Drug Medical Information

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS: THE OVERACHIEVER WHO OVERCAME

During my school years I learned that I could get approval from my parents by being a good girl and doing well academically. I brought home good report cards and my parents were very pleased with my achievement, but I felt an emptiness that only food seemed to fill. My family did not openly display affection, and I longed for the kind of love that I saw expressed with hugs and kisses in other families.

When I realized the impossibility of losing weight, a sort of resignation set in. I accepted what the doctor told me: I would probably lose a day from my life span for every day I overate. Life seemed less worth living, anyway; I didn't care.

After my freshman year in college, I spent a summer in volunteer service at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. As a "normal" control subject in medical research, I requested a moderate diet in the hospital and my weight dropped from 200 pounds to 170 in thirty days. This proved one thing to me: I had no metabolic disorder; I was fat because I ate too much.

I came home thinner than I had ever been in my adult life and told my story of humanitarian service to a college-age church group. The idealistic president of the club was very taken with me and we were married a few months later. I was determined to continue with college and also worked full time until our first child came two and a half years later. I was still in the superachiever syndrome. I overcompensated in the intellectual areas for my painful and overwhelming deficiencies in nearly every other area of my life.

My eating was out of control. I gained weight with both my pregnancies, especially during the six months following delivery. I was totally unable to cope with the housework and we lived in filth and clutter. The children were colicky and drove me up the wall. My husband was progressing down the road of alcoholism, and sex had become very distasteful to me. I went once or twice a week to a family therapist for three years during the early part of our marriage. I appreciated the therapist's love and caring, and I became dependent on her. But I was unable to overcome my sloth, sexual aversion, binge eating and inability to cope with my children.

After eight years, I got my college degree and went to work. It was hard to find a job at 215 pounds, even with my honors in mathematics. I liked to pretend my difficulty was due to discrimination against women, but actually I was uninsurable under many company insurance plans, and some employers had to turn me down. The job I finally got served two main purposes: it kept me from eating for eight hours, since I was a secret eater; and it filled an ego need. I could do well at work and pay someone else to clean my house and take care of the children.

By the time I was twenty-nine, I had eaten my way to 240 pounds and developed the symptoms of diabetes. Again a doctor gave me a frightening talk on the danger to my life and health, and this time I followed his diet to the letter - for a period of five months and a weight loss of 50 pounds. At 190 my diabetic symptoms disappeared, and so did my willpower. Again my eating was out of control and I began vomiting after my binges to keep from regaining the weight.

Realizing the seriousness of trying to control my weight by vomiting, I went to a diet club. I lost 20 pounds in sixteen weeks and received my gold pin while binging on enormous quantities of "free" foods. After that I couldn't limit my binges to the low carbohydrate vegetables. As soon as I had one slice of bread too much, I knew I would eat the whole loaf because it would have to come up anyway. I spent a full year before finding OA binging and regurgitating daily while faithfully attending my diet club meetings and trying all their new recipes, and not losing another pound.

Then, after twelve years of an increasingly rocky marriage, I filed for divorce. In desperation, my husband went to Alcoholics Anonymous and - miracle of miracles - he got sober. I was directed to Al-Anon where I saw firsthand the beautiful changes in family members who practiced AA's twelve steps in their own lives. My husband and I decided to give the marriage another chance.

Strangely, my binging rapidly got worse and my life became even more unmanageable. An Al-Anon friend directed me to OA. She told me that with my compulsion I stood about as much chance of success in Al-Anon as my alcoholic husband would. A compulsive overeater can't fully grasp and develop a spiritual way of life while binging, any more than an alcoholic can while still drinking. To be honest with step three, I could only say I would turn over my will and my life except in the area of food. I read the OA pamphlet with the fifteen questions and I knew without a doubt that I was a compulsive overeater.

I hardly dared hope that OA could solve my various living problems, as it so obviously had for many who spoke at my first meeting. I would be content if only I could stop destroying myself with food. I desperately needed and wanted what those OAs had, so I did as they suggested and took a sponsor the first night. She said, "If you want what I have, do what I did." She had lost 130 pounds by abstaining and diligently following the twelve steps.

I had proved I couldn't do it my way before I came to OA. Now I needed to be open and receptive to the discipline in eating and in the other areas of my life which were suggested in OA. I somehow managed to abstain, one day at a time. I held on to the idea that I just had to postpone eating more until the next mealtime. I read the OA pamphlet, "Before You Take That First Compulsive Bite," with every meal, and I realized that I wanted and needed abstinence more than I wanted and needed food. I quit fighting, and I sensed for the first time in my life a real freedom from the self-destructive urge to overeat.

It was a relief to know that I didn't have to subscribe to any particular belief or faith in order to get on with the steps. I called myself an agnostic, but I knew that the OA group was a power greater than myself, that the twelve steps were a better way to live than I could ever devise, and that God for me was beyond understanding.

Gradually, I became free of the bonds of the past and willing to try to set right those things that I could. Every day of continued abstinence became an amends to my body for the abuse of overeating in the past. I began to overcome my sloth by doing a number of things every day which I didn't want to do: making my bed, doing the dishes, brushing my teeth and taking a shower. After a time, these tasks became a part of the disciplined way of life which, along with my abstinence, led me to sanity.

The sexual problem in my marriage was overcome as I practiced the third step prayer given in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was released in a large measure from the bondage of self: self-consciousness, self-centeredness and selfishness.

I treated sex in my inventory as suggested in Chapter Five of the Big Book. I came to realize that the most serious offense I committed was the deliberate interference with the development of love and withholding its expression. Overcoming the frigidity in my marriage and clearing away the blocks to the expression of love for my children, family and others were the most profound changes I experienced in OA, aside from the changes in my eating habits.

After eight months of abstinence I had the first of several deeply moving experiences which indicated the presence of a Power that was doing for me what I couldn't do for myself. I began to call that Power God. I had visited a dear OA friend who had broken her long-term abstinence after surgery. She would have given anything to move the clock back. As I drove to work the next morning, I thought of the many who had come to OA before me and after me who were losing their abstinence, and I wondered when it would be my turn, since I was no better than they were. Then it dawned on me that of course I was no better. I was utterly powerless. And yet I had been abstaining for eight months.

How did I do it? I didn't do it. A Power greater than myself whose presence I felt at that moment was doing it through me. I could accept that gift for today. And there was no reason to doubt that the gift of abstinence would continue to be available on a daily basis. Only my self-will, my decision to eat could take it away from me. In acknowledging my true source, I lost my fear and became responsible for myself.

I'm grateful that I have the disease of compulsive overeating, because it turned my life around and transported me to a higher plane. The illness that was killing me is now my chief asset.

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