The "Light A Candle" meeting of Overeaters Anonymous in Brentwood, CA

I would now like to introduce our speaker for tonight, Shiva. Hi. My name is Shiva, and I'm powerless over food. I have to say that slowly I have to say that slowly or else I could forget. And, and if I don't look you in the eye, then it just doesn't mean as much.

I've learned that here. There aren't really any words that I could express or articulate that can explain the depth of my gratitude today, right now, in this moment, that that I'm here, that I even know about this program, that I'm willing to show up today, and If you don't believe in miracles, if you believe in a power greater than yourself, God consciousness, whatever you wanna call it, I ask you to look around the room. Look at the people who are sitting next to you because you're swimming in miracles at this very moment. You know, I see people in this room who I've had the the honor to know and to hear their story and their story and their peoples among us who have walked through such un unspeakable hell and to come out the other side still here, still abstinent, no matter what. And I don't care how greatly your struggle is today or what you might be going through in this moment.

If you're here and if you're willing, there is hope. There is hope. For myself, I, well, since I've come in, I've I've always heard that our primary purpose is to carry the message. I've been hearing about the message. So I wanna get right out in the open with the message that I wanna carry tonight is that abstinence is possible.

Freedom from the obsession of food is possible. I don't care if you can't stop eating, you can't stop throwing up, if you're anorexic. Whatever your story is, there is real help here in this program and in the 12 steps. And I'm reminded of that every time I go to a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous. I'm here for one reason, that this program saved my life.

I don't say that in a kind of cavalier or dramatic way. It's my fact. And it's the it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Plain and simple. I mean, I am here because I relate to food the way an alcoholic relates to alcohol.

The way a heroin addict relates to junk, that is my relationship with food. And it has been that way my entire life. Food obsession, free from the obsession, and I wanna be comfortable in my own skin. And I know if I keep showing up, and I know this because I've seen it in people who have been abstaining for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, whole life. And that's the only reason why I'm here because I'm sure we all have something better we could be doing on a Saturday evening.

But I suspect we're all here for to bask in the globe's recovery, of recovery, to take part in the great miracle that is this program. I think of rock bottom for myself. Myself. I think of, think of July 2,001. I was invited wedding was a And I think the wedding was a week away, and I still hadn't confirmed whether I was coming or not.

The only member of the family who hadn't sent the RSVP in. Why? Because I don't think I'd put on a suit for 2 years. And I knew, and in that time, I must have put on £50 to £80. And I knew that the suit that I had in my closet wasn't gonna fit.

And I can't tell you how terrified I was to put on that suit and try it on and then go have to buy a suit. And I couldn't even imagine what size I was gonna be. It was absolutely terrifying. And I felt absolutely alone and isolated and scared. And every day that came closer to that wedding how come Shiva hasn't responded yet?

How come surely you're coming? What do you now I have some things I gotta do. I might have some business commitments. I mean, this was a very, very important thing to the family. Something I wanted to do, but I was so ashamed.

I remember sucking it up and going into that store and getting a new suit, and it was a really difficult experience. I think it was a size 50, maybe in 52. I don't remember. So in that summer, I was well over I was over £315. I don't know what was exactly.

That was the last time I weighed in. I'm down over £100 from that weight today. You know, I'm not that person today that I was in July of 2,001. You know, I know of freedom today, of freedom today, of dignity today that I never dreamed was possible for myself. You know, I look myself in the mirror and I love that person looking back with all the faults, with all the places I still have to go in my recovery.

I spiritual progress that they've talked about since the day I came in. That's why I talk about my respect and reverence and gratitude for this program. Because without this, I thank God today I'm under no illusion that that if I walk out that goes away. You know, I also think think of a time, maybe it was a little before that time in July of 2001, maybe it was in February, when I was getting on a plane. I think it was Southwest Airlines.

And plane was about to take off in 5 minutes. Flight attendants were rushing by to check everybody's seat belt was on. I put on my seat belt, and it wouldn't fit. That had never happened before. That was scary.

That was absolutely demoralizing to have to ask for a seat belt extension for the first time in my life. And yet, I still couldn't stop. I probably put on 20 or 30 in that year before I got abstinent from that. It still wasn't enough because I'm completely obsessed with food because I am a food addict. I have some pictures that I wanna pass out.

The first one is that me in that suit in July of 2001, and you could see that I look at these pictures, and I don't know who that guy was. And I keep them, and I look at them every so often because it's terrifying to me. Every time I wanna throw my abstinence in the toilet. It hasn't happened that often, but should it ever comes up, these pictures are really good reminders of the dark side, side, the the the demonic hell that is the depths of this disease. Let me just pass them out, and you could look for yourself.

