Hi, I'm [
Anonymous] and I'm a compulsive overeater. I believe I was a sugar addict from early childhood, and I believe the disease had already taken hold before I was 10. A few early symptoms were: I was obsessed with my size and weight and thought I was fat, I never had any leftovers the day after Halloween, and I would starve myself for a week before going to my pediatrician.
The truth is that, although food was my first addiction, I am an addict through and through and could and can become addicted to any substance or behavior. As a child I before age 11 was addicted to sugar, diet soda, gum, and thumb sucking and then after 11 - cigarettes, nail biting, sugar, dieting, marijuana, gossip, diet soda etc. And in late high school college it became alcohol, being sexy, exercise, food, marijuana, cocaine (briefly), being cool and in my 20's - marijuana, food, exercise, alcohol, spending money I didn't have etc. etc.
I will say that marijuana and food went hand in hand for a while. I believed that getting stoned caused me to have binges. The funny thing was that my eating really took off 1) after I quit smoking pot and 2) after I met my husband and stopped drinking.
I met my husband when I was 28. He was in AA and coming up on 4 years. I had quit smoking pot 2 months before - though he didn't know that. And then, because I met him and decided it would be "easier on our relationship" I quit drinking and started going to his AA meetings as a "guest."
It took me 4 YEARS sitting in his meeting, week after week, to get it that I was an addict. I had always described myself as having an "addictive personality," never realizing that the reason I had an addictive personality was because I was an addict.
What happened was, we were visiting my parents. My mother had been a closet smoker for most whole life. I had discovered it when I was 11 and her sneakiness was a source of great resentment for me. What I had not been cognizant about at all was that she had also been drinking all of my life. So this one morning after we'd been at her house for some days, I smelled the morning smoke that none of us knew about, and thought about the afternoon drinks that because we all knew about weren't a problem and it hit me - a double whammy, "Oh my God. She's an ADDICT and...so am I!!!"
After that there was a long road of finding OA, getting abstinent how I defined it, defining it a little differently to allow for something I really wanted and then beginning that slipping and sliding that went on for years. My mother died. In the year after I gained a bunch of weight, concocted or tried pre-concocted zillions of food plans and ended up CONFUSED.
So my first attempt at Greysheet happened after I approached a woman in my regular OA meeting about sponsoring me. She had also gone through a difficult year and a tough relapse but for several months had become increasingly beautiful and had seemed to find the solution. She said she'd sponsor me if I did what she did. She mentioned something about Greysheet. My initial response, in my head was, "Oh f_ _ _." But on another level, I felt the stirring of hope. She helped me figure out what to have for dinner and told me to call her at 6:15 am.
It turned out that this new sponsor wasn't doing Greysheet, but she was attending GS meetings and using our food plan with a few exceptions. She required me to attend GS meetings and I appreciated the strength of recovery that I saw in the rooms, even though I wasn't ready to fully surrender to GS. Within a few months, my sponsor surrendered to Greysheet and could no longer sponsor me, so I tried doing GS "with exception" on my own. But I wanted to be part of the community so I went along with the credo, "If you want what we have, you do what we do." I got a GS sponsor and started counting days.
In retrospect, I realize that even though I was doing GS as it was written, the addict in me was looking for a way to wiggle out. It took 11 months. After 10 months, I was put back to Day 1 under conditions that I considered unfair because I hadn't picked up. It's a great story for another time, but the bottom line was that I took my will back and when I was put back to Day 1, I decided that GS was too extreme, and I could go back to what I had done pre-Greysheet.
Was I ever wrong!!! My disease had progressed beyond my wildest nightmares. My relapse started when my husband and I went to CA for the winter and I decided that since people were healthy in CA, I could eat like a normal person. So it started with allowing vegetables in my breakfast food, then taking a snack on a "killer" bike ride, and within a few days I was a MANIAC. My husband would send me to a hardware store, and I'd roam for an hour and eventually empty the vending machine, while stopping at every established to and from the store to binge. It shocked me. I gained weight so fast that the clothes I had brought with me to CA no longer fit. I was totally nuts.
I was also lucky. The necessary moment of clarity came a week after we'd gotten back from CA. I woke up, stepped on the scale, saw that I had gained 20 lbs (amazing that it was only 20) and made a phone call. That was March 23, 2000. I've been abstinent since that date.
I am very grateful for this path. Though I was miserable and ashamed that I had gained back all that weight, and it bugged me when people who had just come in while I was CA and didn't know my history would congratulate me on my day count and all that ego, ego, ego - I know in the depths of my soul that nothing else works for me and I want freedom from food. So I am 100% committed to staying abstinent, no matter what, and I will do whatever it takes - and I will pick up any tool to keep me from getting near a place where I would even BEGIN to think the food is an option.
My program expands and contracts. I use all the tools, but different tools to different degrees at different times. The way I see it, the crux of the program revolves around 1) having a relationship with a higher power and 2) having a network/fellowship of support on the journey.
So how I work my program
- Daily Call my sponsor and take calls from 4 sponsees
- Write daily
- Meditate most days.
- Daily Make phone calls to other Gsers. This is a tool that has definitely expanded and contracted, but what has happened over the last few years is that it's no longer making a GS call, I'm reaching out to friends on a consistent basis. You all have become my friends and my family. We are all in this together. And sometimes I supplement the phone calls by making calls to those I think are struggling or just people I don't call often to widen my network. We need a big net. When I get into trouble I need to be willing to make whatever phone calls are needed to solve the problem, and I am much more willing to call someone if I've called before!
- Not letting myself get too HALT. Tired is the big one for me. That's the one that erodes my willingness to go to any lengths. And I believe one of the big things we need to learn (or I need to learn ) is self- care and balance. The only times I've even come close to losing abstinence were 2 times that were only in attitude. They were in restaurants when something questionable was served and in both cases I was EXHAUSTED and RAVENOUS. The first time, my husband insisted I make calls and the second, I asked and made the requests anyway, but didn't care if the wait staff was lying through their teeth.
Anyway, what I want to tell you is I love this recovery. I love my food, I love the growth and the lessons. GS abstinence has put my life on a completely different level. I still go through stresses and struggles, but I tend to experience them fully, move through them more quickly, and get to the big picture.
This is a disease on all three levels and the recovery is on all 3 levels. And God, gets my attention on all 3 levels. Following is a table I put together that describes what I'm grateful for in recovery and how God gets my attention.
|
Physical |
Emotional |
Spiritual |
| Gratitude |
Slim, healthy, strong body
Love my food
Vibrancy
Wear the same size clothes year after year that wear out!
|
Feel my feelings. All of them.
Correctly label emotions
Mostly happy and full of joy
Sense of humor
Compassion
Stick up for myself
More able to detach
Don't react
|
Serenity
Sense of well-being
Sense of connectedness
Creativity
Ability to LOVE
Acceptance
Integrity
Honesty
|
| How God gets my attention |
Get sick
Get overtired
Feel fat
Get injured
Hungry
Overwhelming sense of well-being
|
Get cranky (tired)
Judgmental
Intolerant
Impatient
Irritable
Easily frustrated
Easily annoyed
Notice a bad attitude
Space out (take a wrong turn, misplace something)
Fearful
|
Insights
Dreams (incl using dreams)
Jokes
Coincidences
Loving people/angels
Feel connectedness
Music
|
Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best, NMW.
Anonymous
