“Okay, you are right Dad, I’m addicted to food…now what?” At the tender age of fourteen, I agreed with my dad that I had a problem with food. I couldn’t deny the late nights, leaning into the refrigerator, countless missing leftovers from the kitchen, or the fact that I was fourteen and 225 pounds. No, I couldn’t deny it anymore. But what could I do about it?
My dad printed out information about FA. That day I was able to admit that I didn’t know everything, and in fact I probably knew very little. The food had defeated me, and I needed help.
My mom and I went to a meeting and I started Program, resisted a bit, and then got into the swing of things. I got abstinent the first month of high school. I soared through life with ease, not because things didn’t come up, but because I had a higher power on my side, and I understood that I didn’t have to understand everything. I lost 85 pounds and felt hot!
However, in perfect addict fashion, I started to do the program my way. Obviously, quiet time didn’t fit my schedule, and extracurricular activities sometimes took precedence over reading my AA Big Book at night. Clearly this program just wasn’t made to fit my busy life. The irony? I didn’t have a life before coming to Program. It had been the abstinence that gave me the time and clarity of mind to go to a performing arts high school and to do countless other activities while still acing my classes and showing up for my friends. But I was unable to see this at the time. After two years of abstinence and one AWOL, I left Program. I was not going to let some stuffy old program tell me how to live my life! I mean, if I couldn’t even go out and drink, what was going to happen on my 21st birthday (in five years)?
After ten months, I decided that maybe it was time to come back when I found myself bingeing each night on “just one more hundred-calorie pack.” (It kinda defeats the purpose of a 100-calorie pack if you eat eight of them.) I came back to FA, a know-it-all. I’ve been here, I know the rules, I know how it goes. I got high and didn’t tell my sponsor, I ate questionable items and called them abstinent, and I went to nutritionists to prove that I needed to eat differently from everyone else.
I continued on this path into the beginning of college and gained two years of watered-down “abstinence.” After taking a life-improvement weekend workshop, I saw how dishonest my program was, and I told my sponsor. Now, I thought, I’ll have a real break. It was October—Hello Halloween! I didn’t even try to restrain. Abstinence? That would come tomorrow. But tomorrow didn’t seem to come. I binged myself sick. Suddenly, my life got harder and harder. I had constant food hangovers, my grades were slipping, I was consistently late to work, and I stayed home from class. Emotional breakdowns became commonplace, and I piled on more and more activities to increase my self-importance. Life was completely unmanageable.
I continued this cycle for a year and a half. I tried cocaine, met with strangers from the Internet, and lived life dangerously. I found myself buying vending machine food and sobbing on almost a nightly basis. After about a 35-pound weight gain and immeasurable insanity, I finally gave up. I called someone in Program.
“Do you know anyone who is available to sponsor?” I asked. “What is different this time?” She asked me. I’d heard her ask me this before, but I’d always judged her as being snarky or mean. Suddenly I understood that she wanted me to know what was different so that I could succeed.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I’m defeated, and I want abstinence more than anything; I am ready to give over my will.”
“But how are you going to make three meetings? You go to school and you have a job at the library, and you don’t have a car,” she said, mimicking every excuse I’d thrown at people over the last two years.
“I’ll take the bus to Tuesday and Saturday, and I don’t know about a third, but I’ll find one,” I said with gusto.
“You find one and I’ll sponsor you,” she said.
It took me five minutes to find a way to get to a third meeting. Five minutes. For three years I had argued my case that I could only go to two meetings, and I found three meetings in five minutes. She took me on as a sponsee and I came back.
Humbled and ready to take any advice she gave, since I wanted what she had, I turned off my brain’s analytical voice. I’ve come to believe that everyone has an inner advice panel; it’s the insane that follow that advice.
Today, I am abstinent, thank G-d. I celebrated my 21st birthday last March, completely sober and grateful to have abstinence. My life today can be tumultuous. I’m about to be a senior in a major university, and I’m moving out on my own. My mom was diagnosed with cancer, my roommate moved away—big things are happening. But I can be present for it all. Being present is the best gift I have to offer today. And knowing that my mom doesn’t need to worry about me at this time is one of the best gifts. Today I can show up for her, instead of the food, and that is a blessing.