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Working Through

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I’m one of those compulsive eaters with a wide experience of diets and other weight-control alternatives. For more than thirty years, I would do everything I could to lose weight and was successful in almost 90 percent of my attempts. It was wonderful—for a short time. I’d get new, smaller clothes, compliments, and the clear sensation of having settled all my needs regarding this problem. Then I’d experience the failure: My weight would soar, the new clothes wouldn’t fit me anymore, and I’d try to avoid people who had complimented me. What they said was meaningless, since I believed the success no longer existed.

To deal with this situation, I employed my secret strategy: diving into lots of eating binges. The food craving was never silent. I could stop eating and lose weight, but the craving—that hell for my compulsive-overeater soul—never abated. I wasn’t able to stop thinking about food, whether in my lessons, at work, or on dates with friends and boyfriends. My drug was and is stronger than I am, and the consequences of failing were always with me, along with isolation and depression.

I found OA on the Internet. I answered “yes” to all of the Fifteen Questions on the OA website. There was no doubt (and there never had been, even before I found OA): I was, I am, a compulsive overeater. I always felt out of place everywhere. Realizing that I am a compulsive overeater made me feel, for the first time, that I had an identity.

I got to OA, but I didn’t let OA get to me. I lived more than five years in relapse, sometimes dramatic—eating sugar caused me to hallucinate—and sometimes banal. When I was in relapse, I didn’t want to fulfill the will of my Higher Power, a loving God as I conceive him. I just wanted to satisfy my inner will, which was egotistical and insane, making me suffer and feel miserable. I had heard that insanity was doing the same things over and over, expecting different results. But I also heard that nothing in OA is mandatory; everything is suggested. So I worked the First and Third Steps, basing my actions on “acting as if.” It did work because “it works, if you work it.”

This Fellowship in OA is my health center, helping me treat the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of this incurable and deadly disease. I know the disease can’t be healed, but it can be stopped, one day at a time, if I keep my mind open. OA is even more: It works as my school, the place where I learn how to be a better person.

“Keep coming back until the miracle happens.” The miracle happens every day in my life. I have a lot to be thankful for and gratitude assures my recovery, just for today, thanks to my Higher Power working through OA. OA works!

— Estrelinha, Brazil

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