319

So since December I've snagged a new food sponsor, and I think he's a keeper. We're calling him Sam. I don't think for a minute I could have lost all the weight I have lost in these months without his help, and I thank the Goddess he's with me.

He's another one of these guys that raised his hand to become a sponsor in response to the "Service" tool. In the 12-steps it is thought of as the fact that in order to help ourselves we have to reach out to others. When we are engaged in honest service, aiding those further down the scale than ourselves we gain perspective on our own disease and therefore gain another tool to use in our own recovery. At it's most grandiose it means passing the light of spiritual questing and healing into the dark personal corners of the world, in the most basic light it is a way for recovering addicts to keep busy. After all I can't eat twenty Ho-Hos RIGHT NOW if I'm leading an OA meeting or on the phone with my sponcee. They will notice.

It seems to me to be a sort of pyramid scheme of healing. The gifts and labors of program kind of flow back and forth between the members, and I think that this friction is what really keeps people involved and spurs folks onto recovery. If you are doing it right both sponsor and sponcee lean on one another.

In my example, Sam is clean and has his food where it belongs, but he has other major problems in his life. He's been out of work for awhile and his unemployment is about to lapse. His chosen profession in the IT sector is really sitting in the doldrums right now. The pallor on the markets digs into profits, which means less income trickling down to the offices, which means less money to new computer and software sales over all. That being the case, the offices are less likely to incorporate new software and new technology solutions overall into their businesses, and that is where it's hurting Sam. So he talks to me about it. I hear about his interviews, what happened with his online applications, who screwed him over and who's headhunting him for jobs he can't afford to take. I can tell he appreciates the opportunity to get things off of his chest, and I am only happy to listen, but what really gets me is what I realized next.

He wants to hear about my issues and problems too. When I start to talk he allows me long pauses and doesn't interrupt, and usually offers some perspective on what I'm going through. Amazing, no? I've spent my life making sure that I don't complain and that I am cool and collected in every situation. I think it helps in a lot of instances, but it is isolating and can give people the wrong idea. With my former sponsors, I hardly ever told them of my hardships unless it was directly related to program, and even then sometimes I held back. Who wants to listen to me grumble and whine about my life after all?

Well, in this sponsor relationship, if you aren't giving up your problems to this guy you start to look kinda snobbish. After all if I'm in program I obviously have problems, right? Why hide them? Why even have a sponsor if I'm not sharing with him? How can he even know how to help me if he doesn't know my problems? It makes a lot of sense to me now, but before I guess I was expecting mind readers to help me with my eating. My knockout wife has been feeling like I have been shutting her out too, so this works on both fronts. Sometimes it's funny how program carries into other aspects of life.

320

I've had 21 days of back to back abstinence to this point, and I've lost 57 pounds. I was at my men's meeting recently and they were talking about the tools. One of course is writing, and this I had not been doing. I did start my fourth with my step sponsor but I haven't seen him in awhile and that project has totally stalled out. I intend to start up again but I don't have the time to get out and go to my sponsor's meeting at the moment (more on that in later posts).

At any rate I realized that this blog more than covers the "writing to get out our troubles" aspect of the tool. I also intend for this to be of help to others at some point who have started down the path to recovery, and I am remaining silent during one of the most difficult parts of the process. The beginning. It's been a crushing series of realizations and periods of emotional turmoil, so writing hasn't aways been the first thing in my mind. And fuck if I am not lusting after the food. So bad. Yesterday was the worst in this current stretch of abstinence. It was the first time I've ever felt so low and I didn't eat. Every drive-thru and supermarket was a naked siren.

I don't even know how it gets so bad. It's just food! I am amazed at my ability to crave the stuff. It can't be rational or normal. More than anything this shows me the depths of my spiritual disease. That thing that drives me to eat is me, and what I am is damaged in some serious way. I really don't have any idea who's fault it is, I am just trying to live with it without killing myself in the process. That's really how OA is supposed to work. Allowing sick people to understand how they are sick, and helping them to live outside the bounds of their addiction. In the end you are really trading one thing for the other, but with OA you are more healthy and sane at least.

I'm not sure what I am talking about here in this post, sorta rambling I suppose. I guess I am here to say that this isn't easy, but if you are like me, you need this. That's just how it is. It's surrender and denial, or arrogance and death.

348

So it's been 11 pounds since we talked last. Looking at this blog really brings things into perspective for me, it's quite a gift even if I am the only one to read it. So thank you Google, for creating blogger and maintain my tripe for eternity on the internet, and also thank you to the Goddess of Earth for giving me the serenity to even attempt this. That is, my recovery.

