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

Well, okay. Hi, everybody. I'm Maxine, a compulsive overeater. Hi, Maxine. Very grateful and feeling very fortunate and lucky to have found these rooms.

I came into Overeaters Anonymous in September of 1961. Out of control, 40 years ago, I can hardly believe it. It's considering I'm only 39. And the lady who's sitting in the front row there was a was leading the meeting that night at, Temple Isaiah on Pico Boulevard. I did not come in at my top weight.

My top weight was a 192. I started my abstinence, in April of 1964. And since that time, I have had imperfect back to back abstinence. I came into OA out of control. The year before I came into this program, very much like Pia was talking about, I was in bed threatening to abort my second child.

My father died. I could not go to his funeral because I was on bed rest. And my grandmother died who raised me, and I gave birth to my second daughter. And in that whole year, I never once shed a tear. Because when people would ask me how I was, I was always fine.

And you know what fine stands for? It's, you know, fearful, insecure. I can't even remember. Neurotic. Neurotic.

Your life's notional. Well, everybody knows, so I don't have to tell you. Anyhow, soon after my second daughter was born, I started to cry and I I couldn't stop crying. I was crying day and night and ended up in a psychiatrist's couch for about 6 or 8 weeks. And, during the time I was having this so called nervous breakdown, I was really unable to eat because at that time I couldn't figure out how to eat and cry at the same time.

But as I started to get better emotionally, what guess what happened? All these cravings and all the compulsions returned and so I started to eat. A little bit about my eating history, which I don't like to spend a lot of time on because you've all done it more or less than I have, probably most of you more because I stopped in 1964. But, I was I started compulsive overeating when I was 3. I knew the time and the date and when it happened.

My I had curly hair as a child and my grandmother took care of me. My grandmother did everything quickly, and didn't like the fuss. But in those days, we had Shirley Temple curls. And she had to brush my hair and curl my hair every morning. And she said to me one day, Cookie, that's my nickname, very apropos.

If you let me take you downtown and have your haircut, I'll buy you ice cream. Well, what a deal. So I went downtown. I ended up with a Buster Brown haircut, you know, short straight bangs. When I got home and my mother saw my hair, she was furious at my grandmother, but couldn't get angry at her because she was my caregiver.

So she got angry at me and spanked me and put me in my crib. And I can still see myself standing there between the bars, you know, like in prison. And soon after that, my grandmother came in and said, honey, here's some cookies. It'll make you feel better. And it did.

And so I learned at a very early age what made me feel better. And so from the time I was 3, I was a compulsive overeater and I was on my first diet when I was 10. And those days they didn't have diet doctors as yet. And so my mother took me to the children's hospital and they put me on this diet. And that we didn't have, PAM in those days and spray.

And, we I wasn't allowed to have any fat. So my mother used to make me scrambled eggs in an iron pan and I can still taste it. I mean, that's why I don't like eggs today because I can still taste that iron taste. And so at age 10, I weighed £100 and I lost £12 during that diet and I went down to £88. And from that time on until I came into these rooms, I yo yoed.

And at the very end, I just yoed because I didn't I just got tired. I just got tired. I just couldn't yoyo anymore. I tried everything that was available up until 1961 and to lose weight. And I am a very, very successful dieter.

But dieting always meant to me, I I stay on the diet until I got to whatever weight I wanted to get to and then that meant that I could eat anything I wanted to and still maintain that weight. Duh. But it never occurred to me that, that that wouldn't happen. So I just kept dieting and losing and, you know, I'd lose 20 and gain 30. You know, that's what happens when you yo yo like that.

You get interest on your weight you lose. You always, you know, there's always more at the end. It's never the same. It's 20, 30, you know, 30, 40. And so at the end it was £65 for me.

It went went from a 192, a 192 back down to about a 125, 120. So for me, it was just always that. And I tried all the diets, you know, nothing has changed in dieting as all you probably know. The only thing is that now things are much more expensive and a little more complicated. But the only thing that it's mathematical.

You just have to eat less than your body needs and you lose weight. And if you eat more than your body needs, you gain weight. And so for me, I was always looking for the silver bullet. My favorite diet in the whole world was eat all you want and lose weight. Oh.

