When our job is stressful (or even when it isn’t), an announcement of snacks in the break room can create a moment of weakness. When it happened to Linda, she reached for two Tools, literature and the telephone, to keep her abstinence.
“If I could control food the way it controls me, I wouldn’t need OA,” says one OA member. For years, she lived life “in the food” and in other addictions to cope with the echoes of childhood abuse, but now she is standing vulnerably in our loving program where she has found a path to healing.
Karen, who has maintained a 210-pound (95-kg) weight loss for more than fifteen years, uses the Tools of Recovery to maintain her program just as diligently as she uses tools and resources for automobile maintenance to keep the first car she ever bought new in good running condition. The road in OA, she notes, is ”not always smooth and comfortable, but it is leading me to freedom” (For Today, p. 288).