Now I'm really starting to sound like those old bitties at the meetings I go to. I've not had anything near to perfect abstinence; and piece of bread here, a handful of nuts there, but I have not binged on cookies or ice cream or candy once in about five weeks. And let me remind you, that binging is something I desperately want to do. I want to buy a bag of cookies and just eat till I can't anymore. I want to go to a McDonalds and order everything on the menu. I want to feel sickeningly full. I want to despair and give up this program, my car littered with candy wrappers, the peanut/chocolate grease still laying thick on my tongue and then proceed to plan my next gluttony fest. Seriously, I really do. Yet somehow, I'm not.

Nothing could have stopped me from going out and doing exactly that before, I can see it happening now, actually in just 15 or 20 minutes from now. Walking into the store, finding my junk, going to the register... Compulsive Overeating is so totally a sickness. I have daydreams about freaking Ring Dings and Ho Hos. I actually regret this program in a lot of ways. I want to eat! And now I can't, but I really wish I could. More than anything, almost. What insanity!

I know that all my body needs is what I am giving it. That's all. I stay fed and continue living day after day, so I know it's true. What I really want however is VERY different.

Is this abstinence? Can it be called 'recovery' when I crave these things so much? I am told that these feelings will pass in time, but I have no idea how. THAT would be the miracle. THAT would affirm my Higher Power. Not wanting to gorge on cakes and desserts for every moment that I am awake, I'd like that. Loving my salad, or lusting for my bran cereal the way I do for Chubby Hubby would be good too.

359- Here comes the crazy

Weighed myself again. Wasn't supposed to. Lost two pounds. Was not enough. I sat there and freaked out, wondering if i'd plateaued or was eating too much or whatever. I was about to start cutting more food out of my plan without consulting Bill. Two pounds in three days is pretty damn good as far as I know but in that ten or fifteen minute span, I was really desperate to lose more weight. Somehow this is a feeling I have never had before.

I want to lose weight for health and image reasons (becoming a sexy stud among them), but I never considered doing anything drastic about it. OA is full of bulimics, compulsive exercisers, anorexics and others. I never did any of those things. I never felt so desperate as these people seem to have been. Also, I really liked eating sometimes. I had gotten to the point where scarfing a bag or Oreos in the supermarket parking lot was a pleasant experience. Sometimes.

People have always told me that I'm comfortable in my skin, in my voluminous skin. I felt that way as well in an image sense except when in front of a mirror. I was always surprised at my girth. I still am. I'd always think, "Who's the fat guy?"

What drove me to OA was the physical labor of just getting around and the fear of illness. When I got my first taste of abstinence, I realized I was crazy too, but now it feels like I have a different crazy coming on. The 'after school special' kind of crazy where I HAVE to be the prom queen or something. That I must get thinner even faster. Is this good? A step forward for me, joining the body-zeitgeist of society? Gawd I dunno.

I know that I'm getting a little desperate to see results. This weighing I'm not supposed to be doing is evidence to that. It feels like if I'm cutting off this limb of mine, the eating limb that I could always count on, the friend that was never busy, that I should be getting the kickback of being thin. NOW. 18 pounds lost apparently does not turn you into the at-stud uber-male. Well that implies getting loads of sex too, perhaps I should warn my wife about this so she can clear her calendar. Heh. But that a ways off.

The point is if I'm not happy now, when will I be happy with my body? Was I ever really happy with it at all? I can't binge anymore. I just cant. And going forward I must measure my food and stay on plan. When am I going to be happy about it? That's what I want to know.

361

Wasn't supposed to get on the scale until January 1st, but I did anyway. I know the reasons why Bill wants it that way but, I was weak. As a matter of fact I've been lying to him about a few things. Nothing major, but when you call in your food every night and you were too full to eat a salad along with you pile of cooked veggies, 6ozs of meat and a baked potato, how do you tell a guy, "Hey I know I was an eating champ yesterday but now I just can't finish what's on my food plan!".

When I lie usually it's usually about things I didn't eat as opposed to things that I did, though once I ate a quarter of pita that came with a lunch salad. Flour is a no no now. I don't seem to be getting the same kind of crazy hunger all the time this time, my first bout of abstinence was much rougher at this point but that's not a big deal.

I read in the big book and have heard it again and again in meetings that this is a program that requires absolute honesty, both with ones self and with the outside world. It's the outside part that I can't hack it seems. Lying was always the way I knew I could evade all responsibility, that no matter what I could soften things for myself with a few well placed words. Growing up there were very few people that this would not work on, so it became a major habit for me. It was also the way I could hoodwink people I didn't like to feel better about myself. I would lie just to pull one over on you, just for kicks. As my relationship with my wife deepened, it became obvious to me finally that I couldn't go on like that. So the lying stopped, mostly.

