How OA Changed My Life Recovery Lost Half, Gained Everything I am at a peculiar milestone. I now weigh 168 pounds (76 kg), and that reflects my 168-pound weight loss. It’s also been three years since I started my transformation. I joined OA in January 2013. The following September, I was sitting in my chair and purposefully eating myself to death. I felt done with life; I could no longer … Read More
Relapse Twelfth Step Within Paying Attention When I attended a Region Eight convention and assembly, I had the opportunity to see people in recovery and others in relapse. Although I have no personal experience with relapse (thank God), the only thing I can imagine worse than not having a solution (something I do have experience with) is knowing a solution exists and being unable to access … Read More
Relapse Relapse & Recovery Unboxing My Disease I’ve been in OA for almost a decade, and I’ve had various levels of recovery. In the last few years, I entered in the deepest, darkest relapse I’d ever experienced. The only thing I can say I did right was to keep coming back. I’ve recently been going through old boxes that have been undisturbed for ten years. They’re all labeled … Read More
Higher Power Tools & Concepts So That’s What the Tools Are All About 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 … Read More
Tools & Concepts The “Write Way” to Work the Steps When I first came into OA and sought out a sponsor to guide me along my path to recovery, she asked me to complete a reading and writing assignment every day. At this, I balked! I’m not that good of a writer and didn’t think I’d be capable of doing it. She was kind and gentle with me, but insisted that … Read More
Tools & Concepts Meetings are Multipliers My first few OA meetings were like stepping into another world. The meetings I attended began with members reading the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. At first, this made no sense to me. I spent my first meeting scanning the crowd while someone read the Steps. Funny, I had no idea someone was reading the keys to my recovery. By … Read More
Higher Power Trusted Angels 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 … Read More
Higher Power Ten-Cent Miracle 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 … Read More
Recovery Working the Program Transferable Skills Six weeks ago, my little brother took his own life after several decades of dealing with emotional pain. He was 44 years old and had struggled with bipolar syndrome and alcoholism since he was a teenager. His death still feels like a knife in my soul, but with the help of OA and the Twelve Steps, I’m learning to handle … Read More
Recovery Working the Program Resentment Prayer I learned early on in OA that if I had a resentment toward someone, I was to pray for the individual to get everything that I wanted for myself. After praying for such a person, I found out recently that my prayer was answered. The thing I wanted was to go back home and visit the small town in which … Read More
