In a clinic for alcoholics, sober, healthy, well-dressed people accompanied sick, often intoxicated patients and waited to go home with them. Interested in Alcoholics Anonymous as the most successful group project of our time, the author studied these 'sponsors' to find motivation for the loss of time and money involved in the activity. He concluded that sponsorship afforded these ex-alcoholics an ego defense against their own emotional conflicts, namely, the acting out of the fantasy of rescuing the parents from a distasteful sexual relationship.