Now it's more like two or three a week, and there have been weeks when I haven't gone at all. It's not uncommon for attendance to lessen with time. On the contrary, it's the usual pattern, although there are some stalwarts twenty or thirty years sober who still get there seven days a week. Sometimes I envy them, and other times I figure it's what they do instead of having lives of their own. The program, after all, is supposed to be a bridge back to life. For some of us, as my sponsor occasionally pointed out, it's just a tunnel to another meeting.

It's been a couple of years since my sponsor died, and it seems to me I went to more meetings before then. He was killed, shot dead in a Chinese restaurant by a hired gun who mistook him for me. The man who shot him is dead now, just about everybody involved wound up dead, and I'm still alive and, more remarkably, still sober.

They're pretty clear on what you should do if your sponsor dies or drinks or runs off with your wife. First you get your ass to a meeting, and then you find yourself another sponsor. That's the conventional wisdom, and I have no quarrel with it, but it's generally honored in the breach by those of us who've been sober more than ten years or so. For my part, I couldn't see anyone taking Jim Faber's place in my life. Early on he'd been a tower of strength and a source of essential counsel, but over time he became more of a friend and less of an adviser. Our standing date for Chinese food every Sunday night was a time for us to talk about anything and everything. I'm sure it helped me stay sober, and be comfortable in my sobriety, and I suppose that was the point. But there'd been a lot more than that to the relationship, and I've never felt inclined to hunt for a replacement.

I've sponsored people myself over the years, on and off. A year ago I had two sponsees, one sober a few years, one fresh out of rehab. Neither one looked to me like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but sponsorship's a practical relationship, designed to help both parties stay sober, and I'm sure I went to more meetings and stayed more active in the program because of the role I played. But one of my sponsees- the new one- drank and disappeared, and the other one moved toCalifornia, and no one had turned up to take their place.