What in the world is spirituality anyway? I’d had a good upbringing in my family’s religion, but had no more spirituality than I had control over my eating. The God I grew up with was not personal to me, more like an ethereal image that I couldn’t grasp or really even believe in. He was from a book, rather than …

I believe that God’s “will” for us is only a direction, not one path for us. Because I have free will, I can choose a direction based on my character defects, yet still have things work out. That’s because I believe God works like the GPS in a car: if we’re driving in the wrong direction, the GPS recalculates and …

I am looking for any writings that give reasons why we celebrate abstinence anniversaries. I have just become the anniversary chairperson for a meeting I attend and would like to give a clear explanation of the benefits of celebrating anniversaries. Can you direct me to a writing or provide me with the reasons? We celebrate to reflect our pleasure and …

For twenty-three years, I had been active in OA but never could get lasting abstinence. So, I started focusing on the spiritual side of the Steps, immersing myself in gaining a closer relationship with my God and Higher Power. I didn’t want to just believe in a Higher Power; I wanted to know my HP on a personal level. The …

Surrender is such a simple yet profound concept. When thought about, it seems so impossible and distant, yet when practiced, it is right at my fingertips. I find this dichotomy strange. In my religion, the recognition that we need God’s help to accomplish anything in life is meant to be second nature. However, in my life, this has been an …

I came into program pretty mad at an HP who seemed not to care about me and let all the bad things happen both to me and in the world. When I started working Step Two, my Step work started demonstrating to me how limited my belief was. I began to explore and experience something greater than my limited imagination. …

Mid-afternoon triggers one of my compulsive food behaviors—munching. Every day, hungry or not, food thoughts start to pester me. One day, I asked my Higher Power, whom I call Loving Mother, to handle the urges for me. “I’ll do what you tell me to,” I assured her. “Well, it’s not really about doing; it’s just about loving.” Her reply surprised …

After five years in program, it was just this year that I came to understand the Tools. For a long time, I thought they were the program. If I wanted to be working the program, I just had to be using the Tools. A little farther along, I believed my abstinence rested on whether I had used the Tools that …

After a life of binge eating, primarily on sugar, I found my way to OA in 1991. I became abstinent right away, got a sponsor, worked the Steps, and stayed abstinent for about two years. I then lost my abstinence and was in relapse for four-and-a-half years. I became clinically depressed, gained back all my weight and then some, and …

It was about 2 p.m., and I was sitting at my desk, where I work as a receptionist. The phone calls were coming in steadily, but between them, my mind would start to wander. I could hear the vending machine in the break room calling my name. It was over an hour until my next break, but the voice was …