The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

OK, I'm beginning. Welcome. Before I formally introduce myself, those of you have been to some of the big book workshops I've given know that I like to do something for the people on the tape where we're taping this and it might even go online, right, which is which is very exciting. So for the benefit of those who are listening on tape and as well for the benefit here, we're using some forms we're looking at. We have there's a book here

that I've written and everything is available for free download on a website that's WWW OA big book OABI GB O OK, bigbook.info INFO. And if you go there, you can get a free downloads of the forms we're using and of the end of the book as well. Secondly, for people who were listening on the tape,

I always like to know sort of what I listen to tapes. I like to sort of get a sense of

the audience and where, where it is. This is in the Victoria Hospital in Winnipeg, a wonderful hospital that also the, the, the room in which our Sunday morning meeting is in Winnipeg every Sunday morning at 10:30 and it's a wonderful room. They're about 300 people here.

I really crammed into this very small space.

I'm, I'm, it's, it's everything's done in, in, in tables.

People are sitting at tables. We're going to go until 9:30 today. Tomorrow we're going from 9:00 to 5:00 and on Sunday we're going from 9:00 to 11:30 Sunday. The regular OA Sunday meeting will start at 10:30. But we've had special agreement from them that it will be part of the big book study. But people may be coming at that to that 10:30 meeting. So we'll acknowledge them and deal with especially if any newcomers come, we'll have to make sure that

they are accommodated and we deal with with them.

Let's see what else. A few more preliminary comments. I'm going to be talking about the big book today and the big book, the Alcoholics Anonymous. Big book Alcoholics Anonymous, which was first published in 1939, is a book that I have discovered for myself. My experience has been that it's a, it's a book that gives me the directions for doing the steps that I have found extremely useful. I'll tell part of my story. I'll tell much of my story as I go through the the next

this whole weekend and how I discovered the Big Book as a series of instructions for doing the steps. But my love of the Big Book does not extend to the point that I believe it is the only way of doing the steps. It happens to be the way I do them. It happens to be the way I have sponsored people. It happens to be the way I have found it to be successful. But I know people who have never used the Big Book and have found recovery within with the 12 steps the program.

So although I am a big book lover and a big book thumper,

I'm not a big book extremist in the sense that I, there are people who love the big Book so much who say if you don't do it the way the big book says, you won't have the recovery the big book promises. I, I know that's not true because I know people who work the 12 steps and many other different ways and have reached the kind of recovery and even greater recovery than than I have reached. So although I love the big book, I am not suggesting that if any of you have found a way that works for you, that gives you the kind of recovery that's promised

the big Book and that I'll be talking about. If you have found that doing something else don't change. There's no reason to change the you might find the study of the big Book to be very helpful in trying to Well, there are two reasons why the big Book is very helpful. One is it gives a picture of our problem and the nature of the solution of the 12 steps bring us that is really simple and easy to understand for a newcomer. And once you recover, your job under step 12 is to carry the message to those

still suffer. So when you want to carry the message, you want to carry in a way that that has a lot of meat to other meat people can understand. And therefore you might find that this way of explaining the problem and the nature of the solution is very, very helpful to explain to a newcomer. Secondly, you might find that the instructions here provide a good way of taking someone through the steps who may not be responding to the way

you've done it.

Answered By the way, if you haven't got the recovery that the big book promises, you might want to try the steps in the big Book. People say the steps don't work for me. Well, the one thing that over it is anonymous stands for is that you have if you have a problem like the problem we have, then you can have the recovery that the 12 steps bring you. And that recovery is freedom from the bondage of food. If you're here and you're not a member of OA, but you, you have another kind of addiction, the freedom from that addiction, the ability to be around

substance or the activity that causes you uncontrollable problems that and, and to be free of it and not to want it to be around food and not to want it. When I ask, when I say to people I'm a member of Overdose Anonymous and they say, well, Gee, I have a friend who might be interested. I always say to them, tell that person two things about me. One is it would do me good to talk to him or her, that it is part of my recovery to help that person or to talk to that person

so they'd be doing me a favor. And the 2nd is

I can have ice cream in my freezer and it can go bad and I don't care. And if they understand that and they think that that's a miracle because I think it's a miracle, then they probably are like me. And that's the kind of recovery I can watch. My wife, my my wife is a kind of person who can eat well. She's a chocoholic in the sense that she needs chocolate once a day, but she has a certain amount of it and no more. And we sometimes have gone out for supper to a very fancy restaurant and have and she's ordered a

chocolate dessert that has been, you know, very dark, delicious. I don't know what I don't even know what's called. And she has eaten it. She's taking a bite of it and she's just broke out an excesses. Oh God, this is this is the greatest dessert I've ever had in my entire life.