Now they have a new twist on it. Take this pill before you go to bed and while you lose weight, while you sleep. That's even better. What a con. What a con.

Anyhow, so that's what I did and that was this part of the the physical part of my disease. The emotional part of my disease was that I was always miserable, never happy, very insecure, very needy, very dependent, very codependent. And, I came from a background, that that supported that. My mother is a compulsive overeater, and was a gambler and a compulsive gambler. And my father was kind of like the invisible man.

So, we don't end up in these rooms because we come from loving, nurturing parents. So that was just some of my background and I'm not blaming them for that. When I said I'm a lucky compulsive overeater because I don't know where I would be today without these rooms. I don't know what have happened in 1961. I didn't agree to bring somebody else to my first OA meeting.

I found out about OA because my mother found a little blurb in one of the local papers that they were starting this new weight reducing group and, I didn't have enough money to go to another diet doctor. So then the secretary called me and told me the meeting was in at night. And the other thing was that I was also very fearful. And I said, well I'm sorry I can't make meeting because I don't drive at night. But she called me a couple weeks later and said, there's a young woman who needs to come to the meeting.

She's £300 and she doesn't have a car. Could you pick her up? I said, sure. So some so my codependency, my need to help somebody else, putting somebody else's needs before myself brought me to these rooms and I'm grateful. I'm really very very grateful.

So when I came into these rooms, I didn't hear a lot except everybody was very loving. I saw Roseanne at a £110, very thin and very up and very on the ball, telling about how wonderful this group was. And I kept coming back and it was wonderful. And we didn't have something called abstinence in the early days. We just dieted.

And there were the 12 steps. But God bless your heart, Roseanne, she had changed the steps slightly. She had taken God out of most of the steps which was just fine with me because I didn't have a God. So we did I won't bother you with what You can go to Rosanna and she'll tell you all the the revised version that she gave it. But it was fine for me because I really never followed directions.

My my best thing in life was I wanna do the least amount of work to get the most results. And I didn't read in the big book where it's just, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our steps. I looked at the steps and this is how I took the steps for the first two and a half years I was in the program. I took the first part of step 1, the last part of step 12 and a little bit in between. Now that's what I call taking the steps cafeteria style.

It didn't work. I did lose weight. I did get down almost to my normal weight, but then I had to move to the valley because we were moving. And for me to move from West LA to the valley was like trekking across the United States. And at that time, we only had 2 groups, right, Roseanne?

There was a group here in LA and there was a group in the San Fernando Valley. We did not when there was 2 groups in the San Fernando Valley as I remember. And we didn't have, you know, a meeting or 10 meetings every day. We had 2 meetings a week if we were lucky. And, I managed to keep my weight off, but this is how I did it.

I dieted Monday through Friday and then binged on Saturday Sunday and then started on Monday Friday again Monday through Friday. Well, that won't work. And so what I was doing in o a is what I had done outside of o a. I was cheating. I was doing the least amount of work and I had no emotional and spiritual recovery.

I had physical recovery. But as what a lot of you know in this room, you know, thin doesn't necessarily mean well. So for me, in 1964, I decided I would finally get a sponsor. I'm a very slow learner. And so in 1964, I met a woman who was also an a an AA and who was also very very high on the steps.

She said, Maxine, if you want what she called at that time permanent recovery, she in which and she said, if you wanna have permanent sobriety, that was Those were her terminology. You need to work the steps. Because for me, and she said, o a is just a cheap diet club without the steps. And that's the truth. And so I, being a good little girl because that's how I was raised to be a good little girl, I wanted to be I wanted what she had.

And so in 1964 in April, I started my, abstinence at that time. In that time, it was Gratiot Absidence. For those of you who know about it, I wanna have to explain. And those of you who don't know about it, you don't need to. And so and so, I started my abstinence in April 1964 and I started working the steps.

And I went down to, a group of people down in, I can't call it East LA. I guess it's mid Wilshire of, 3rd and Alvarado, the Old Palms Hotel, an old alcoholic hotel, where, a man by the name of Bob Brack, who is now since deceased, had a group called APOAR and it is and those letters, APOAR, stood for Applied Principles of Addicted Recovery or Alcoholic Recovery at that time. And he believed that the steps written in the big book were not tough enough for the real tough alcoholic. So he had written re he had written a book that made it much more difficult and much more thorough in his his, frame of mind. And one thing about that group, you could sit in the room and listen but you could not participate in that group until he had give written a 4 step and given it away.