What began then was a regime of subtle omission and misdirection. Rather than conjure up huge events and story lines for myself to have lived it was smaller things I played with, especially when reality reflected poorly on me. It worked for a long long time, but I was caught in stupid, senseless lies a few times and now I am TRYING to knock it off. It's been better, but when I'm not thinking... out comes a lie.

It's hard for me in a way I think because there are things that I have told and retold as amazing exploits from my past (usually funny things), that my wife and friends still think are true. People that I never met firmly placed in her history of me. It isn't as grand as the tales I'd dream up when I was younger, but it more like "Remember that time when..." and "Where is so and so now? They sound really cool. We should look them up!" It's a kind of stupid shame that I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to get out from under. You my humble reader, are the first person I've ever mentioned this to. Don't tell anyone, alright?

At any rate, leaving out financial details or the fact that I surf for porn when she's not around seems somehow smaller in comparison to the fake events I created. In those particular instances there are bunch of other issues tied in, but my point is that being honest with her and everyone else seems really hard for me. So Bill has been lied to, and I'm guessing my program has suffered for it.

That was one of the major issues that I had with Josh, the lying to him started there just like it did here. In the end I was in total denial of my fucked-up program, in a state where I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I didn't TELL him about it. Go figure! No wonder I stopped calling him. I felt so terrible about it I gained back 30 pounds in less than a month. It wasn't his fault clearly, but perhaps I wasn't ready. Am I ready now? I can't know. I hope so.

Things have been much better for me health wise, and I'm gaining belt notches and stuff like that. It's all very heartening.

And now this

370

Get used to seeing that on my posts as my new sponsor only wants me weighing myself once every month. I knew that jumping on the scale everyday during my first bout of abstinence was not a good idea, but at the time it was the only thing I was getting out of program. Now that I am in step study the focus is on having a spiritual connection with my higher power. This connection is what is going to sustain me now, so the book and Bill say.

Now we had arrived at Step Three in the process. In regards to that I am a man who has had congress with the divine and the not-so-normal by my own estimation, and as a result I have no delusion that divinity is not real or that there is no guiding force in the cosmos, so why is Three such a hard sell? I just can't see this power as a part of myself. In it's presence I was so confounded by it's size and scope, it was an impossibility ingrained in every little thing that exists. You hear this a lot if you study these sorts of things, it was for a moment as plain as my hand or a tree but the feeling of this presence was temporary.

I can remember the feeling but do not have a way to put that knowledge to use. Also, and I think this is the crux of the issue, I felt this power was separate from myself. Somehow I was inert in this world of the 'divine body' that I had sensed. Was it simply because I was an observer? Or was I too distracted to notice my own role in that fantastic place? Even now I know that that power is in the keys I am typing on and in the air I'm breathing, I simply cannot sense it. Now I'm not telling you that I am a prophet or that this experience was even planned in any way shape or form, but it certainly did happen.

Now how in the heck is that supposed to help me stop eating? A fair question I think. In that moment I sensed the being that encompasses us all, not a god but a goddess. An Earth Mother to be exact. She did not create us in her image, nor did she send floods and trials upon a gang of well informed unfortunates in ancient times, she simply is. That being said and understanding that all of her creations are equal in importance, why is my eating problem going to stir a being with nary even a concept of a Ho Ho? This is my problem.

I find myself reading "We Agnostics" and finding much that I relate to. The judeo-christian Yahweh is omnipotent and all powerful by report, so imagining such a being using an influence of a sort to keep boston cream pie from my mouth makes sense. After all if he is "all-powerful" he's got power to spare. Why not help a soul who is suffering if he prays? I certainly would. Unfortunately I am cursed with divine knowledge as opposed to religious knowledge and the situation in the big book does not add up for me.

I'm not saying that I don't believe that millions of christians also feel this disconnection from their God, I'm just sitting a different part of the same space. For me the divine is a fact and the conflict is my role within it, for the typical christian my guess is that the existence of the divine itself is the issue and the resulting conflict therefore being religious teaching versus reality, or at least the perception of reality. In the end who knows? I've been wrong enough times to know I will probably be wrong again.

I can say with an amount of certainty that I think OA is working for me right now. Bill is pretty much exactly what I need in a sponsor and the step process is going to be good for me. It's funny, even as I am writing this I am having terrible food thoughts... :P It's nice to feel that I won't be giving into them today at least.