And I have a miracle that's happened to me is that I'm happy for her. I have no interest in eating that or trying it. That's a miracle. The other miracle is when she says halfway through eating it and she says, oh, I just can't have any more. I'll I'll save the rest for tomorrow.

A I'm not angry at her and BI don't want to eat the rest of it. And I consider all of those to be miracles because what I was before I joined this program and before the 12 steps gave me recovery

was a person who would have wanted to taste it when she said it was so good. Or even if she hadn't said it was that good, B would have been angry at her for not finishing it. And C would have finished it if she hadn't finished it. So for me, that's a miracle. And if the big book, if, if, if it's not working for you, then maybe you're not working the steps the right way. And maybe the big book is a way of working the steps, a way that will work for you. The big book is not a book that is that easy to understand. And I can tell you that with a great deal of experience, because

I read it for six or seven years without really understanding it. I read it and studied it and read it and re read it. And until I started studying with the person who had studied it with a person, treated it as a set of directions rather than as an inspirational book, I had trouble with it. I still had trouble with it because it was basically written by Caucasian

Christian men who American men who had been in the absolute gutter

with alcohol and who had been imbued and had grown up in kind of a,

an old style language that they studied in the early in the late 1800s or early 1900s. And so the language that they use is not a language that really spoke to me in many ways. Some of it does. Some of it is language that just speaks to you. It's poetic, it's inspirational, it's incredibly insightful. And some of it is really, really hard to understand. And I often would read it with my sense of the modern meaning of words without realizing that the words that they used were rooted in the early

1919 twenties and that I really should have read them with an old dictionary, not a new dictionary in my hand or in my head. And I, I will talk to you about that and talk about the meaning of some of the words because they are difficult words to accept The word selfish is, for instance, a very difficult word to understand in the big book. The word allergy is very hard and, and some of the language is not easy. So I'll translate as we go along.

I also, I'm going to start off before I formally introduce myself with what I call the 12th provocations.

And I'm going to, I'm going to say them. And I'm going to say them and tell you that the first time I read them out at a big book workshop on the Sunday, a woman came up to me and said, I read them on a Friday. And a woman came up to me and said if I hadn't paid for this retreat, it was in a retreat area and in Maine. And she said if you, if I hadn't paid for the whole weekend, I would have left on Friday after you read these things because they I found them so offensive. Now I don't know if you'll find,

but I do ask you to give me some slack. And by the time we get to Sunday, I think I'll show you where these provocations really aren't that provocative. But I will be asking you on Sunday whether you think I should be saying them at the beginning or whether you think I really should save them at the end. I say them now to raising your mind some areas where you'll, I, you may find some differences and some some different ways of looking at things and maybe to keep you in some kind of suspense. But if they appear to be so provocative

that you, it turns you off, I'm sorry.

I promise to explain them. I promise that they aren't that bad, but I'm going to read them anyway and take the chance that you're going to stay one. I mean, each one of these statements is provocative somewhere within OA. I've traveled a lot. I've been to a lot of OA meetings in a bunch of different parts of, of,

of the United States, Canada and, and even England. And I can tell you that somewhere

in OA, each one of these statements is truly provocative and would raise a ruckus if I said it. But I'm going to say them all. They may not be provocative in Winnipeg. One is I am a recovered compulsible reader, not a recovering one. This is a major theme in the big Book and I'll be showing it to you all the way through. I don't, I'm not recovering. I have recovered. I'm different from what I used to be, and it's the very fact that I'm different

that is what I carry. The message I carry to those who still suffer #2 and this is, by the way, found in the book. It's on page three of the book. 2. Abstinence is not the most important thing in my life without exception.