And so for about 3 months a whole group of us from the valley drove down every single night, Wednesday night down to, this hotel and we sat in this d this dark kind of smoky coughing room and listen to a man expound on the steps. And I started working the steps in 1964. The first step I was told and I do believe is this explains my disease. I am powerless over food and my life really sucked. And so I needed to do some doubts.

I I just read this week something that was very interesting and it really goes along with the 12 steps. It says, in order to bring about change, you need 3 things. You need to be aware, you need to have the desire and you need discipline. Now isn't that the program? The first step says, I am aware.

I am a compulsive overeater and my life is unmanageable. Well, that's my problem. What am I gonna do about it? I really want a solution. I have a desire to get well.

So the second step is a solution. I needed to come to believe that there was a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity. If I could have done it myself, I wouldn't need to be in these rooms. If I could have done it myself, I would be thin. So I knew that I couldn't do it by myself.

And the big book explains it to me. It explains that I have an obsession of the mind. And if you look up the word obsession in the dictionary, you will find that it is something that is greater than the mind. So how can I expect to solve my disease where the disease lays or lies, whatever? And so I can't do that.

I mean, it's impossible to cure something where the disease is. So I need something other and greater than my disease. And so that's for me is a higher power. Now I didn't have a higher power when I came to this, to OA. But my sponsor explained to me that I only had to come to believe.

And she said, do you believe that I have a higher power? And I said, yes. She says, then you can use my higher power and that meant I could use her. And I had I had faith in her because I believed that she had, emotional and spiritual recovery as well as physical recovery. She was also the person who brought the the infamous grace sheet to Overheaters Anonymous and I won't bore you with that.

So for me, I said, okay, I can come to believe and that started my pilgrimage. And she says, well, if you believe that, then the next step it comes right in right in order that I have to turn my will and my life over to the care of that power. Now, I didn't know how to do that and I didn't even understand that. And sometimes today, I don't understand what turning my will and my life means over to God. But I knew at that time, she explained it very simply.

The 3rd step just means you proceed with to the 4th step. Now the first three steps of this program are all mental steps. It doesn't require us really to do anything in action. It requires me to admit. It requires me to believe and requires me to decide and make a decision.

Now a decision is not a decision unless it's immediately followed by action. And 2 birds think about flying away. How many birds are left on and 2 birds think about flying away. How many birds are left on the wire? 3.

Because they only thought about flying away. They didn't fly away. So for me, I had that decision then made me, meant that I had to take action. And the the first the next, 9 steps are the action steps that are necessary to bring about recovery for me and I think for everybody else in this program who's recovered. So 3 through 12 are the action steps.

And so for me, I should say 4 through 12. So 4th step meant that I had to get down to business and write an inventory. Now I had tried to write an inventory several times before 1964. One of them was going to be this perfect I had to write typewrite it. It had to be grammatically correct and perfectly written.

That fizzled. I never got past the first page. And so this was written very simply. It was written in the format of the big book, the the three columns. And it took me about 8 months to write this thing, because the APOR format is much more extensive and has lots and lots and lots more to write to write about.

I carried my inventory around with me wherever I went. I had a lot of ego tied up in this inventory. And the reason was because I was afraid someone might I might lose it, I might leave it somewhere, someone might discover it in my home and then they would have the basis for the great American novel. So I was really I had a lot of a lot of trepidations about that. And I was really very fearful about giving this away.

I was so fearful that I did not even use my OA sponsor to give my my first inventory away to. I found someone in APOR, an A sponsor to give my my inventory away to. Because I didn't think that after I had told this one person my horrendous inventory that I could face them at a meeting. But that was not the truth. When I gave my inventory away to this to this AA member and he came back and shared with me some of his stuff, my stuff was child play.

My biggest thing in my whole inventory is that I had premarital sex. Woah. But this was 1964 and I come from a different generation than most of you people or except maybe some people in the first row here. But that was a big deal for me in 1964. Now it's not people don't even blink.

