, tells how it was written).
In Step One, “Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it.” In Step Four, the sponsor eases a frightened newcomer’s inventory by “talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present.” Two years later, the Big Book’s second edition added members’ stories that used the word as a matter of course.
By the late 1950s AA had a pamphlet of its own, Questions and Answers on Sponsorship, though nobody seems sure when it first appeared. In 1974 AA’s General Service Conference asked for it to be rewritten, and the new version is usually dated 1976.
In between, in 1975, AA published Living Sober, a small book of things members did to stay sober. Its chapter on sponsors begins: “Not every A.A. member has had a sponsor. But thousands of us say we would not be alive were it not for the special friendship of one recovered alcoholic in the first months and years of our sobriety.”
It’s 1953, in New York. Bill W.’s second book comes out, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. The first book, in 1939, never used the word sponsor. This one puts the sponsor right into the Steps. When the newcomer takes his inventory, it says, the sponsor comes to the rescue, talking freely about his own defects.
AA also puts out a pamphlet of questions and answers about sponsorship. Nobody seems sure when the first one appeared. A dealer has a second printing from 1959. In 1974, AA’s General Service Conference asks for it to be rewritten.
And in 1975, a little book called Living Sober gives the sponsor a chapter of its own. A sponsor, it says, is simply a sober alcoholic who can help with only one problem: how to stay sober.
Compare the accounts
The Big Book of 1939 never says “sponsor.” Here are six places it turns up in AA’s own literature afterward, in the order they appeared.
Quotations are short excerpts. Living Sober is quoted from a printing of 2020, whose text was revised in 2019; the 1976 pamphlet from its revision of June 2025.
14 years after the Big Book
“This person may turn out to be one’s sponsor, but not necessarily so.”
On whom to tell your story to in Step Five. The sponsor also turns up in the essays on Steps One, Two, Three, Four, Nine, Ten and Twelve.
Bill W., Step Five.
New stories by members
“About seven that evening my sponsor walked in, Charlie G.”
A doctor in Washington, D.C., remembering the call that brought him in. The same edition has Jim B.’s “sponsor of my sponsor” and Earl T.’s “this type of sponsorship.”
“Jim’s Story,” Alcoholics Anonymous, first printed in the second edition.
Bill W.’s history of AA
“It was soon evident that a scheme of personal sponsorship would have to be devised for the new people.”
He puts it in Cleveland in 1939, after the newspaper articles. 2 · You had to be sponsored
Bill W., “When A.A. Came of Age.”
A dealer offers a “Second Printing from 1959”
“…be reviewed and rewritten to include Twelfth Step calls & sponsorship…”
The Conference’s request for the pamphlet Questions and Answers on Sponsorship, already at least fifteen years old.
Conference action of 1974, as listed in “A.A. Pamphlets History As Reflected In Conference Actions,” silkworth.net.
A chapter of its own
“A sponsor is simply a sober alcoholic who can help solve only one problem: how to stay sober.”
And on men and women: “By trial and error, we’ve discovered that sex and sponsorship are a very bad mix.”
Chapter 11, “Availing yourself of a sponsor,” in the text revised in 2019.
Rewritten; revised many times since
“An alcoholic who has made some progress in the recovery program shares that experience on a continuous, individual basis with another alcoholic who is attempting to attain or maintain sobriety through A.A.”
Its answer to its first question, “What Is Sponsorship?”
AA’s pamphlet P-15, quoted from its revision of June 2025; the 1976 text isn’t online.
From a chapter to a pamphlet
The Big Book of 1939 described the work and never named it. By 1976 the sponsor had a place in the Steps, a chapter in Living Sober and a pamphlet of questions all its own.
For a closer look
Two stories of where the word came from; the title the pamphlet nearly got; and how Living Sober ends its chapter.
Living Sober gives the hospitals the credit. A few hospitals in Akron and New York, it says, began to take alcoholics as patients, but only “if a sober A.A. member would agree to ‘sponsor’ the sick man or woman.”
Bill W., in 1957, gave the credit to Cleveland, where a newspaper series in 1939 brought hundreds of calls for help and very new members had to look after newcomers. Both have a case. Part 2 tells Cleveland’s side and part 3 the hospitals’.
AA’s General Service Conference, which meets each spring, kept coming back to the pamphlet. In 1967 it looked forward to “upcoming revisions.” In 1970 it suggested that group discussions sometimes center on pamphlets such as “Sponsorship.”
In 1974 it asked for the pamphlet to be rewritten to cover Twelfth Step calls too, “with a new suggested title ‘Twelfth Step Calls and Sponsorship’.” The rewrite kept the old title.
The Conference asked for wording changes in 1983, and in 1994 added a section on “service sponsorship,” for members new to AA’s service work.
Living Sober ends its chapter on the newcomer’s side. “You are under no obligation ever to repay your sponsor in any way for helping you,” it says. “Some day, you may want to pass such help on to someone else. That’s the only thanks you need give.” The Big Book had said much the same in 1939: “Make it plain he is under no obligation to you.”
And on the day the newcomer no longer needs one: “the best sponsors are really delighted when the newcomer is able to step out past the stage of being sponsored.” The chapter closes, “But the time does come when even a young bird must use its own wings and start its own family. Happy flying!”