A Story of Recovery:

Pioneer on the Frontier

Some time ago in December, I attended my first “FA meeting,” an OA meeting in Chelsea, Massachusetts whose attendees, fortunately for me, espoused the same precepts and tools we now use in FA. I was overweight and very low in self-esteem. After finding a sponsor at my very first meeting, I began working the program in earnest. Following my then husband’s career meant that I had to move away from Boston just nine months later. That was scary for me. Would I be able to stay abstinent and in recovery from far away? When I left Boston, I was on Step 8 in my face-to-face AWOL (the only kind we had then). My generous sponsor worked the remaining steps with me by phone over the next several months. Finishing the AWOL meant I was qualified to co-lead an AWOL.

Over the next six years, my husband and I lived in three different U.S. states. Each time we moved, one of the first things I did was find OA meetings. (FA did not yet exist.) There I was, in Indiana, in North Carolina, and in Minnesota, hoping to find at least one OA member who might look at recovery from food addiction the same way I did—the way we do now in FA.  I was on the frontier, though no one had yet put those words to it.

In every place I lived, God helped me find one sponsee who wanted what I had. My sponsee and I would meet once a week to do a one-on-one AWOL. Working the steps together in person with another committed, abstinent member was a large part of what kept me abstinent during those years. Humility and patience were also important ingredients for making it on the frontier. I remember learning to accept small steps of progress toward stronger fellowships. If my OA meeting was not willing to vote for 90 days of abstinence in order to share, I asked God to help me to be grateful that they instituted a 30-day requirement when there previously had been none at all.

Eventually, after moving to New York where I’ve been ever since, a sponsee and I started a meeting in their city with a few others who wanted what we had and were disillusioned with what they were finding at their other OA meetings. What a celebratory time it was when our little meeting got to participate in the vote to choose the name for our new fellowship—Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous – FA! Soon after that, I helped start meetings in my own small city and then in a much larger city further west.

In those early years, living far away from that first strong fellowship I knew in Boston made me aware of how important the FA tools are. I wrote postcards and made phone calls so as not to feel alone. When I slacked off on those things, my abstinence got shaky. I did service by sponsoring people and working the steps with them. That REALLY helped me not to feel alone. I traveled back to Boston whenever I could, to see my sponsor and to attend meetings with others who were strongly committed to recovery from food addiction.

Soon,  I will return to the frontier, moving back to the U.S. state where I grew up. God is leading me to spend my retirement years near my family. I have started making phone calls to a handful of FA members living in that state, and with God’s help we will start an FA meeting. But before that happens, I will attend AA meetings to keep hearing about the spiritual solution to addiction. And I will continue to use the other tools of FA to stay connected with the help and the hope I found so many years ago.