A Thorough Step 1

It is for me very important to do a thorough Step 1 even though I am already convinced that I am an addict, alcoholic and compulsive overeater. It is not hard for me to relate to me eating as a disorder that I need help with and turn to the 12 Steps for help. I have been trying to control my eating with no success. In fact I have had the opposite of success. The scale is telling me the opposite of what I want to hear. (My scale does not actually talk.) I have lacked discipline where exercise and dieting have been concerned. Instead I have been more obsessive about food. I read diet books and plans and magazines and websites while eating things I should not. I finally decided that I already know enough about food - that no new book will tell me something I hadn't heard somewhere else. I need to address the mental and spiritual and physical aspects all together and OA looks promising. I relate to what everyone says and, though I haven't met any, there is apparently fellow alcoholics in OA as well. Imagine that - an alcoholic that switches addictions!

"The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death." (Big Book pg 30)

I just realized something. During my adult life I would switch addictions. I drank heavily and it took its toll on my psyche when I was young. Then I had children and didn't drink anymore. Then came food and I vowed I would never drink out of control again. Then life and stressors came and I was overweight. I started drinking more and eating less and I was overjoyed with the weight loss. Then what I didn't want happen happened. Drinking and marijuana use and pill use took their toll and I was flattened like I never was before. Then I quit the mind-altering substances and joined AA. Then I started eating more and more even though I had vowed that I would never gain weight again. But here I am powerless over my compulsions. My experience has shown me that "no alcoholic ever recovers control" (Big Book pg 30). Like the Big Book says, "I have tried every imaginable remedy" (Big Book pg 31). I give up! The Big Book also says that "if we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol" (Big Book pg 33). For me this applies to food. I am willing to try anything. The steps worked for drinking. I believe they can work for food.

The Big Book hints on a solution to come later in the book. It says:

"Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power." (Big Book pg 43)

I say, "Bring it on!"