Shortly after joining FA, I signed up for an AWOL, a meeting where we study the Twelve Steps. It didn’t take long for me to get stuck on the first step, where we admit that we are powerless over food and that our lives are unmanageable. People talked about how they had discovered they were food addicts.

I was never quite comfortable saying, “Hi. I’m a food addict.” I was a professional and to me, addiction was for the homeless and the down and outs. I was not sure that addiction was my problem. I thought addiction was something that only alcoholics and drug users are subject to.

In the AWOL, I heard one woman share that the “addict in her” was a voice in her head that was totally self-defeating. It wanted her dead. It said things like, Why not enjoy yourself now while you still can. Don’t think about the consequences. Life will never turn around so you might as well give up.  I recognized that voice! Several times in my life when I had suffered from depression, those self-defeating voices (the “stinking thinking” voices) would be loud and clear. Whenever life would present me with obstacles, that voice would pipe up and sing its lamentable tune. It would tell me that I was no good, that others had it together and I didn’t, and that death would be a sweet release. I realized that yes; I was an addict, a food addict to be precise. That day I admitted that I was powerless over food.

The next step for me was to figure out how long I had been an addict. I only started gaining weight slowly and steadily after my second divorce. I climbed from 150 to 205 pounds over a period of 20 years. In wondering whether I was an addict in my earlier life, some powerful revelations came to me. I lived with an alcoholic mom and a dad who set impossibly high standards for me. Being pushed like that was good for my academic life, but it wreaked havoc with my emotional security. I sucked my thumb as a means of comfort until I was in high school (an addictive behavior, not really appropriate for anyone over the age of 2!). After puberty, I discovered boys, and could think of little else but my vanity and my ability to sexually attract males. In my late teens I played around with sexual freedom and kept that up for 20 years, through two marriages. I was looking for love and self-worth in all the wrong places.

The voice of the addict in me is still loud at times. The Serenity Prayer helps. Prayer helps. Living an attitude of gratitude helps. I am so thankful that with the help of the FA fellowship, I have lost 50 pounds and most of the symptoms of fibromyalgia. I can run or snowshoe through the woods, and my blood pressure is at an all-time low.

It is clear to me that my addictive behaviors have changed throughout my life, but the addict in me was there from the start. I can now listen to the sweet wisdom of the second step, which teaches me to let my Higher Power (whom I call “Great Mystery”) begin the process of restoring me to sanity.