I have respect for the disease that I never had before. You know, I a lot of friends in my life, a lot of people I love in my life who are serious addicts with alcohol, with drugs. My oldest friend, died when we were 20 years old from a heroin overdose. And I didn't even know he was using heroin, but his relationship with that stuff was my same you know, this program has allowed me to to come clean for the first time in my life with my relationship with food. And it was then that I was only able to to get abstinent when I was able to just come out with it and say, wow, I am an addict, but with food.

I never knew it was okay. I thought, you know, people had that with drugs, with alcohol. But with food, there's so much shame involved in this disease. So much guilt, at least for me, and isolation, and denial, and the feeling of being a freak, and being abnormal, and being, you know, as I said, just not comfortable in my own skin. But before I took the first step, I was, you know, a lifetime in the disease.

I, grew up in Westchester, New York, which was a very affluent suburb of Manhattan. And all I could compare it to out here is, like, white. Like, you know, Irvine white. You know, Colgate white. You know, just very white.

White. And my parents were hippies with a lot of conviction who had hung out with spiritual people and spent some time in India, and lived there for a few years with various saints and gurus, and came back, and had a son. And I'm an only only child. And named Yeshiva, which is the name of a Hindu deity for the god of creation and destruction. And a lot to live up to.

And you might be able to imagine, you know, myself being in kindergarten in, you know, the suburb in Shiva. That's an interesting name. What does that mean? Going over to other children's houses and you know Yet I was also born and raised Jewish. I was bar mitzvah so I classify myself as a Hindu, you know.

You know, I had some meditation and yoga practice before my bar mitzvah. You know, it was very interesting, very interesting experience. So I always felt out of place and not like the other kids, and especially when it came to eating. And my parents were vegetarians way before was cool to be vegetarian. I know now yoga is very cool and vegetarianism is very cool.

I know out here in California, you guys invented the concept of health food. And, but I assure you, back in the seventies in New York, McDonald's was very cool. And, I'd never heard of a Happy Meal before until I started watching Saturday morning cartoons. And, you know, with frosted flakes and all these stuff that was not in my I had, you know, the Kashi puffed white, rice cereal in my, you know, some crazy kind of brand, you know, whole grain. I don't know what.

But what is, you know, what's Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam? You know, I never these were wonderfully adventurous, lovable creatures on the television, you know. I'd be watching TV and music and movies and Saturday morning cartoons and just wanted to be like all the other kids. So I'd go to other kids' homes to play. It was very social.

And I remember maybe, you know, like being like 6, 7, 8 years old and going right to the fridge cupboards of other kids. I go over there, how you doing? I had made a beeline right for the the pantry there. Fascinated by what was in there what they had. And, by what was in there what they had.

And, I think, you know, it was maybe before I was 10 years old, I had my first, you know, encounter with McDonald's. And, you know, I just wanted to be normal, but, you know, I remember between that and then I think when I was maybe 6, my my aunt had given me a lollipop and it was like it hit a crack from it. I remember that euphoric. Wow. What What is this?

I didn't know this existed. And I was high. I was a little chunky with that lollipop. I mean, I remember that that state. And I guess that taste has never really left my mouth because it was just I just felt whole.

I felt great. Like it was That was a really bad seed that was planted that day in those early days of childhood. And I started to put on a little more and more weight. And I think by the time I was 12, I was maybe £20 overweight, maybe 30. And my father, you know, my parents were I would definitely say they were compulsive over the years.

You know, I had to guess. My father, father, you know, had a His name was Mohan. Everyone called him Moe, and he had the infamous Moe Bagel Grip. His friends used to make fun of the way he'd hold bagels on Sunday mornings. And, you know, yeah, Sunday mornings were about bagels and it was about food.

It was about, you know, different days with different themes for what you had for dinner. And then, you know, eventually became you didn't need a day to do whatever you wanted. It was just about that. You didn't need an excuse for what day of the week it was or what time of day it was. So I think when I was 12, my father was really freaked out.

He was battling with his weight and that his only child was becoming fat and it scared the shit out of him. And so what did he do? He thought it would be a great idea to nip this in the bud and have weekly weigh ins. So he'd have a clipboard, and every Sunday morning, he would get me on the scale and with his clipboard and notate what was going on. And God forbid, I gained if I gained a quarter of a pound, I'd be punished.

And what would, you know, be taken away from me? The only things I love to do, play with my friends and go to the movies. And I remember being, like, on a Saturday night, being with my friends at McDonald's. All my friends were normal. I remember eating, you know, a Big Mac and a large fries at 12 years old and a large Coke.

