300

Today is my first ever 30th day of back to back abstinence. About two months ago when Sam called me up on Mother's day morning and told me that he'd lost his abstinence after FOUR years, I really just wigged out. He couldn't be my sponsor any longer and I would have to find a new one, but the real damage was the realization that even if you've been straight up and down for that long, you can still fall off. I was seriously confused. Don't we get any respite? Doesn't this crap ever have an ending of some kind? I knew in my mind that people lived with their compulsions for a lifetime, but I didn't really understand it until then.

So I ate and ate and ate. Two weeks of practically nothing but junk and I gained back 20 pounds all the way up to 327. I was despairing hardcore and I didn't know what I was going to do. Luckily I went to my men's meeting and took the 're-commitment' chip from the chipster and got another sponsor. It's a shiny sliverlike coin with the OA emblem on one side and the serenity prayer on the other. If I made it to 30 days I would get another one, so I focused on that. Somehow it helped. My new sponsor is an amazing dude named Jerry and I can only hope that he has better luck than Sam did.

Now I'm down past my previous low and I'm feeling really healthy and energetic. My clothes are falling off of me and I have no money to replace them, but it's only a problem every so often. My wife is dieting too so we can both bitch about food now, which is a nice change. I have to admit that I've been skating through these days, not really working program very well, just calling, praying and weighing my food, but I think it's enough for now. If I did everything that is usually recommended, I'd be working two jobs instead of one. Perhaps it's gets easier as you go.

I just wanted to get all that out and say that I'm still here and still in OA. I'm changing the name of the blog to something more up-beat because I feel like it. Talk to you next time.