As a child, my mother, (God Bless her), would break a wooden spoon over my head or crack a thick yardstick on my back. When she realized what she had done, she would calm herself down and ask me what I would like her to fix me for a meal. Consequently, I got used to feeling better when eating a meal or two. My mother would tell me to clean my plate because of the starving children in China.

I cannot blame my mother for my problems, especially since once I reached the age of reason, I continued to eat the same way as I did in my childhood years. I grew up in a family where life always centered on food and drink. On holidays all of our family came to our home because of the good food, which we all found comforting.

In my eighteenth year in the AA program I met a fellow, and every time he spoke at a meeting he would always mention that other Twelve-Step program where he lost weight (85 pounds). I would cop the biggest resentment you could ever imagine. I know now that my anger was for the way I looked and felt at 250 pounds.

I was having difficulty breathing and couldn’t walk up stairs easily. All I ever wanted to do was sleep and rest. I was wearing trousers with a stretch 50-inch waistline. I had become selfish and self-centered, just like I was in the old drinking days. I was totally addicted to food, my latest drug. There was an oversized mirror in the bathroom and it exposed too much of my body. my stomach was so large, and I hated the sight of the person who was looking back at me.

One day I was using an inhaler that a pulmonary specialist had prescribed for me because I was having difficulty breathing. The emergency medical technicians in my little town had to be called because I literally died on my own bedroom floor, and they put paddles on my chest and brought me back to life. I than became a resident of the Cleveland Clinic Hospital. Three months later I was given a heart transplant—truly a gift from God. But I still was doing a good job of eating my way off this planet.

Five years later I took an inventory of my life and realized I had become someone who I never set out to be. I was sure that I was ruining that gift of life that I had received earlier. I cried out for God’s help and a wonderful thought came to mind: call the person from AA who I had resented when he spoke of his weight-loss program. Although I had a God in the AA program, I never thought that the same Higher Power could relieve my addictive eating one day at a time, just as it did with the drinking and drugging.

This man took time out of his daily routine to meet with me at an FA meeting that he does not regularly attend, just to be of service. He helped me with a very large problem: my overweight body. He became my sponsor.

I became abstinent on September 11, 2009 and have remained so since that date and have lost 50 pounds. I know from 26 years of recovery that I must work the Twelve Steps on a daily basis. I must turn my food life over to God, with the help of my sponsor. I must use all the tools of FA and remember the pain that I was in before. If I don’t change my life around the food, that pain may revisit me again.