You know, nothing that a child should have any business consuming. Knowing tomorrow morning I'd be getting on that scale with my father and being made to feel like a piece of shit. I mean, there was never any physical abuse in my family, but my father has the kind of tongue that, you know, for me was the equivalent. Sometimes I wish, you know, he'd hit me instead of and just shut up. It was very painful.

And I just wanna be close with him. And so that's how deep the obsession was at 12 was that I knew it was in store for me the next morning, yet I still couldn't stop. And it was like being made to feel to, walk the plank, you know, every morning, every Sunday morning. I knew what I'd done the night before and here it was time. So a lot of fear, waking up in the morning with fear.

And today, I still wake up in the morning with a certain fear, a certain anxiety. And it probably has something to do with that. I'm not sure. But, luckily, this program, I don't have to wait to get abstinent to figure that out. What this I stop, and then I have plenty of time to get to the root of it.

And that's what the steps are about. I'll talk about that in a few minutes. I went to, so they put me in a weight watcher camp at 13. And, I was terrified and then I got there. I was the skinniest kid in the camp.

You know, there were kids who were my age There was a 14 year old kid there who was £300. There's a 15 year old kid there who I'm sure isn't alive today. He was £500. I'm sure he's not alive today. And I learned a thing or 2, a few tricks about compulsive overeating.

And we had food parties. We got down. We snuck food into camp. Ones of us were in better shape. We're able to hike, you know, 4 miles outside of camp.

And I was like Tony Soprano. I'd bring back, back, the Godfather here, you know. What do you want? How much for a Snicker Bar? $10?

You know, wheeling and dealing. It was great. And, even then, you know, Snicker bar was a hot commodity. Believe me. So we'd leave camp.

Most of us, you know, there's that picture that's going around. I looked like an anorexic. Don't worry. It was only for a week, but I had just gotten back from from fat camp and, you know, a little emaciated there. Maybe one of the happiest weeks of my life.

And what would happen was we'd all put on the weight that we would get, lose. We'd gain it back within a few months, if not a few weeks, some of us. You know, everyone was important. There were some serious bonds made at that camp, and we felt like we were normal, that we had beaten it. But we weren't taught any skills how to live.

It's another thing that separates this program from from Weight Watchers or anything else I've ever tried. It's that we had no skills. We had no way to deal with it in the real world. And so we'd get out and every summer we'd get back and put on sometimes twice as much as what we had to deal with the month before. We always talk about, oh, yeah.

Let's get together in a few months. We'd see each other. Nobody wanted to see each other after 2 months. Everyone was so embarrassed and humiliated. We didn't understand why.

So, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about how it used to be, but I really wanna talk about, you know, recovery here. Parents got divorced. My, couple years later, I think it was 14 or 15, my mother ran off with my shrink, who I'd been seeing. So talk about some trust issues. I had a ton of them.

Found out my father was running a Studio 54 type, you know, nightlife at his office on Fifth Avenue in the city. And I mean, I've heard some stories of womanizing like I can't even imagine, but, you know, my family was pretty screwed up in that department. I felt very alone. So it was about that time my friends started doing drugs, you know, marijuana, psychedelics, drinking, you know, going to Grateful Dead concerts, and so on and so forth. And, you know, watching Cheech and Chong movies, and they would be binging their brains out at 3, 4 in the morning.

And I would pretend like I was whacked out like they were, because I could eat like how I wanted to eat during the day. It was acceptable. So the weight started to gradually come on. But I always remember always feeling like I could eat whatever I want but I'll never, you know, I might like be fat but I'm it's never gonna get to a point of, you know, I weigh 300 pounds. It's never gonna get out of control.

It's I never imagined I would ever turn into the guy who's in those pictures. I never imagined. And that's why when I woke up one day and realized the wreckage I had put myself in with this disease, that I was I never dreamed that it would get so bad. So it just it was absolutely progressive. And I have no doubt that if I didn't come in and get abstinent, you know, I don't know where I would be today.

I imagine I'd be over £400, and I'm 5 6a half. I don't know how much I could physically sustain over that. It was that summer of 2001. My father had been visiting me from that wedding, and he saw how horrifying he hadn't seen me in 2 years and was freaked would be a near fatal case of sleep apnea, which means that the fatty tissue was so thick in my my throat when I go to sleep that I couldn't I thought I was getting sleep, but yet I wasn't getting any sleep, and I'd be suffocating myself in my sleep. So much I found out when I finally took a sleep test, an episode an average of 80 apnea episodes an hour.