So but for me, that was a big deal. And it was the driving home that that day, I will never forget it, I felt like someone had lifted a 20 pound bag of potatoes off of my back. I felt so great. I felt so relieved. And truthfully, it was the first time in my life I had ever done something one 100%.

I hadn't cheated. I hadn't fudged. You'll pardon the expression. I hadn't I hadn't skipped anything. I had been thoroughly honest.

Now to give you an idea of how honest I had been before this, I guess I skipped a little of my former history. I was not only a compulsively overeater but I was also a compulsive shoplifter and I was also a cheater. I almost got expelled from UCLA because I cheated on a on a freshman exam. Now I was so smart in those days that I managed to cheat from someone who knew less than I did. Did.

And of course, I had the same dumb questions he had Wrong. And so we were called down to the dean's office and we were given one morning and I was told that if I ever got caught cheating again I would be expelled. And I didn't cheat there again, but it didn't keep it didn't keep me from shoplifting. And I shoplifted almost every day of my life before I came to this program. Sometimes big things, sometimes small things, sometimes And I always had a rationale.

If I wanted to go in and buy a blouse and I found a blouse, I couldn't decide if I wanted the green one or the red one. So my rationale was I'll buy the green one and I'll steal the red one because then the money they make up on the green one I really they really didn't lose any money. Right? Very rational. So that's what I did a lot.

And I really wanted to get caught because I thought if I once got caught, I would stop. Fortunately, I never got caught. But as soon as I gave my inventory away and as soon as I admitted that I had done all that stealing, I didn't have to steal anymore. I did I can tell you that I haven't thought about it because sometimes that old thing, that old reptilian brain clicks in and I think I don't have to do that anymore. It's not necessary.

And it wasn't because I didn't have the money, it was because I didn't think I was worth it. I didn't think I was worth paying for 2 blouses rather than 1 blouse. And, that was my self esteem. I didn't have any when I came here. Had no self esteem.

I didn't think I was worth anything. I was the last person on the on the totem pole. I was invisible. Your needs always came before my needs. I didn't matter.

I was a people pleaser. I only wanted to do what you wanted to do because then you would like me. That's that's the kind of person I was when I came here. So for me, not only did I not have to compulsively overeat again, but I didn't have to steal again. And the 2 of them kind of went together because Monday morning was always the day I was gonna start the new diet and this week I wasn't gonna steal.

And by the next day or maybe by that evening, I had broken 1 or 2 of those bows. So when I did the 4th step and I gave my 5th step away, I was so relieved. But I lied because I really had a few I really liked. I loved gossip. I just loved gossip.

And I said, yeah, I could I've I'm I'm really ready to give that one away, you know, like that. And I, I said yes and I got I did the 7 step prayer where I asked God to remove all my defects of character and he did. He removed compulsive overeating and shoplifting but there was many more. See my first inventory had to do with all that big stuff, all the big, stuff that's all was really bothering me. And you've heard the analogy before about this program is, you know, inventories are like peeling the onion.

You know, it's one layer at a time. I could never have dealt with the things that I've dealt with over the last 40 years that And in 1964, it would have killed me. I didn't have I didn't have the consciousness. I didn't have the emotional stability. I didn't have the spiritual connection to deal with what I've had to deal with in the last 40 years.

It was impossible. So that's why we have a very gentle God. It's just a gentle peeling away. And that's why they say more will be revealed. Believe me, more will will be revealed.

So for me, I went to the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th step and then the 8th step said, are you ready to have all your defects of character removed? And I said, I mean, excuse me. I, are you willing to make amends to all people you have harmed? And I said, yes. And I really didn't think I had harmed many people.

But I had a lot and I hadn't really, because I was such a weenie. I had a lot of financial amends to make. Now those were really scary to me because I didn't know one person in 1964 who had made a financial amend. And so, I asked my sponsor and she hadn't made any financial amends And I was really scared. And she said, well, are you willing to go to any lengths?

And I said, yes. So I decided that my first financial amend would be made to the Broadway department store on Moshe Boulevard, which is no longer there by the way, probably because of a lot of customers like me. But I was very dramatic about it. I said to my husband, Murray, you may get a phone call. You may have to come post bail.

