Written Text Qualifications

Saturday, July 27th, marked 6 years of back to back, weighed and measured GreySheet life for me...
I qualified Sunday at our small, south Florida GreySheet meeting, and swore I would write something about this event, effectively trapping myself...
So this is going a qualification here, of sorts...
look, here - I'm doing it - now I'll never have to do it again...
Since this is for the cyber crowd, I wanted to try something a little different...
We speak in a void, folks, and I, for one, am tired of faceless, image-less communication...
It's important - for me anyway - to have some kind of picture to go with these dehumanizing "addresses" - I read messages from you all every day, and with a few exceptions - I don't know very much about most of the lives behind those words on the screen...
I would like to try and optimize this wonderful tool of communication, so I'm going to "come out of the cybercloset" as much as possible here with a more descriptive bio than I would give in a regular share in the room - one which includes more data about my physical presence, the work I do in the world, a little family background and personal history - generally, those things I would like to know a little bit more about that would give me more of a handle on who I'm talking to when I'm speaking to someone I've never met...
We don't get the benefit of the physical rooms on a weekly basis, where we see and hear each other - and share enough about personal lives that we can begin to develop history together...
Anyone who would care to share similarly with me will be greatly appreciated...
I'm [Anonymous]...
I got abstinent in the New York Community 6 years ago Saturday, July 27th...
To me - this is still the most astounding fact about me - that I have - through this program which has somehow hooked me up to something larger than myself - had 6 years of back to back GreySheet abstinence and sobriety... Some other facts about me though, are...
I'm about 5'7", with somewhat longish blonde hair and large brown eyes...
On good days people sometimes tell me I look like a) Loni Anderson minus the breasts, or B) Kelly McGillis, though this is rare and generally only happens on really, really, really good days...
Actually, I think this has happened once.   On bad days people tell me I look like a) Carol Channing, or B) their friend's sister, an apparently ubiquitous amalgam of every forgettable blondish female between the ages of 32 and 41 they have ever known...
I am 38, born on May 1st, a May Day baby and a Taurus - through and through...
I'm an actress, teacher, director and writer, and trying desperately to keep all of those things concurrent and do them simultaneously rather than put them in an order of importance...
I currently teach Acting and Period Styles of Acting (which is acting in plays by people who are pretty much dead... see Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw - guys like that...) in a conservatory BFA Theater program at the University of Miami.   A pretty great job, with, of course, huge massive downsides that I whine about on a regular basis.   Consider though, that when I managed to stagger into the rooms, I was an actor wannabee - one of the thousands flopping around New York saying I was an actor and not doing a damn thing about it because I weighed about 200 pounds, was barely hanging onto a 20 hour a week part-time $6.00 an hour job, and was living in a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn...
In 6 years I have gone from that - to assistant professor on a tenure track job - and 3 months ago I finished a national tour of Death of a Salesman with Hal Holbrook, where I had a great small part...
Any way you slice it - this - this is absolutely and purely due to abstinence in action, and a miracle to me...
I make a living somewhere in the vicinity of a lifelong dream, probably closer to what my higher power would have me do than I would ever have gotten left to my own totally dysfunctional devices...
And I believe I have the making of a pretty great teacher...
If I can let go of those "control" joysticks - which I only have hope of doing through this program, but that's getting too darned specific for this bio...
I am the oldest child of a novelist who writes incredibly depressing existentialist fiction, and an actress, playwright, and theater director who - between themselves and five different marriages - produced a conglomerate of 7 children...
Yes, of course, a dysfunctional family...
Incredibly volatile, artistic, passionate, loving, vengeful and full of rage - and - you guessed it - alcoholic...
My entire family - grandparents on both sides, uncles - everyone, in fact - is/was/are heavy, high-functioning drinkers... Alcohol was never simply an occasional thing, reserved for parties, Christmas, or the odd closet cousin, but part of the fabric of existence, as unexceptional and familiar as brushing one's teeth...
It was bought and stored like groceries...
"Cocktail hour" was part of the ritual of daily life in my house...
It was never overlooked - ever...
For years I denied my own story with alcohol with the comforting idea that food was my problem, that - given a choice between a martini and a round deep-fried carbohydrate covered in sugar - I would go for the round thing every time... I remember joking about this...
