Recovery Working the Program Our Shared Solution By admin Posted on July 1, 2019 4 min read 0 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Reddit Share on Pinterest Share on Linkedin Share on Tumblr We recover together or not at all. This is the “we” in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. OA is not an “I” program. I tried the “I” program. It was all I knew; wasn’t I supposed to apply my will to problems and overcome them? But my food issues were impervious to my efforts. I was stuck. And I stayed stuck until I was brought to a place so desperate, I asked for help. I was willing to accept the help proffered, and though it didn’t really help despite all my efforts, I kept trying. I found solace in the Fellowship, companionship in the disease. Going through the Steps, particularly Step Nine, freed me from decades of guilt. I felt lighter than ever—I even lost my excess weight. But I found no serenity until I cast my net more broadly. I went to the phone meetings, and that’s where I found the OA-HOW Two-Hour format. I felt attracted to the light and serenity I heard in people’s voices in those meetings. So, despite my doubts, despite my conviction that it couldn’t possibly work, I tried this OA format. Though it still makes no sense to me, I am still doing it seven years later. I don’t need to understand it; I just need to do it. With others. Every moment I do what we say we do in our meeting—every call, every meeting, every blog post—grants me recovery from active food addiction, one moment at a time. When I’d been in the driver’s seat, there was an insane driver guiding my life with food. I had to step away and give up control to someone who could make sane food decisions for me. The OA-HOW Two-Hour Format showed me how to do this. It’s a shared solution that entails full surrender over food. My dietician makes my food choices for me. She decides how much and when and what I should eat. My sponsor witnesses my food before I eat it. Another sponsor who follows this format makes any in-the-moment food decisions for me when they arise. So, I’m just along for the ride with respect to the food I consume. As such, I live in abstinence—one moment at a time. My OA-HOW meeting offers me serenity with food and the solidarity that comes from a shared solution: a Twelve Step program, for people powerless over food, that works for me. — John-Eric