Today is it. I don’t have to do more than that. I’m grateful to my first sponsor for drumming into me the concept of “one day at a time.” When I worried about the future, she’d remind me to look down at my feet and say aloud 1) where I am standing, 2) what day it is, and 3) “That’s all there … Continued
The list of amends to make in Step Nine may be long, but it is guaranteed to be finite. Even in a difficult Ninth Step, the promises still come true! “And,” this writer reports, ”I am able to stay abstinent . . . one day at a time!”
“The Fifth Step: what a daunting Step it was for me as a newcomer,” says Anonymous. “But I can remember the feeling when I was done . . . I was relieved.”
Tina, a recovering compulsive overeater, and Gloria, a compulsive overeater and food addict, host this workshop on Step Nine: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” They give specific examples to show what making amends can look like in different situations.
Stephanie, a compulsive overeating, and Nancy, a gratefully recovering compulsive overeater, host this workshop on OA’s Fifth Step: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Ronnie, a compulsive overeater, and Tina, a recovering compulsive overeater, host this workshop on Step Eight: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.” For Ronnie, the accountability of Step Eight is what differentiates the OA program from talk therapy.
Gloria, a compulsive overeater and food addict, and Neil, a compulsive eater, host this workshop on OA’s Third Step: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
Tina, recovering compulsive overeater, and Ronnie, a compulsive overeater, host this workshop on OA’s First Step: “We admitted we were powerless over food; that our lives had become unmanageable.”
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.
Before OA, food ruled Dodie’s every waking moment, even from a very early age. In college, Dodie weighed 215 pounds (97.5 kg) and felt trapped in ugliness. When she realized she had a problem with food, she found OA, and now maintains a 85-pound (38.5-kg) weight loss.