I ate because I couldn’t face my life. Then I couldn’t face my life because I ate! My life was out of control from an early age.

I grew up as an only child and my parents divorced when I was two years old. My mother was very permissive. I was undisciplined and unruly. I talked too much, and I sucked my thumb until high school. Yet even after years and years of looking for a solution to all of this, I still wouldn’t let go of any of the food or of trying to control everything. Like it says in Alcoholics Anonymous, “The people of AA had something that looked much better than what I had, but I was afraid to let go of what I had in order to try something new.”

Before FA, I spent 23 years in Twelve-Step programs for food, trying to get abstinent.  I had prayed so often for an answer to my eating problem. Yet when I came into FA, I still had not been humbled enough to have an open mind. I had this theory that it was my passion for food that gave me a passion for life. I was afraid that if I let go of that, I would lose my identity and my joie de vivre. That powerful delusion kept me in the food. The very thing I thought would limit my life (giving up the food), was taking my life, one day at a time. Yet I was blind to my own faulty thinking. I thought my thinking was right and that other people’s thinking was insane. I was still unable to recognize what was true vs. what was a delusion, what was right vs. what was wrong.

In the beginning in FA, I was not able to hear the solution from others. As an accomplished food addict, I lived my life with a marked lack of humility, although I would never have known that. I did exactly what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. I hated being told what to do. I rebelled at the slightest hint of domination by teachers or even police officers. “Don’t tell me what to do,” was my line.  My life was totally unmanageable and yet I had no idea why. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t figure it out. I still saw my ideas as right, and the ideas of other people, sponsors included, as nuts!

I did want what I saw in FA, but I was in my own way, as my first AWOL leader pointed out when she suggested gently that I try to get out of the driver’s seat. I struggled my whole life to gain some semblance of control and here was someone telling me to get out of the driver’s seat!  It made no sense. Who was going to drive the car?

Well, I have since suggested to many newcomers that they get out of the driver’s seat. I’ve learned that it was my will that was getting me into trouble. I needed to practice letting go of my will in the unimportant things first, to even have a crack at the really important things.  After all, it had been my self-will that had turned against me and had me pick up that bite. Finally, after some abstinence, I could finally see that it was time to surrender. I had to “surrender to win.”

I have found that almost everything I thought was crazy has helped me to stay abstinent over the last eight years in FA. The process has been a slow one, but I am finally being humbled enough to really see things the way they are. As long as I was in charge, I was not able to find that sanity or clear thinking that would lead to a manageable life.

So it is the practical fear and respect for my disease of food addiction that is the beginning of wisdom. When I’m afraid I won’t get what I want, I just remember that what I think I want is usually just what my food addict self wants, but what I really want is recovery. Now I’m usually more able to see the difference between what the disease wants and what my higher power wants… and often that means when I want to go right, I go left!