Kaitlin’s sugar addiction started in middle school after her parents’ divorce caused a number of stresses in her life. She later discovered bulimia and started overexercising, using laxatives, and vomiting. Today she has a new life that she once thought was impossible.
ane. That’s the word Charles uses to describe his relationship with food before OA. He went to his first OA meeting only to support a friend, but he did not recognize his own problem. Years later, when he could no longer control his weight, a growing sense of hopelessness made Charles ready to hear OA’s message.
A preacher’s son, Joe’s compulsive eating was born when he became an adult and renounced the religion of his upbringing. From then on, Joe says he was “running too the food or away from the food.” At Joe’s first OA meeting, he felt hope seeing that others had overcome their food obsessions.
Bob was already in shape and at a healthy weight but learned in OA that his exercise habits masked a food addiction. He describes how OA gave him a safe place to find recovery and build a productive life.
Food was Bob’s sole obsession. He was selfish with food, and his unapologetic overeating even drove away friends. As an agnostic, he was uncomfortable hearing talk about God at his first meeting, but he stuck around, and now his life is changed completely and for the better.
“It took a long time before I believed I am equal to others, says one OA member. “I think one of the reasons this happeend is because I heard the Twelfth Tradition over and over at meetings.”
“The Eighth Step is the springboard for creating genuinely healthy relationships, based on honesty, humility, balance, appreciation, and objectivity,” says one OA member. Sometimes, though, becoming willing to make direct amends takes time.
Dorothy cheated her employers to the tune of thousands of dollars, and she was hopeless to pay back such a large sum. But her sponsor encouraged her, she became willing, and Higher Power responded in kind.