I mean, I didn't know. I didn't know if if you went back to a store and said you had stolen from them that they didn't, you know, do this and call the cops. I didn't know that. And only had told me that that was not possible. So I had called they had I had been told to call the manager of the store, to make an appointment, and to only see that person.

So driving over the hill, over the 405, to the to Wilshire, my heart was just pounding in my in my chest. I was so scared. I get there. I asked for the manager. She had been called away.

I was ready to go home. God, you didn't mean for me to make this amend. So now I said, no. So I said, well who could I do? Is there a a manager of a department?

And finally they found somebody, I don't know, some manager And I gave her my whole story about I was in a 12 step program and I was trying to turn my life around and I had lost all this weight and She didn't really need to know but I wanted her to be sure she understood. And they didn't know what to do with me. First of all, they don't want to take my money. And I said, you have to take my money. Well, they had never had anybody up to that time who had ever come and made a personal amend.

They had people who had sent checks in the mail anonymously. They had people who had left merchandise outside the door but they hadn't had anybody who had come into the store. So they when I they finally agreed to take my money then they took me kind of like from department to department to kind of show me off. And it was it was I was like in Zululand. I didn't know what to do with myself cause I had never had that experience.

But again, on the way home it was like I I can't even explain it. It was like something Well, for those of you who've done it, I don't have to explain it. And for those of you who haven't done it, there's no explanation. You just have to do it. That's why this program is the action is so important in this program.

If I could have done the things that this program suggested or actually demanded that I do to recover, I would have done it a long time ago. But it's just like everything else. In order for me to change, I needed to be aware, I had to want it, I had to be willing to go to any lengths. And then the discipline is action. Discipline isn't I'll think about it.

Discipline is well, I'll make a New Year's resolution which I made every year and broke before, you know, January 4th. But it's doing it. And what we need to what I needed to do it is I needed a sponsor. I also needed the fellowship. I needed people to say, yes.

You you it's scary but, I'm here to support you while you do this. And and and over the years, one of the the most, helpful things I've been able to do in this program is to help people who are compulsive shoplifters. Because we're there are a lot of us. I see a lot of shaking heads. Yeah.

There are a lot of us. It's part of our disease for a lot of us along with other other things. So for me, that was so important. And so there was a lot of places I couldn't make amends to because they were no longer in business and were gone. And so my my my daily amends, my my amends now is that I I give to charities all the time anonymously because that's part of the way of my living amends.

The 10th, 11th, the 12 steps are really very interesting because that to me is for me is the foundation of maintenance. And that has been the foundation for the last almost 38 years for me as maintaining. It took me a long time to realize that there was on page 86 of the big book, it said, you know, on at night we take, we take an inventory. I only used to write 10 steps when they used to get like, oh, that no good son of them. And, those are the kind of 10 steps I usually wrote when things were so bad that I couldn't stand it any longer.

But then I realized somewhere into the program that it said, in the morning we do this and in the evening we do that. And every night, I used to go through those questions every single night and go through those those questions. And finally after, I don't know, 10 years of doing that, I realized that I could kind of compress that into what did I do today that I feel good about and what did I do today that I could have done better. I used to say what could I have done what did I do today that I don't feel good about. And what happens was most of the times that I didn't feel good about, the things that I had done that I didn't feel good about, had to do with amends.

I was really, you know, with the people. And so that's that has been really my salvation. And a 10 step keeps me current. I don't have to write those long lengthy 10 steps most of the time. I've done many many inventories.

Thank you. Probably 10 on my mother if not 20. And, my mother, God bless her, is 94 and is still around. And, has been a great great teacher for me. My one of my spiritual teachers once told me that troublesome people in your life are your teachers.

And they teach you because they push you to learn what you need to learn. And so I'm grateful for that. And the 11th step has been my spiritual pilgrimage. I have been on my pilgrimage for my spiritual life since 1964. And I've gone many places and done many things.

And one of the things I I did in 1975 after being in the program for about 11 years was leave the fellowship because my one of my spiritual teachers told me that I needed to leave because I needed to learn humility. Because in 1975, I thought I was it, miss o a. And I wanna you you all know what that is. I don't have to tell you what it is. And so for 9 years, I was gone, not from the fellowship, but not from the program.

