It is a proven system. . . . It works whether you have lived it or have not yet lived it . . . Come back a week, a month, or a year later, and you will notice the reality of emotional maturity.
One cannot walk a lifestyle of living the Steps without the Steps working within them. I guess a good illustrative analogy is watching plants grow. It happens naturally. Nevertheless, there needs to be sufficient sunlight, water, proper temperature, and nutrition within the soil. You may gaze upon a meadow of grass for hours and nothing seems to happen. However, come back in a week or so later and look at the same area, you will notice a change.
A clear understanding of this concept within my life is how I embraced the Twelve Steps when they were first introduced into my life. I am a dual Twelve Step recovering addict. I have 14 years of recovery in the OA program; however, I walked into another fellowship’s Twelve Step rooms for the first time in 1989 when I joined that fellowship. I got a sponsor. I kept coming back to meetings. I did not pick up a substance to comfort my pain. I had no mental interpretation of what the Twelve Steps meant or how they worked, so my sponsor guided me through each Step’s philosophy. My sponsor told me that if I kept coming to the meeting, if I did not pick up a drug substance, and if I focused on applying the literature, then the Twelve Steps would naturally work in my life. I listened to what he said. My first sponsor, who was with me for five years, guided me to understanding how to live in sobriety. This is an example of me living the Steps.
Regardless of my spiritual understanding of how the Steps work within my life or my having worked the Steps in another program, working the Steps in OA has been keenly important. I would tell you my OA journey was “merry and Dixieland music,” and I lived happily ever after, but that would not be true, because even though I had a thorough understanding of the Twelve Steps when I joined Overeaters Anonymous in 2010, I found myself relapsing into compulsive eating on a regular basis. For some reason, the depth of recovery in my other fellowship did not resonate with my food addiction.
Even though I had a thorough understanding of the Twelve Steps when I joined Overeaters Anonymous in 2010, I found myself relapsing into compulsive eating on a regular basis.
I’ve had two sponsors in the time that I’ve been a member of OA, a period measuring over a decade, and I worked all Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions with both my sponsors. I honestly believe that the best evidence of one who has worked the Twelve Steps is a thorough development of Step Four, witnessed by a Step Five, and then reflected upon continually in Step Ten. Steps One, Two, and Three are the foundations to build your faith towards spiritual development, and for me, the flowering result has been an overflow of gratitude that naturally took over in Steps Eleven and Twelve.
Much like any type of success in life, one’s abstinence can reflect a certain appearance. A healthy body weight can be the evidence of reaching abstinence, but we all know . . . OA is a “disciplined plan of eating” program not a “diet” program. For me, my weight is none of my business: abstinence from compulsive eating is the truth of traveling a road of recovery in the OA program.
The Twelve Steps are the means used to help one connect the psychological, spiritual, emotional, and mental aspects of the disease of addiction. It is a proven system. It works whether you have lived it or witnessed other people living it. It works whether you have not yet lived it or witnessed other people who aren’t living it yet. Come back a week, a month, or a year later, and you will notice the reality of emotional maturity. One who is working the Steps properly will develop and grow over a period of time.
—Tony B.
