Deborah has endured jail, marital separation, and cancer, but today she shines with recovery. “I am now claiming six years of abstinence,” she says. “Y’all have taught me life is fun, but my meals can’t be fun. . . . It’s worth all the daily discipline for freedom from food obsession.”
“It’s that time of year again,” says Edward, “when the national focus is placed on . . . food!” Learn how Edward uses his recovery to change the focus of any holiday from food to living in recovery.
Every night, Meg went out shopping for snacks. She’d come home, stuff herself, and then suffer from bad sleep caused by her compulsive eating. “I’d feel my ongoing failure as a human being,” she recalls. But after finding abstinence in OA, she now says “I feel light-hearted and excited about life. I’m blessed with so much more.”
A healthy check-in from Rosanne’s sponsee leads Rosanne to reflect on what it was like for her before she found OA. “I wanted to be thin but not give up the food. . . . OA encouraged me with more than just food issues—I no longer felt alone.”
Even with two relapses, Christine has found that life in the OA program is immeasurably better than life before OA. “Abstinence is the most important thing in my life,” she says.
”I’d tried millions of times to have a sane and healthy relationship with food and failed miserably each time,” says Trish. After nine months in the OA program, she can now say, “I love my life.”
“A sponsor has what a newcomer wants: abstinence!“ says A.G. “I wouldn’t be able to sponsor if I was in the food.” In this story, A.G. reminds us that we are promised a lifetime solution to our problem with food, and shares what that looks like.
A collection of inspiring speeches given by OA’s founder Rozanne S. at World Service Business Conferences in 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2001.
I am a very grateful compulsive overeater with thirty-six years of abstinence. That is amazing to me, but not to my Higher Power, who asks me only to be abstinent one day at a time. The adding up of days and weeks and years is in the hands of my Higher Power. My job is … Continued
Before, I was ready to explode at any time, but now it seems that without excess food and junk food, space has opened for me to think calmly and either solve things with more serenity or . . . really deliver it to a Higher Power. I’ve reached my twenty-ninth day of abstinence. Tomorrow will … Continued