Washington · 1938
Jackie
Sober a month or so, he sat up all night with Jim B. Two weeks later he was drunk, and Jim took him to New York. He brought many of the first members in, and died of alcoholism.
Jim B., 1955
“…all of a sudden I found I had become the sponsor of my sponsor, for he was suddenly taken drunk.”
A month or so
On January 8, 1938, Jim B. was thirty-nine, broke and shaking, in Washington, D.C. His mother would take him in only if he stayed locked in a small storeroom and gave her his clothes and shoes. An old school friend, Fitz, persuaded a man named Jackie to call on him. Jackie found him lying on a cot. He “arrived about seven in the evening and talked until three a.m.”
Two weeks later, Jackie was drunk. He had, Jim learned, “only been off the booze a month or so himself when he brought me the message!” Jim made “an SOS call to the New York Group,” and the next day the two of them went there together. Three weeks dry, Jim wrote, he had “sobered up my sponsor all by myself!”
Jackie “brought in many of our original members, yet he himself could not make it and died of alcoholism.” Jim told the story in the Big Book’s second edition, in 1955. “My sponsor, Jackie,” he wrote, was one of AA’s tragedies. He wondered “what would have happened if somebody else had made that first call on me.”
AA’s best-known sponsor drank too. Ebby T., who brought Bill W. the message in 1934, drank again in 1937, and went round and round for sixteen years. Bill introduced him as his sponsor through all of it. When Ebby died in 1966, Bill wrote that “my friend and sponsor Ebby passed beyond our sight and hearing.” Ebby’s biographer, Mel B., called that “a good lesson for AA members, who sometimes become too critical of sponsors and members who return to drinking.”
It’s January 1938, in Washington, D.C. Jim B. is locked in a small storeroom in his mother’s house, lying on a cot, sick and shaking. At seven in the evening a man named Jackie comes to see him, and he talks until three in the morning. Jackie has been where Jim is. Now he’s happy, and laughing.
Two weeks later, Jackie is drunk. He had only been sober a month or so himself. Jim finds he has become the sponsor of his sponsor, and takes him to the group in New York.
Jackie brings many of the first members in, but he can’t stay sober himself, and he dies of alcoholism. Years later, telling his story in the Big Book, Jim still calls him my sponsor, Jackie. And he wonders what would have happened if somebody else had made that first call.