My name is Christina, and I am a compulsive overeater.
When I joined Overeaters Anonymous on December 27, 1998, I weighed 326 pounds. I was abusing food and couldn’t stop. I had tried reducing my food intake, going on diets, joining diet programs, and exercising—all while shaming myself for the way I looked and behaved with food. Between July and December 1998, I gained more weight faster than I ever had before. I knew another round with a diet program wouldn’t work.
I don’t know how I first heard about OA or knew it even existed. About five or six years earlier (around 1994), I had looked up OA in the phonebook and called to find out where the meetings were located. At that time, I could only get around the city by bus, and the only meeting they told me about wasn’t accessible to me. Fast forward to 1998, I was in counseling, trying to deal with the alcoholism in my family. My therapist suggested I try Al-Anon. When I finally looked up a phone number, it was for Overeaters Anonymous instead.
My first sponsor guided me through the steps using the OA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book. She knew about the book Alcoholics Anonymous (aka The Big Book), but hadn’t really read it. I did what she told me, and I found freedom from my eating behaviors and trigger foods by about February 1999. In April 1999, a member from my home group organized a Big Book study led by a man from Alcoholics Anonymous. That weekend event changed the trajectory of my program. I was already starting to feel restless and thought maybe I was done with the work, and my home meeting was nothing more than a support group. I am so grateful for that weekend study!
The OA member who organized the event later became my sponsor. We worked together for over 10 years, during which time we studied the Big Book, and I learned how to maintain and grow my recovery. I was also encouraged to seek and study OA and AA literature independently.
I am setting up my blog to discuss the 12 steps, highlighting the pitfalls and successes I have observed in my own practice and in those I have worked with. I also aim to explain some of our twelve-step language, hoping that the words we use carry depth and weight for those still suffering, new to the program, or long-timers needing a new experience with the steps.
These are my observations and experiences; I do not speak for OA as a whole.
I was taught that the only way to achieve and maintain recovery was to complete all the steps (in order) and to continue practicing them. This is hard work.
I believe that, as a fellowship, we tend to overcomplicate the program. When I overcomplicated the steps and life, my Big Book sponsor taught me the simplicity of the Steps through the “Big Book.” When the old hetero/male-centric/Christian language in the “Big Book” made me want to gag, my sponsor taught me how to engage with the text and understand the deeper messages and meanings.
This is the gift I hope to pay forward.
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