The fact of the matter though, is that whether I drank or whether I ate - I produced exactly the same effect - when I did either one I did it until I got high and passed out, the major difference between the substances being that I used alcohol in strictly public situations - it was my key into the social arena, and certainly into that mystifying realm of intimate relationships...
Food, however - food was my lover when I was alone, which was, and often still is - the most comfortable place for me to be...
In fact, I did not get into GreySheet - i.e. - into recovery - until I had hung around some AA rooms, which is where I heard "no matter what" for the first time...
I also heard about people being "relieved" of the obsession...
At the time I was in the regular OA rooms, and I had never heard of this concept before... that the obsession could be lifted and a daily reprieve granted...
Ultimately, I had to put it all down - food, alcohol, and cigarettes...
When I share in AA rooms today I identify myself as a cross-addicted alcoholic - because to me - if I pick up one - it will all go... my body does not seem to discriminate... my mind certainly doesn't...
The eating history though... The history... AKA - the gory, bloody details... my mantle of membership... the secret handshake...
Funny, after 3 years as an outpost roaming through 3 different states, conducting meetings ad infinitum - I am stupendously bored with my own story...
Telling it again rouses in me only a groan of "bleeaaahhh, nooooooooo"...
And I remember how it made me cry and writhe for so long...
it was so painful to dredge it up...
Amazing, how things heal, I think - that I should be able to view what was sheer agony for so long so dispassionately now... in Cliff Note version, fill in the blanks yourself, for you all know the refrain...
diet pills at age eight...
fasting/dieting Atkins and Stillman at age eleven...
hitting 200 pounds for the first time at 15...
up and down...
in and out...
diet pills...
weight loss programs...
liquid diets...
diet-center...
Nutrisystem...
twice...
working for Nutrisystem...
doing Nutrisystem's advertisements...
shots...
pills...
legal and otherwise...
hypnosis...
gaining and losing 30 to 70 pounds a year, year in year out...
therapy...
psychotherapy...
women's body image therapy group...
Susie Orbach and Fat is a Feminist Issue...
behavior modification...
more therapy...
hitting 200 pounds with alarming regularity...
therapy...
antidepressants...
regular OA for 8 years...
2 fairly long periods of regular OA abstinence...
therapy...
2 magnificent catastrophic crash and burn relapses...
gaining 50 pounds in two months...
walking summer streets in chafing 200 pound thighs...
losing everything after graduate school - all momentum, contacts, prospects, life...
sliding into oblivion in New York...
running into a GreySheeter - and finding Jan Hus 2 blocks from where I worked for 2 years...
and then...
the miracle...
If you are reading this, chances are that my story is your story, I don't care how the details differ...
I am a compulsive overeater, and if you are a compulsive overeater only you know what I'm talking about, only you can empathize with what I went through...
The wonderful thing about each other's stories is that now - we no longer wail them to each other in helpless pain and anguish, desperate and hopeless for help - now what we do is possible - that we and our miracles exist...
because I could not...
could not...
could not - I could not stop eating under my own power, and oh - heavens above - for the majority of my life I devoted myself to trying to do just that one thing - and I couldn't, not until GreySheet... and so it seems still - utterly unbelievable to me today...
I am so grateful...
I come from a top weight of somewhere around 220 several years before I actually found GreySheet - I had stopped weighing at 210 and went on for awhile into a pair of massive jeans that I remember as being incredibly huge, but I never knew the worst of the worst for I wouldn't get on a scale...
After that period and another series of geographicals which eventually got me through graduate school and back to New York afterwards, my ability to get down to reasonable weight for at least some portion of the year dissolved entirely, and I struggled along for a couple of years around the 200 mark, generally sweating bullets to keep in the 190-195 vicinity, anything but to go over that 200 mark again...
I should also mention that this was during a period when I had a 15 month stint of "abstinence" in regular OA which I went to for 8 years - a viciously angry, white-knuckling abstinence that included carbohydrates and was defined only by the fact that I had no sugar and 3 meals a day that had a beginning and an end...
Never mind that these meals were enormous and often went on for 2 hours - they did end eventually, and so - in the lexicon of the general OA rooms and by their definition of abstinence being "whatever you define it to be" - I was abstinent...
Utterly hopeless and insane, but abstinent according to them...
But I knew something was wrong, and eventually lost even that tenuous grip on control and slid into relapse again...
