Drug Medical Information

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS: SOMETHING DEPENDABLE

My father was a doctor, and ours was what is looked upon as a respectable, secure family. There was always plenty of food, snacking being a favorite pastime with all of us. Who would imagine that the good times we had over food might be dangerous, that the coziness of gathering at my parents' bed to share a nighttime candy bar might be awakening in a seven-year-old an insatiable appetite for sugar that would take control of her whole life?

Yet the problem was already apparent then. I alone among the children would make my way back to my parents' bedroom to rifle through my mother's drawers for more candy. My mother was learning fast that she had to hide food from me, and learning almost as fast that hiding it didn't do much good.

Looking back, this was the first indication that I was powerless over food. I never planned to eat everybody else's share; the humiliation it caused me was great. Yet once I began eating, my judgment vanished and I could not stop.

In my first two years of high school I dieted successfully, but to do so I became totally self-centered and bitter. I was vicious to my parents, blaming them for my misery. Waves of self-pity came over me that I should have to deprive myself of everything to stay thin. As I saw it, my life was certainly a hard one, and I wanted it to end whenever my body seemed out of control.

What control I had fell apart soon enough. I gained 35 pounds in a few months. It was a time when I was beginning to care about others and the problems of humanity. I didn't know how to care about myself. I hated myself. Embarrassed to be seen, I stayed in my room as much as possible, feeling sorry for the world and sorry that all my sensitivity had to turn up as fat on my body. Again I imposed on family, this time by isolating myself from their projects, refusing to wear attractive clothes (I didn't even put on a swimsuit for two years), and talking constantly about the diet I never went on.

The awareness that nobody believed me, that I couldn't believe myself, poisoned my self-esteem. I began to feel that nothing I tried would ever work out because I was too untalented and undisciplined. In an effort to show everyone (myself, especially) that maybe I wasn't so bad, I crash-dieted while traveling for a few months. I came back 40 pounds thinner, eager to start college as an attractive young lady, a perfect daughter. A frightening episode interfered with my plans. At dinner my first night home I experienced a feeling of no control; the world seemed to be spinning around me and I didn't know how to handle it. That evening, I began compulsively overeating on a new scale.

I panicked at the thought of being fat and miserable again. I began to make myself vomit after really bad binges, each time swearing I would never do it again. Throwing up was painful physically and emotionally, but the fact that food no longer made me fat rendered it that much more attractive. I wanted it so badly, had always longed for it; now there was nothing to keep me from eating all I wanted.

The five years that followed, during which I became progressively enslaved to my compulsion, taught me that no amount of food would ever be enough for me. I lied to everyone about how much I ate. My mother developed a guilt complex because I told her I only overate at home. I didn't worry about her feelings. I just had to make sure she didn't find out how insane my eating really was. She never knew that under my bed were bags of garbage from food I carried around in my bookbag.

My greatest heartache was that I expected myself to make great strides in academia, yet my work was not very good. How could it be when I spent ten or more hours a day eating? I thought something must be holding me back from using my willpower and I sought help from two psychiatrists. I asked one, in a deadpan manner, whether I was weak. I was afraid he would say yes, but he didn't. In fact, he helped me to see the good in myself. Both doctors seemed to think that I would give up overeating when I no longer needed it. But when that day would come, I had no idea. Willpower still seemed to be the answer, and I didn't think I had any. I had been looking for an easier way in therapy. When I didn't find it, I stopped going.

Soon after graduation from college, I developed infectious mononucleosis. Bedridden for six weeks, I went on another food rampage as soon as I could get up. It was worse than ever. I moved into my own apartment to avoid the stimulation of my roommate's food. That was another joke. The only thing living alone did for me was remove the stigma of having my eating habits known. I now cooked and ate regularly until five o'clock in the morning, then tried to function that day. The inside of my mouth was full of canker sores and burns from biting myself and not waiting for food to cool. I was spending thirty dollars a day on food when I didn't steal it from the restaurant where I worked. (Everyone else stole, didn't they?) My purse was like a garbage can full of wrappers because I couldn't go anywhere without things to nibble on.

I had never given my body a rest after the mono, so quite naturally my exertions were now driving me to my bed every two weeks with another cold and fever. My mother was alarmed, as was my doctor, when my health never improved. I knew why it didn't, but I could hardly tell them that incessant eating and vomiting were responsible for my condition.

It was then that my mother showed me an article about OA. She was beginning to suspect that my overeating was a drain on my health, though she didn't know about the vomiting. In any event, I saw myself in the description of the compulsive overeater.

I went to my first meeting that week. I was ecstatic! I wanted to cry or scream with relief at the honesty I heard. These people spoke my language.

My hope was to be able to stop overeating and start living up to my high moral standards without accepting God. I was agnostic. In time, the force of good became my Higher Power, but this had one vital shortcoming: I couldn't ask it for help. I continued to flounder through life and food alone, until I read the AA book Came to Believe. It proved to be the most valuable book I have ever read. It taught me to pray. It showed me that I didn't have to be able to justify my Higher Power intellectually; I just had to depend upon it, and the sooner I stopped worrying that faith in something greater than myself was stupid and weak, the sooner relief would come.

I was lucky enough to find people who needed to hear my story because they were also caught in the snare of vomiting. It was only in having my experience be of use to others that I finally was able to forgive myself. Through feeling their pain, I was able to ache for myself after so many years of pretending that the problem wasn't me.

Food has become the least important part of my program. I never thought I would be able to say that. Today, if I am living my life right, I do not overeat. I must add that I don't view abstinence as something I go on and off. If I did, I would have to say that I go on and off living, because today for me to binge is to die. It is to shut out of my life everything I believe in. It is to be dishonest and pretend that I can stop eating without turning my life over to a Higher Power when I know I cannot. It is to pretend that there is no Higher Power than myself, when I know there is, or that there is no beautiful world to live in, when I have already found one.

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