Maddie has been abstinent in OA for one week. “It’s terrible to admit . . . a destructive obsession with food,” she says. “But until we are ready to admit defeat, our abstinence will be on shaky ground.”
”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.”
Jennifer’s childhood left her hungry for love, and that opened the door to an obsession with food. After thirty years of binge eating and diets another door opened: the door to recovery through OA. A year later, Jennifer can say, “I know I am worthy, and I want to nurture my authentic self and heal old wounds.”
Desperate and exhausted after an all-night eating binge, Jessica wrote a letter to her food addiction, and spelled out every scary, uncomfortable, and honest thought. After two years in OA, she now sees how writing that letter made it possible to find recovery and a worthwhile life.
“It is because of OA that I can miraculously hold an addictive food in my hands and not have it speak to me.”
“It was only a few moments into my first meeting that I realized it was not about the weight, but the way I was leading my life,” says Marti, who reflects on her one-year anniversary of abstinence from compulsive overeating.
Bonnie, a longtime OA member, came into OA as a teen in the 1970s and reflects on the challenges and benefits of fitting in with older OA members. Bonnie says, “More young people who need OA are out there … I want to be the hand that says, “Welcome to Overeaters Anonymous. Welcome home.”
This episode explores the nature of the disease of compulsive eating and the willingness it takes to begin the recovery journey. Some refer to the state of being just before accepting the OA program as “Step Zero.”
Listen to OA members share at a real OA meeting about OA’s First Step: “We admitted we were powerless over food—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
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.