I had never heard of GreySheet.
And when I finally did, from somewhere in the New York community - it was called the "Nazi program" - and I was warned away - that everyone in those rooms was crazy...
When I finally walked into the GreySheet rooms that Thursday night 6 years ago, I had edged over into no-man's land - 202, and truly felt more absolutely doomed and hopeless than I had ever felt in my life - which - for a chronic depressive with a history like mine - is pretty low...
It was, I felt, only a matter of time - for very quietly now, in the back of my mind, beat the idea that I would not, could not - live this way, I simply refused to put up with it much longer...
And that if I could not change it, I would quietly opt out of it...
Truthfully, this little voice was so very calm and matter of fact, I do not doubt it this day...
For I had tried it all I thought at that time... tried it all... every food program... drugs... therapy... even that last door on the block - OA... even... God... And none of it had worked...
As I said, I'm 5'7" and I have weighed right around 165 for about 4 years now, up from around 152-155 in the first 2 years of abstinence.
People are often surprised when I tell them this, and the usual response is disbelief and a quick assurance that "I don't look like I weigh that much"...
That used to reassure me, now I don't care and wonder why they say it...
I look at pictures of myself at around 13-14, before the great eruption into 200 pounds - and I see a pretty normal, but not extremely thin - young girl...
I read my journals around that time - and 165 was the "horrific" weight that I could not abide nor live with, the one that sent me through the years of hell...
Tracking the history - I have always been - from babyhood - chunky? Thick? Dense?
No delicate filigreed bone structure here.
I am sturdy and very muscular.
And never - even in the couple of anorexic periods I went through where I managed not to eat much of anything for months at a time did I get out of the 140's except for one time - at age 18 - I hit 137 for approximately 18 seconds after a prolonged period of fasting...
So I do believe that the "dream" weight I held in my mind for years - 125 - is physically impossible for this particular body to reach.
It doesn't go there...
I wear a size 12 though - so I can only conclude that I am somewhat vacuum-packed...
I have, however, begun to share my observations very specifically about this as the weight and it's attendant numbers still make us all nuts, and especially as - and sorry but this is pretty much a fact of life here folks - most of us do gain some weight back as we progress in the program and in abstinence...
And I have heard from many people who are struggling with it, including a much beloved sponsee for whom it is painfully torturous...
And God knows I do sometimes, still, so that's why I'm talking about it specifically here...
Now, because we are CO's and basically that means we are insane, many of us sometimes chalk the weight gain up to a problem with the program and we want to start tinkering...
But I believe that nothing is broken...
For one thing, there is a little known fact that as one gains years of abstinence - one also - follow me closely here - GETS OLDER...
That's right.
Metabolism starts to SLOW DOWN...
Also - lifestyles change...
health changes...
After a couple of years in the program - I got my period back after an absence of almost 3 years - a definite improvement in terms of the health profile, though not necessarily one on the convenience scale...
But it did bump my weight up that extra 10 pounds in one month and it's never gone down since...
Devastating at the time, but it seems entirely reasonable now, and gynecologists have corroborated this...
My entire menstrual cycle was a disaster area prior to GS, it has been pretty much fine since then - again - disasters of the reproductive systems are a common phenomenon often reported among those of us with years of yo-yo weight gain and loss in our histories...
Another observation I would like to make is a personal one not borne out by any scientific data but merely reached by talking to many GreySheeters - it just seems that often we do tend to weigh heavy - we do tend to have a higher weight number while looking like we weigh less that we do, so often we still don't tally with all those damn weight charts that make us psychotic even after years in GreySheet...
This seems particularly true of those of us who come from high numbers...
(If anyone else either supports or refutes this theory - I'd love to hear it...)
In terms of how I eat on the GreySheet and how that factors into this discourse - I did the usual basic maintenance change after a year - i.e. - half-cup vegetables and fruits up to a whole cup - but that is absolutely the only extra thing I've ever, ever, ever gotten, so I never talk to the GreySheet men about this if I can help it because it just makes me pout...
But also, you need to know that I don't eat light either...
I never eat an ounce of xxx when I can get my hands on 8 ounces of something else, 3 raws for lunch are the rules, and sometimes I go on a run of downright grease, (like a month of xxx and xxx for dinner every single night) and - darn it - I enjoy my food and I pretty much eat what I like on the GreySheet, having had years of forcing myself to eat what I didn't like...