The consciousness of the presence of God, whatever that means. And I'll talk about that tomorrow is the most important thing. And you'll, you'll hear many people know a say, you know, I'm so and so an absence is the most important thing in my life for today without exception. And that's, that's not what the Big Book says.

3rd, although a sponsor, if available, is extremely helpful, extremely important, if you don't have a sponsor, you can still do the steps. The Big Book stands for that proposition. And the main reason I point this out is to say that if you can't find exactly the right person for you today and you just can't find the right person to sponsor you, that doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of working the steps, because you can do them without a sponsor. Best you do them with a sponsor but you can do with

1/4 is you recover in weeks. You don't have to wait months. You don't have to wait years.

You know, I, I have a friend who's in another 12 step program who is suffering tremendously and in that program and who keeps relapsing that program, his sponsor has said to him, don't work the steps until you've been in the program for a year and you know, and this person keeps relapsing. And the big book stands for the proposition that you can do it in weeks. Actually, there's a story in the big book and we'll discuss it tomorrow or what what I'll point to it

where one guy did the steps in a day. He recovered in a day and it's possible to do that. It's not probable that you can do it in a day, But if you ever had someone like Doctor Bob Smith with one of the two Co founders of a A taking you through the steps, you probably would recover in a day because he was that kind of a charismatic personality. You could take you through them because we don't have that many charismatic personalities. Maybe we have to work a little harder and and a little more boring way of doing it, but you can do it in weeks

five. The tools of recovery. There's a pamphlet in OA. The tools of recovery is not an essential part of the program and and that's an important theme in many parts of OA. Not because the tools isn't, not because the pamphlet itself isn't a good pamphlet, not because the tools aren't helpful, but because if they are used as a substitute for the steps, there will be no recovery. The tools don't get you recovery. They may help you abstain, but they do not give you recover. Recovery comes from the

step steps. That's what this program stands for. If you look at the there's a policy, a list of all the policies, all the group conscience of OA, the first policy ever passed in 1962, two years into the creation or the existence of OA. Is that something that says something like this? Ovaries Anonymous stands for the 12 steps in the 12th traditions. That is all the way stands for and it is all the way stands for something like that. It's not very well written, but that's what it is.

We are the 12 steps. Our job is to carry the message of the 12 steps of recovery to those who still suffer from the problem that we have. Just as Alcoholics Anonymous job is to carry the message of recovery to the 12 steps to Alcoholics who still suffer, Gamblers Anonymous is to carry the message of recovery to gamblers who still suffer, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That's our job. And as as long as we do that job, we have every reason to continue to exist. When we stop doing that job, we become

a coffee klatch or a a support group or anything else. We're no longer doing the 12 steps,

and the 12 steps is what gives us recovery.

Six, you don't take steps one and two. I'll talk about that today.

Step 7 #7 Steps 367 and eight should not take a long time to get to. It should take a long time to do Steps 367 and eight. And yet many people take a very long time because they think something should happen, something dramatic should happen. Well, maybe they should in other ways of doing the Big Book, in other ways of doing the 12 steps, but from the Big Book perspective, hardly anything happens.

And I'll talk about that as we get to them. Eight, you don't make amends to yourself. You often hear an OA, especially in, well, the first person to have to make amends to is myself.

Well, the big book is pretty clear that you make amends to other people and not to yourself. And you do make an amend to yourself. And that amend is you become a different person from who you used to be, which is a pretty big event, but but that's a very different issue. And I'll talk about that when we get to steps 8:00 and 9:00.

10 service is not slimming. Oh no, nine, you should not sponsor until after you have completed step 9. Now sponsoring in that connection means you you cannot carry the message unless you have recovered. Doesn't mean you can't do other things. People in OA sponsorship can mean many different things. That can be food sponsors and food buddies and taking people up to step three and stuff like that's not what I mean. I mean carrying the message

10 service is not slimming. That's something we they used to be said in a way all the time service is slimming.

