Traditions Dual Addictions Q. Can people who use drugs or alcohol participate in Overeaters Anonymous meetings and pursue food abstinence? Is there a ban on this? A. If you are asking if someone can have recovery from food addiction while they are acting out behaviors of other addictions, I believe that through working the Twelve Steps with a sponsor to stop eating compulsively, they … Read More
Steps Traditions The Daily-ness of Surrender Surrender is a daily practice that I can choose or not: “the daily treatment that brings about our recovery,” as it says at the end of Step One (p. 7) in our Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition. All I have is a “daily reprieve” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., p. 85). For my recovery, taking the … Read More
Steps Traditions Accessible to All When I showed up at my first OA meeting, I did not have the desire to stop eating compulsively. I was morbidly obese and had lost and gained large amounts of weight throughout my life. My desires back then were different. I wanted to be thin. I wanted the emotional pain to stop. I wanted a reason to continue living. … Read More
Higher Power Actions That Help 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. … Read More
Recovery Relationships I Give What I Want I didn’t know what I needed when I came through the doors of OA. I wanted to lose weight, but it what I really needed was love and acceptance. I needed to find out how to love, accept, and respect myself and my relationship with my HP. Today I give to others what I needed. I don’t talk down to newcomers. I don’t tell … Read More
Diversity Recovery Around the World We All Qualify I am a compulsive overeater of a common variety, and there is little about me personally that would not fit right into the least diverse of OA meetings. I am female, white, and I have been in OA for six years with four years of continuous abstinence. I came into the rooms of OA morbidly obese and now am at … Read More
Atheists & Agnostics Feeling Supported Longtimers used to say, “Either you’ll get the God-thing, or you’ll put a gun in your mouth.” At a recent meeting, some men shared about having suicidal thoughts. I had been a part of that misanthropic club, so I may be a terminal case, but I’m not unique. The God-thing must be easier for religious folks. I can’t buy a … Read More
Higher Power New-Mother Energy When I came to OA, I was immediately attracted to the God language and knew this was the path for me because I am a rabbi and God is my business. But I struggled to get abstinent. Step One was easy, Step Two was a given, and I thought Step Three should’ve been also. My sponsor often said, “You’re a … Read More