I believe - unequivocally - that we must enjoy this food and find a different relationship with it - or we're going to go out there again and try something else, for I know people who have the GreySheet like an iron knuckle and that is what has happened...
I hate those kind of ominous pronouncements, but there you go...
In terms of exercise - I am also very active - lots of running around and warming up as an acting teacher, you know...
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make with all of this is one that was very comforting to me - our Higher Power gives us the body we were meant to have, not necessarily the one we would order if we could get our hands on the catalog...
I have a healthy body.
More importantly - I have a body that I live in and have genuine affection for now - and for the majority of my life, I loathed it...
So, no - I have never hit my "ideal" weight in GreySheet - but I did hit something else - the realization that this is where this body lives...
And when I stop and consider that I spent 20+ years of my life gaining and losing 30 to 70 pounds a year - it's a wonder that my metabolism still listens to me at all and will maintain any kind of stabilized weight...
So, chalk up another one...
Though certainly not across the board or constant, this kind and amount of acceptance, this relative sanity and peace around my body and food is another miracle to me, since I'm tallying these up in my life today...
I have dim, confusing memories of most everything prior to six years ago - though with my years of being out of the substance and so being somewhat "clear" - I am reconstructing my life, and more and more of what I forgot or mislaid is coming back to me now... But these last 6 years are pretty Windex clear, and this is amazing to me, a person who has lost vast chunks of time, countless opportunities, and scores of people to this disease...
So whenever I speak or qualify, I've come to realize that I tend to add, organize and tally my life up - thrilled because I can finally kind of remember things in sequential order now, having experienced most of my life as a series of random chaotic events brought on by episodes of bingeing or trying to stay on a diet...
When I speak in the rooms I add up hours and days and months and events and accomplishments and tragedies which have happened to me abstinently - because this helps me to tell myself - it helps me to realize that I have been IN my life actually LIVING it, rather than observing it in some disembodied substance fog...
And while my first 3 years were spent in the bosom of the New York community, barely functional for the first year, and then a slow rebuild for the next two - after this, you see - my life literally exploded, it took off in high gear and continues to do so...
About all I can do is to keep tightening down the seat belt and weighing and measuring...
In the past 3 years this is the current score of what I have been through - abstinently - without reaching for food, a drink, or a cigarette: I have gotten married and I am right now, even as we speak, getting divorced...
I have gone from an insolvent hand to mouth existence - to working in a profession and gaining recognition and more financial security than I've ever had in my life...
I've left and mourned my New York community and been an outpost for 3 years, moving from Michigan to Ohio and now down to Florida to take 3 different teaching jobs in 3 different cities every year, each more advanced and difficult than the last...
I've traveled and taught in Cairo, Egypt - my first time out of the states...
I've lived on the road, in hotel rooms while doing an incredible show, for more than 3 months and 10,000 miles...
I've lost my mother...
I've lost a child...
and 2 months ago - I lost my half-brother, age 26, and my half-sister, age 31 - to an overdose of heroin - both on the same day, within hours of each other...
The disease has rocked through my family, ravaged it, and it killed two of us in one day...
And I am abstinent and sober...
And so help me - it has been the foundation for me - the bedrock that kept me together enough to write that last paragraph...
Yes, I happen to be going through some heavy stuff right now, which of us isn't? But my gifts have been tremendous, the promises of the program have absolutely happened in my life, and I've been given the grace to handle the pain of the rest of the balance sheet...
This is the one thing that has not failed the test of time - the one thing that has never let me down - the one thing that delivered exactly what it promised - "just weigh and measure your food - and it will get better..."
And now it is the one accomplishment that I am proudest of - the one thing that has rebuilt my self-respect, my belief, and my hope and thus my life - this simple/stupid/amazing thing which I do with my food on a daily basis, 3 times a day, day in, day out...
This happens to be my personal path to spirituality - and a faith that works...
I weigh and measure 3 meals a day from the GreySheet, write them down, commit them to a sponsor, and don't eat between my meals...
no matter what...
no matter what...
no matter what...
My love and commitment go out to all of you over the airwaves...
I am grateful for you, for this community...
My name is [Anonymous], and I'm a compulsive overeater...