I joined my first AWOL ( a 12 step study of the steps in sequence) after I’d been in FA for two weeks, and I was spectacularly afraid of the group of people pressing into the small room with stained-glass windows. My fear of people exhibited itself as irritability and anxiety when I helped set up the room. I lasted four months in that AWOL before I had a break. In my second AWOL, we had just completed Step 5 when I got very full of myself and had a break, which meant I had to leave the AWOL and go back to day one again.. When my third AWOL began, I absolutely wanted to stay abstinent and complete the AWOL. Toward the end of that AWOL, I met a woman who truly had what I wanted, and I decided to switch sponsors. We then got to be in a... Continue Reading
Before finding FA, my first reaction to life was to soothe with food. It didn’t matter if I was tired, lonely, bored, anxious or afraid. Almost before I realized what I was feeling, I found myself reaching for food. It didn’t matter if the feelings were good or bad. Any feeling was too uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to deal other than to bury it with food. I found food helped me cope, although poorly, with life. The feelings could relate to something as major as the death of a family member, or as minor as running late for an appointment. A parking ticket could lead me to a fast-food drive-through. Anxiety about a work issue could lead me to the refrigerator at 2 a.m. I never learned healthy ways of feeling or coping with life. I had no tools, no guide, no faith. But I did have healthy... Continue Reading
My wife had prepared and weighed my salad and said, “Here ya go.” It was time for me to add my salad dressing. Earlier that day, the dinner I had committed to my sponsor included eight ounces of salad with one tablespoon of vinegar and oil for a fat. After measuring and pouring on my fat, I opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a bottled dressing and poured some on my salad, telling myself, “Nobody will know; it doesn’t matter.” My wife uses other things on her salad that I, as an abstinent person, would not; but I sprinkled some on my salad anyway and ate more by hand. Over the years, I would do this time and time again. My dishonesty would mask itself but, being a man of integrity, it would always come back to haunt me in guilt. I would go to meetings where my fellows would... Continue Reading
When I weighed 212 pounds (about 96 kilograms) at age 17-18 years of age, I told myself I would never weigh that much ever again and that I would do anything to get that weight off. I began a diet in which I ate small amounts of protein every other day and I lived on sugarless snacks. I also bit my nails down to the quick until they bled and were infected and painful, but I couldn’t stop. I had to have something in my mouth all the time! My weight came down and I was starving. My dad did the cooking in our family of eight, and he would make big pressure-cooker-size meals. The food would be simmering when I came home from school or work and I just couldn’t resist trying some. But I wouldn’t take just a taste. I remember one day when I ate three or... Continue Reading
I have struggled with food for 50-plus years. I wasn’t a fat kid, but I thought I was. I compared myself to other girls continually, and when I was older, compared myself to other women. I can’t remember when I didn’t have thoughts about food and weight. Is my butt smaller or larger than hers? Are my thighs that big? I would starve myself, but not for long, because I really liked to eat. Then I would cry because I didn’t have the willpower not to eat. I put alcohol down in 1994 and have been in several Twelve-Step programs, but I never made it to the ninth step. I was in a very bleak pit of despair in early December on year and was wondering if I would be like that for the rest of my life. I’d sit in my easy chair, watch TV, eat, go to bed,... Continue Reading