So 80 times an hour, I would stop breathing for 10 seconds, but I have to wake up to take a breath. The oxygen level of my blood was around 70%, and I think anything below 90 was abnormal and unhealthy. I've fallen asleep more times at the wheel driving home at night. I could have bought the farm a 1,000 times by now. Fall asleep during the day in business meetings, and it became this joke.

But I lived the life of a narcolepsy, somebody who I I got no rest, no peace. My father visiting me would see this, and he was freaked out. He said, look. Some ex girlfriend of his had told him about OA, and you gotta try this, or else you're gonna have to get an operation or you're gonna die. And I was scared to death.

I was scared shitless, beyond the point. And And I went to a meeting. It was an OA Howe meeting. It was the closest meeting at the closest time. We looked it up on the Internet.

I don't know what the difference between how or regular. It was OA. It was 5 minutes from where I lived, and it was an hour from when I looked it up on the Internet. And I went in with my dad, and it was me and maybe about 5 other women. And I said, what the fuck am I doing here?

I got nothing in common. And there was a woman here there. We'd all they all shared, and and it was just I immediately felt the connection. Talking about being food addicts, being powerless over food, food, all this stuff. I just said I couldn't I was just kinda speechless and then it came my turn.

Do you wanna share? And yeah. And I just came out. I'm an addict. I just I don't know if I stood up, but it felt like, you know, for the first time in my life, able to just for just an instant come clean on my relationship with food.

And there was a woman who was at that meeting who came up to me afterward, and she said, I heard you share, and I feel your pain. And I want you to know that there's a solution here, that there's a way out, and that you don't have to die from this. I've been abstinent for a while, and I heard a bit of her story. She had been abstinent through some, you know, horrendous previous history with the disease before she got abstinent. And she was sharing with me that it's possible.

And she was looking me in the eye saying, I feel your pain. And she said, I'm buying you this book. It wasn't the the 12 and 12. It was the stories of Overreaders Anonymous. And she goes, I don't want any money from you.

I'm buying you this book. Please keep coming back. You know, there's there's real help here. I didn't get absent until a few months later, but it was her genuine kindness that kept me coming back. I will never forget it as long as I live.

There's no way I could possibly pay that back to her. It's just what we do in this program. We take care of each other. So be kind to the newcomer. I share this story because be kind to the newcomer because you you never know just a little bit of genuine kindness how far that can go for somebody.

How much that means that they changed my my life. The other day that changed my life was the day I got abstinent. My first abstinent meal was Thanksgiving of that year. I went to the meeting in Palms Park, and I saw what long term recovery looked like. And that's why the message for me is that it's possible, because it wasn't till I could really see the overwhelming evidence that it's possible that I could get abstinent.

And on that day, on Thanksgiving, there are all I mean, the New Year's Eve of alcoholics for food addicts. Right? Thanks fucking giving. Pardon my language, but you understand what I'm talking about. Thanksgiving my whole life had been how much food I could shove in my face, in my stomach, and how I can go to town and just massacre myself, how much I can go.

And I was looking at a couple 100 compulsive overeaters, food addicts, every facet of the disease, bi, gay, straight, 100 pounders, you know, people who weighed under a £100. I mean, people were talking about throwing up a 100 times a day. Everyone was represented there. And there was people with 20 years of abstinence, a 100 pound weight loss, 200 pound weight loss, £20 weight loss that it kept off for 10 years, 15 years. I was filled with such gratitude that there was no way possible that I can go to that Thanksgiving meal and do what I had been used to doing.

I had one plate of food. I was comfortably full, and I was filled with God's grace. Thanksgiving that day was about being grateful, and boy was I grateful. And I'll never forget that. And that was the day that changed my life.

My first sponsor, who began my journey with him, I think, 2 days after that, I said, well, how does one get abstinent? What is abstinence? And he said, well, you know what? Let's, call me tomorrow. We'll talk about what you're gonna eat, and, we'll get started then.

I said, I'm glad you mentioned tomorrow because there's one more all you can eat sushi place that I used to go to, and I'm just gonna get one more binge out of the way for old time's sake. And I'm glad you said tomorrow because my whole life have been about tomorrow. Thank God this guy could smell and see my bullshit from a mile away. He said, asked me something again that changed my life. So why don't we go outside right now?

And he asked me this question. He goes, why don't you start, why don't we start today? Why don't we start today? I never heard that before. I never it's always been about tomorrow.

