A Story of Recovery:
The Gift of AA Meetings: Experience from the Frontier
It is a regular Tuesday night, and I head off to my FA meeting to share experience, strength, and hope with 10 other FA fellows. On Friday night, we will all meet again for our second meeting of the week. Saturday morning I will get up early to participate in my AWOL (A Way of Life-Study of the Twelve Steps). This routine of committed meetings has become the norm of my recovery journey. But, it wasn’t always that way.
Five years ago, I started on my FA recovery with a sponsor, a phone, and 3 AA meetings. My sponsor had recently moved to the area. She had about 8 months of abstinence when we met. We were the only two people with FA recovery in our part of the state, and I came to learn that we were part of the ‘frontier’.
I met her at my moment of desperation. I was 302lbs. My soon-to-be sponsor, sitting across from me in a trim body, explained that she was maintaining a 35lb weight loss through the program of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous. She told me about the addictive nature of sugar and flour and I knew in that moment that I had found the answer I was praying for all my life. I jumped in with both feet to FA. I didn’t ask very many questions. I just knew that this was the answer. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I was agreeing to go to 3 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week by joining a FOOD program.
My first response was ‘Heck no, I just want the food part!” but somewhere deep inside I knew that, as crazy as it sounded, I was going to give the plan a fair shot. I had a few “unsuccessful” attempts at “finding” an AA meeting. I conveniently got the time wrong for one. Another time, I claimed I couldn’t find the building. My sponsor was great. She just encouraged me to double check the times before I left the house and to look for the building that “had all the smokers standing outside.” She was patient and kind but never compromising. I was not the ‘golden exception’ in FA. As a frontier member, I needed to break my isolation and hear the experience, strength, and hope of others in 12 step recovery.
When I had, yet again, failed to ‘find’ a meeting my sponsor asked me what my biggest fear was in attending an AA meeting. I told her that as a teacher I was afraid that I would be seen by a parent or former student and that my reputation in our small town would be ruined. She encouraged me to take that fear to my Higher Power and ask for help.
Be careful what you ask for! I took her suggestion, prayed, and again went to an AA meeting. This time I pulled in the parking lot and fought off the urge to run. I knew I had the right building, I knew I had the right time, and there was only one person standing outside. It was a now or never moment. I got out of my car and walked to the door and the young man standing outside smoking turned and looked at me. My heart stopped. There it was—my worst fear standing right in front of me– a former student, looked me straight in the eye and called me by name. I nodded hello and kept walking to the door. I was shaking like a leaf but I made it inside the building. I don’t remember much about that first meeting but I do remember sitting across from my former student. He smiled at me during the meeting but we never spoke. I left the meeting and went straight to my car. I couldn’t wait to call my sponsor. I had attended my first AA meeting AND faced my worst fear at the same time. (Note: in all the AA meetings that I attended after that I NEVER saw that student again. Sometimes I wonder if he really was there or if he was just an angel sent from above to help me get past my fears!)
It was not love at first sight for me and the AA world. In the beginning, I spent whole meetings justifying why I SHOULDN’T be there. I focused on everything that was said that did not pertain to me and my issues with food …such a ‘waste’ of time…they don’t ‘get’ me. It took me awhile to realize it wasn’t about them “getting” ME. My recovery depended on me “getting’ THEM. I had to come to the realization we all shared the same disease—that root disease of fear, doubt, and insecurity. It may manifest itself differently in my life but obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior was just as deadly to me as it was to them. An addiction to a substance was making my life unmanageable.
Some of the meetings I went to looked like a bakery shop exploded in the corner. I learned quickly that AAer’s don’t celebrate with alcohol –they celebrate with sugar! It was after one of those meetings that my sponsor introduced me to the FA prayer, “Thank you, God, it’s not my food.” She told me if I ran away from every place where sugar and flour was present than I was going to have a very lonely life. It wasn’t long before I was completely neutral around the food at the meetings. I was hungry for the recovery of the old timers not the sugar products .
The more meetings I attended, the more comfortable I became. I started to focus on what I had in common with the people at the meeting, rather than the differences. Eventually, after my 90 days, I even shared at the meetings. My sponsor taught me how to share my experiences without compromising their singleness of purpose. I identified myself by saying, ‘My name is Peggy and I have no desire to drink today.” That desire was based on not being able to tolerate the sugar in alcohol and the only requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking. I never mentioned food or weight. I stayed on topic and shared gratitude and thoughts on my Higher Power. I had plenty of other outlets to talk about food. I had my outreach calls, which I made faithfully, and I had my daily calls to my sponsor.