The word "sponsor" is absent from the first 164 pages of the AA Big Book. Some thirteen or so years later, the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions appeared. And so did the sponsors. They loom large in the Twelve and Twelve. They frequently speak or act collectively: "our sponsors declared that ...." or "our sponsors pointed out ..." or "our sponsors come to the rescue." Or they speak at inordinate length: several times, several supposed monologues by sponsors are given in direct speech.

Perhaps tellingly, the word appears only twice in the chapters on Steps 10, 11 and 12, and no longer do sponsors fulfill some omniscient role. In Step 10, the sponsor appears as a possible alternative to a spiritual adviser. And in Step 12, the reference is backward-looking, rather than to any role the sponsor now fulfills.

In some of his books, the one-time popular author Scott Peck suggested that everyone should join a 12-Step program because a sponsor could act as a sort of free therapist. I have been sober a very long time, and I never yet saw a situation where a sponsor could have or should have acted as a free therapist. Therapy should be left to professional therapists. In fact, I've never been able to see that a sponsor has any role other than to comfort and encourage the newcomer and persuade him to get through the first nine Steps as fast as possible. Once the last three Steps are embarked upon, in my experience, the "sponsor" merely becomes an equal, another close friend, one of the close-knit family to which the recovering addict must adhere: that select group who work 10, 11 and 12 continuously, every day.