Well, it's not. I'm actually, I am living proof of that fact because during a time when I was in relapse, I did a lot of service and I didn't stop relapsing. I just did a lot of service

11 and this I know in Winnipeg is not a big issue, although it was at one time, but it is somewhere in a way, and that is food can be discussed at meetings. I mean, there are parts of parts of OA, some OA meetings where you cannot discuss food. You can't mention a particular food. You have to talk around it. And 12 and this is probably sounds cruel, but some people who come to a way should consider not coming back until they're good and ready.

And that may be tough. But when we talk about the big books approach to carrying the message, you'll see that it's it's what we would now call tough love. And it's pretty tough.

So let me let me start off by introducing myself and telling you a bit of my story and then telling you my story.

I will tell you the approach

that I understand the big book has.

I'm going to pass around some pictures. These are pictures of me before I joined OAI. Just discovered a new one and and it's about as I don't remember being this big but it's bigger than the other pictures of me.

I hardly recognize myself in it. I don't know to this day how much I've lost because I had stopped weighing myself way before I joined away

and I had a lousy scale even when I even when I joined away. So I don't know how much I've lost. It must be at least 60 lbs. I think it's more than that. I I was fat all over, not just in my in my belly. I was fat everywhere. I, I've even lost a half a shoe size,

so I, I, I just put on weight everywhere. So I'll I'll show you pictures of me and then you'll see a a picture of me sitting at a

kitchen table. And that's a kitchen table that will meet on Page Six or seven of the big book. Very exciting moment in my life. You'll see a picture of a letter. This is a letter from Doctor Carl Jung, which I'll be discussing tomorrow. You'll see a picture of a desk. This is the desk that Bill Wilson, the one of the two Co founders of A A used to write most of the major A a literature including the big book.

You'll see a desk another desk. Those of you who are members are are are aware of Al Anon will know that Lois Wilson, Bill's wife, was the co-founder of Al Anon.

This is her desk. It's fascinating. It has one of those, you know, in and out file things. It has three labels on it. The top one is First things first, so that's priority. The second one says easy does it, which means I'll get to it. And the third one says live and let live, which I have a feeling means I'll never get to it. But at any rate, there's that. And then there's a picture of a gravestone. And this is a gravestone that if you read page one of the big book, you will see,

I'm not going to go into it, but it's a gravestone at Winchester Cathedral that the bill sees. So these are my pictures.

OK,

my name is Laurie. I'm a compulsive overeater

first said those words February the 11th, 1986. And there are few people in this room who were either at that meeting or or might have been or could have been at that meeting. Not many, but some.

What brought me there? What took me to OA? Well, you know the pictures of me show me what? That I was very fat and I've been fat all my life. There are some pictures of me when I was six or seven that show that I wasn't fat, but from 8 on I was fat

and I suffered the normal humiliations of weight. The friends that would make fun of you, you know, it's, it's, I remember my best friends would talk about how funny it was to be behind me on a bicycle because my bum would jiggle on either side of the seat, you know, and you know I wouldn't. When we played

basketball in the, in the gymnasium in high school and there were the skins and the shirts and I had to take my shirt off and how embarrassed I was by how I looked.

I but I, I didn't suffer in the same way that a lot of people have suffered in this program.

I, I remember at night at the meeting I used to go to on Tuesday

evening when I first went there, it was a, it was a meeting of a pretty deep meeting at a meeting of a lot of people that suffered a great deal in their lives. So one and, and had recovered and had worked. We're working the program. It was a great meeting, but most of them had really suffered,

really, really suffer in their lives. And I remember when I first took a meeting about 3 months after I joined and I, I, I led the meeting and when I told my story, I sort of apologized. I said I just haven't suffered the way you people have suffered. I, I had a basically a happy childhood. I mean, I suffered the humiliation of being fat, but I was loved by my parents and I grew up with my grandparents as well as my parents. And I was given maybe too much food, but certainly

a lot of food and lot of companionship and love and, and,

uh, intellectual stimulation. I mean, I really had a lot, I had anything I wanted and I sort of apologized for that. And when it became time for other people to share, went around the room. One of the long, long timers, Ralph had been an A a as well as OA said that, you know, Lori, from those of us who have been in the gutter, you haven't missed a thing. And I thought, you know, that is true. I mean, I

what brings us together in this program is not how much we've suffered.

