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From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
On the Ultimate Answer

Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!

There was a period when I hated my sponsors. Of all the remarks they made to me, none upset me so much as this one. It didn’t seem to matter what I asked or said to them—whether I complained of constipation, my boss, sore feet, or the latest thing my kids had done—their reply was always the same: “Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!”

Then I figured it out. If all of the A.A. literature were somehow destroyed in a catastrophe, I still could stay sober. All I had to do was to stop fighting it, not drink, and go to meetings. I finally saw my sponsor’s cruel remark in its true colors—a definition of the A.A. program in one line. So I did what they said. I hadn’t realized how well I had learned the lesson until I recently caught myself telling a newcomer: “Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!”

It works, and to A.A. that’s the only test that matters.

This is the last of Things My Sponsors Taught ME – by Paul H.

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