So we went outside. We told him told him what I was gonna eat that day. And he said, I want you to go home. I wanna write you to write down every single food that you can eat. That you know if you're abstinent, you cannot eat.

You gotta get still and figure out. You know in your heart what abstinence is by now. You've been to enough meetings. You've you're absent on Thanksgiving. What's not abstinent?

Then write down a list of foods you can eat, and write down a list of foods you're not sure about. And I got still, and I it just came out of me. For a half hour, I wrote. And I looked at all these things that I knew I couldn't eat, and this was my diet. I realized how I got to be £315 +.

I was eating all these foods all the time. I'm amazed what I don't do today. You know, Sunday mornings is about Sunday for me. What I would hazard to say or feel my belief is probably the OA meeting in the world, and it's right in our backyard. And that's where I met my my second sponsor.

He's been my sponsor now for about a year 6 months, and the guy respond you know, who worked with me on this flu plan where I was able to lose all this weight. And Sunday mornings used, for me, used to be about sleeping till 1 in the afternoon, getting up, eating 2 bagels piled sky high, probably an omelet pile. It's just a day of food. I'm up. I'm basking in the glow of recovery.

And that's the spiritual progress that's in this program. I remember after I left my first sponsor because he wanted me to call him at 6 in the morning, and I wasn't willing to go to those lights at that time. And I was flying solo for about a couple months, and it was scary. It was scary. But I was abstaining from all the foods that I was using to get high.

You know, I wasn't eating I mean, my first 30 days of abstinence, I was used to eating 5 slices of pizza 5 days a week. Now to go from that to not eating any pizza, I knew was not realistic. So what I did is, okay, what's a sane amount of pizza? What's a healthy amount in a meal? Two slices.

That sounds abstinent. So I said, if I'm gonna have pizza, I could eat 2 slices of 1 meal, and that's it. Anything else is breaking my abstinence. Somehow, I only ate pizza once in that first 30 days. I just didn't want it.

The obsession, I don't know where it went, but it went away. But then, you know, flying solo for a couple months, I was barely hanging on. And I remember Roy being at Saray Sunday leading the meeting and talking about doing the deal. If you're about recovery, you wanna be in this program, you get a sponsor and you do the deal. I just hear his voice in my head still, do the freaking deal.

And then I remember seeing my sponsor who had come back. He'd been in Europe, I think, for a while. He was talking about he lost, I think, £80 plus or £90 in this program. I said, what? This guy looks totally normal, And was the other day that kinda sealed the deal for me in this program.

Because I went up to him and I said, I want what you got. I want he said, are you, you know, are you willing to do anything for victory over food? I said, yes. He still wouldn't be my sponsor. I gotta talk to my sponsor.

I'm not sponsoring yet. I just took my candle. I called him every other day for 2 weeks till he said yes, because I knew he was my guy, and I knew I could get somewhere. And we take care of each other in this program. You know, I'm constantly amazed what people do for each other in this program and the power that are in that is in these 12 steps.

I have a friend who's just sober, I think, almost 10 years in AA. And before I got in the program, or right when I got in, he said, abstinence is cool, and it's gonna change your life, but the recovery is in the steps. And after my 4th step and my 5th step, I finally see what he's talking about. And I have a reverence for the steps and for the profound wisdom in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which are programs based on. I need a lot of reminders and reasons to keep coming back because the disease is so hideous, cunning, baffling, and powerful.

That's why I keep showing up in meetings to remind myself, be reminded by the fellows, by the great miracle that we're all part of, that it's possible. And I remember the candlelight promises meeting. That was in December of that year that I got abstinent. I was maybe absent a month. And I wanna read these promises because I can't read them enough.

Because I see people week after week who really work in this program. These promises are coming true for them. And some of them have really come true for me. Holy cow. Who knew?

You know, Jenny Craig ain't offering me that. The zone diet is not offering me that. This is real. Page 83 3 in this big book about Alcoholics Anonymous is, where these promises are located. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self seeking will slip away.

Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not.

They are being fulfilled for them. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that. When I, when the we care books are passed around, I always write 449. I remember being a month in when Don Peay turned me on to that page in the big book. And in this book, it's on page 417.

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation, some fact of my life, unacceptable to me. And I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober.

Unless needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes. I can't hear that enough either. You know, that's how I've been able to stay abstinent, and every day of abstinence is is just a miracle for myself, and and as I've as I get to hear for all of you. And I'm grateful for one day at a time. I'm grateful for this program.

I'm grateful to be here, to abstain no matter what, and and it's just today. So congratulations on your birthday, Mike. A victory for 1 is a victory for all. Thank you for letting me share today.