Most of us don't understand the difference. The fellowship is not the program. The fellowship is here to support us while we work the steps. The steps are so important. And so those 9 years I was gone and in a spiritual instruction, I worked this program.

And when I came back in 1985 or 1980, yeah, January of 1985 only and I didn't think I was coming back. But in 1984, my my daughter almost died of toxic shock. And, when she was very seriously ill, I called some of my friends in OA that, I'm that were still in the program and I asked them to pray for for Robin and myself. And they did that whole week. I got calls from all of people from my old home group.

And I was so touched by those prayers and support that the next week I decided to go back to my old home group and thank those people for further love and support. And when I walked back to those to that room in 1985, I knew God had brought me back to the program. So I'm very grateful he brought me back to the fellowship and I knew there was more for me to learn. And so my the 12 step of this program is my gift. I get this gift from working these steps.

I get the gift of recovery. I get the gift of continuing to grow emotionally and spiritually. I get the gift of helping another compulsive overeater when no not not a normal person can do that. I get to share my my grief, my hardship, And I I did some 12 step workshops sometime back. And one of the little exercises they had when we wrote inventory, they said, if you die today, what do you think would be on your tombstone?

And the next question was, if you die today, what would you like to have on your tombstone? The difference. And so I thought about it. And I thought, oh, it was an optional question. You don't have to answer it.

And it's just like, you know, don't think about pink elephants. That's all I could think about for the whole next week. So I thought, well, if I died, the day they would say, Maxine, you know, loving mother, daughter, wife. What would I like to have on my my tombstone? And I would like and I thought, Maxine, she made a difference in other people's lives.

And that's what this program has given me. Thank you all for being here and thank you for letting me share. Okay. Are there any questions? Gosh.

Oh, yes. Thank you for your share. I'd like to hear your experience with with So you'd how to deal how I deal with fear of people and living in fantasy? Well, living in fantasy is not for me, living in fantasy was dreaming about stuff and never taking any action to make it happen. You know, faith without works is dead.

And so then it's back to action. I don't know that's that's only my been my experience. Fear of people, what I found in the program for me is that I have to do what I fear. And if I was afraid of people, I guess I would just have to ask for people's help in introducing myself or learning how to be a, how to be a friend. By the way, I had no friends when I came to this program.

None. 0. Zilch. And I learned in this program how to be a friend. And all I have to do is ask, ask people how to help you to do that.

Because I don't know what specifically you need. But all I know is that there's help here from Anybody else have fear of people in the room? There you go. Ask these people. All you have to do is ask for help.

See, my problem was I never wanted to ask because I might appear foolish. So rather than appear foolish, I was stupid and didn't ask. Somebody else? I still have hands over here. Did your did your questions get answered?

Yes. My amends were getting caught. I mean, my amends was getting caught. I got I I I got the wrath of the Dean. I got the threat of being expulsion.

And that that I didn't have to do that anymore. And I and I didn't I I didn't get a passing grade in the course. That, you know, that was that was I had to take the course over. So that was, yeah. Cheating was, I never believed I was good enough.

Cheating for me came from the fact that I never felt I I was smart enough, good enough, pretty enough, whatever enough. I was never enough. So in order to get what I needed, I had to I thought you were better. You knew better. You were prettier.

You were smarter. You were whatever. And so that I depended on you instead of myself because I never believed I had any anything inside of me that was worthwhile. So the basis of my cheating gets back again to that low self esteem. It came from my mother's My mother's message to me was, you didn't do it right.

Yes? Anyway, I was gonna ask you what was it like before you did your amends to your mother and what was it like when you actually did this? My amends to my mother? I didn't make amends to my mother. I didn't have to.

My I'd when I ever try speak to my mother about anything that went on early on in my childhood, my mother, rationalized what happened. Even today as an adult, I've I've come to say to her talk about this thing about the haircut. She'll say to me, you should've you shouldn't have let grandma do that. I said, well, mom, I was 3 years old. She said, I know.

But you shouldn't let grandma do that. Is that rational? I mean, there's no responsibility. So there's no there's no things. The difference between with my mother now is that I relate to my mother as an adult.

I don't relate to her as a 10 year old child. That's taken a long time and I'm still working on it. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

No. I let go I let go of the food. I let go of the food. Oh, I thought it was, like, Monday through Friday. Oh, yeah.

