Before I joined Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), I never really learned much about the word “commitment.” When I agreed to be somewhere—a party, work, a class—I would back out if something better came along, if I didn’t feel like it at the time, if I didn’t think it was that important, or if I had some kind of mild physical symptom I later heard called “the vague alcoholic illness.” The result was that I showed up for my commitments perhaps 60 percent of the time. After I came to FA and decided it was for me, my sponsor suggested I commit to the same four meetings every week. Shortly thereafter, that became three meetings and an AWOL (A Way of Life, a study of the Twelve Steps). When I balked at meetings or something else seemed more pressing, my sponsor said that there were only three reasons to... Continue Reading
I came into Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) when it was 90-Day OA (Overeaters Anonymous) for one reason only—to lose weight. At 5’2” and 200 pounds (about 91 kilos) at my heaviest, I thought if I could only lose “a little” weight, everything would be great. The rest of my life was fine, thank you very much. Denial was working! Never having been to a Twelve-Step meeting before, this program was nothing more than another diet and I had a lot of experience with diets. You name it, I tried it. From the time I was a teenager, I had been on one diet or another. Weight Watchers, Diet Workshop, Cambridge Diet, Slimfast, cabbage soup, grapefruit, Atkins, counting calories, low carbohydrate, diet pills, shots, hypnosis, acupressure, and on and on. Almost every diet worked the first time I tried it, but once I lost a little weight I went... Continue Reading
Following a three-year break, I returned to FA. I was convinced that nothing could slow me down this time. My intention was to come back to FA and start over. I originally joined but dropped out a year later. During the time away, my father passed and my two adult children divorced and took turns living with me. One remarried and the other became engaged. I was happily spending time after work with my five grandchildren. Everything was okay except my spirit was ragged and scrapped up a bit. Because I had regained the weight lost the first time, I was feeling like a failure, physically and mentally. I had to buy my size in the women’s section of Dillard’s, my favorite store. It was time to come back and get busy. I was ready to get down to business and get happy, healthy and holy all at the same... Continue Reading
Unemployed, but abstinent, I had been looking for a job for over 18 months. I showed up to countless interviews, job workshops, networking events and more. I was reminded by this program to stay in action each day to keep my mind from going into any sort of despair about my future. On days where there was simply no action to take, I felt as though God was silent to my endless prayers, but my dear fellows and sponsor kept reminding me the goodness of my Higher Power and that I was being gifted with clean abstinence throughout the whole journey. One of my FA fellows kept telling me that I just needed to kiss a lot of frogs before finding the right job. Job searching was truly just like dating. I showed up to several promising looking job opportunities that seemed so perfect for me, yet I didn’t get... Continue Reading
After three-and-a-half years of back-to-back abstinence, I figured I had arrived. Five sponsees, leadership roles in my area intergroup, service positions at committed meetings, a general willingness to share pretty much everything with my sponsor—I was willing, able, and pink-clouding like mad. I’d learned how to enjoy family gatherings, cope responsibly at work, become financially responsible, and was even starting to explore the treasures on a dating website. These, I thought, were the promises of the program I’d been told to expect. I’d started dating a delightful man who was easy, intelligent, active, and funny. He was long-separated from his wife, still close with his college-aged daughter, and respectful of them both. No debts, financially prudent, and socially conscious—all the boxes were ticked. His sailing buddy had invited us both to the family Seder. We’d been told to expect an eclectic gathering of old family friends, union activists, a civil rights lawyer, a mother and daughter who were running the Boston Marathon, a Peruvian professor, and... Continue Reading