At the beginning. Yes. Yes. And What was it that triggered to The question is, I was not I wasn't I hadn't let go of the food in the early years. And what was it that made me let go of the food?

What made me let go of the the my tongue won't work. What made me let go of the food was a very strong desire to please my sponsor. And she was tough. And you know what? My first sponsor was just like my mother.

She was a strong, tough taskmaster, and she said, this is what you do. She says, don't think about it. This is what you do. Here's the here's the diet. Here's the abstinence sheet.

Call me tomorrow and tell me what you're eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To this day, I still write my food down every day. I still do that. It's a discipline. I do it just like, you know, brushing my teeth in the morning.

And I had never done that before. So I made a commitment. I made a decision and I did it. I took the action because I wanted to please her. It may not have been the best reason to do it but it worked.

Yes. Can you talk about your abstinence? What is it? What was it? Or how did you know what it did now?

Well, they wanna know what my abs everybody wants to know what my absence. I have had more abstinence in OA than anybody else I know. My abstinence, or you wanna know my food plan? I guess yes. That's it.

Or how and how it has changed. Oh, right. But see there's a difference between abstinence and food plan. Abstinence is or the food plan is the tool by which I abstain. At the beginning, I had 14 years of Graysheet abstinence, which worked for a long time.

And then I realized I was abstaining out of the fear of food. And I made a decision that I would try other foods, and if they didn't work, they didn't work. And if they did, they did. And so I had the courage to do that and they did work. For about 11 years I was a vegan.

For those of you who know what that is, that's a, a maturity moment. A vegetarian that doesn't eat animal products, any kind of cheese or eggs or dairy products. And I did that for that length of time. And then I've done a lot I've just done a lot of other things in my food plan. But my abstinence is that I abstain from compulsive overeating.

That's what I do. And my and and my abstinence has as I said, has not been perfect because I don't I really don't believe for me that there is a perfect abstinence. I mean, I may, you know, eat I may eat a little bit too much at a meal. I may have a food in my food plan that is perfectly good for a couple of years, and then all of a sudden it looms greatly on the horizon. My last big give up was I had to give up rice cakes.

Now, boy, I'm I'm compulsive as hell about rice cakes. There were, you know, there were things to be compulsive about, but they I ate them for many, many years and I can't eat them anymore. Yes. Next, ma'am. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about your emotional sobriety.

You you alluded to the fact several times that you could never have gotten through in the last 4 years some of the situations you've been forced to encounter. Mhmm. And I wondered if you could tell us possibly that intruding, you know, on Right. A couple of things that have happened to you and what the 12 steps have done or how you made me to get through them now that Owen has helped you? I think that, for me, my my whole evolution of recovery has been, just a slow a slow thing.

I've worked the 12 steps. I've I've gone other places and done other things. I've done, you know, gone to other workshops. I've I've had therapy. I've I've done lots and lots of things.

And it's as as I've needed to do them, I've always been open to everything that's possible for my for my recovery. I don't I don't think I never wanted to be so closed minded that I only saw this much. So if there was something that I thought would help my emotional spiritual recovery, I I've I've done that. Like I said, I was in a spiritual instruction for, gleaned a tremendous amount out of it and then moved on to some I found myself just shifting over. So it's just been what so so much we are all such individuals.

I am an individual. My story is so different than your story. So I couldn't possibly, you know, my my recovery couldn't possibly be the same as yours. But I just I just used everything that has come my way that and I've tried it all. I just tried it all.

Some of it's worked and some of it hasn't worked. But there's been a lot of upheaval. I mean, my daughter's illness was a tremendous upheaval for me. Just recently, my mother and I didn't speak for a good many years. We've had several times when we've had breaks in our relationship.

And about 4 years ago now, I've lost kind of track of time, I was reading a piece in of spiritual literature and it said, if you die today, would you have any regrets? And I thought, no, thank God I don't have any regrets. And then it came to me I would really regret not making the effort to reconnect with my mother who is at that time 90 years old. And so I prayed and prayed and prayed and was very fearful because my mother can be very vindictive and very vicious. And so I decided that I would make the attempt because I did not want to have that that regret of not because my mother doesn't have the tools of this program.