It is that we suffer from an illness of the mind and body that appears to us before OA to be completely uncontrollable. That is hopeless, that we can't get out from under this stupid, silly, obnoxious thing that keeps us enslaved to something in a way that nothing else enslaves us and we don't. We don't understand why. It's just beyond us. And it's so silly

compared to all the other sort of dramatic addictions like gambling and drugs and alcohol, which are so much more dramatic and and everyone feels sorry for them. And here we suffer from this thing that's the butt of comedy jokes that, you know, comedians make their living making fun of themselves when they're fat. Situation comedies are full of fat people who make jokes about themselves. Food is considered somehow to be a wonderful thing. It's sold all over

and yet we suffer from this

and that's and that's all that binds us together, what we suffer from and the solution that we found in Ovaries Anonymous.

So I joined February the 11th 1986.

And as I said, the pictures show me fat, but there are fat people who don't need this program.

Let me qualify in another way and let me tell my story in another way. And I tell my story in with in two different segments. The first illustrates the body problem. The problem of my body has nothing to do with my mind other than my mind sort of goes to sleep.

It can't, it has no power. And and this body problem is symbolized exemplified by my hand going to my mouth, going first to the food and then to the mouth. The hand may be holding a fork, a spoon, or maybe just be holding the food at various times. It may be holding food that should have been held in a fork or spoon, but in fact it's just in my hand and it's going mechanically from the food, holding the food and bringing it to my mouth. I'm eating it

and back and forth and back and forth and sometimes the hand is faster than the mouth and my mouth is full and I'm still eating and my mind is saying

I have to stop. This is crazy. Why can't I stop? This is the, this is no, this is the last one. And it just keeps going.

And

that's been my experience much of my life, just not being able to stop once I've started. I have two stories which I know many of you in this room have heard, but I'm going to tell them anyway because I know some of you haven't heard it, and people in the tape maybe haven't heard it.

And they're progressively disgusting, the two of them there one is more is the second one is more discussing than the 1st.

The first story is is a story of Hanukkah, which is a Jewish holiday. As I say, it's it's known as the Festival of Lights because it commemorates a miracle that occurred after the liberation of the temple in the early, early AD

when they tried to light the eternal light. It had been, it had been destroyed and they, they wanted to light it again.

And there's only enough oil to keep it going for a day. But they lit the oil and lo and behold, it lasted for the 8 days. It was necessary to create more oil to keep the eternal light lit. And so it celebrates light. And that's why you get these menorahs, you know, these big candle, the candles and things of that sort. But for Jewish mothers who who who have often been the cooks, it is also the Festival of Greece, the Festival of Oil and the Festival of Greece.

Most of the food that is served at Hanukkah is extremely greasy food.

There are two different kinds of pancakes. One is deep fried, the other is fried. But it also you put gravy onto it, which basically consists of the drippings from whatever is being cooked. So you've got some like double fat, you know, and usually a goose is cooked. Goose is the fattest domesticated bird. And

one Hanukkah my when I was in the middle of my illness, my mother had cooked

a goose and

I'd eaten a lot of it and I'd eaten a lot of the pent, the two different kinds of pancakes and whatever else my mother had cooked. And no doubt there was there were two, there were usually 2 desserts and I had eaten those. And people were sitting in the living room about 1015 feet away from the kitchen, just around down a hallway and around a corner. And I went into the kitchen to get a diet drink. This was always amusing to me. There was a diet drink and it was long ago. So it was a tab. It wasn't a diet drink. It was a tab. The only

you could get in those days

and there was the the goose carcass sitting on the cutting board and the goose skin was hanging on the carcass whose skin is so fat that it slips right off. Unlike the unlike the Turkey skin and the chicken skin, which sometimes which sticks to the flesh, goose skin just slips right off because it's all fat.

And I remember saying to myself, I really like goose skin. I'm much too full to eat it. But maybe just a taste, just a taste because I like the taste of skin so much. I picked up this goose skin still hot from the oven an hour and a half after it had been taken out. You can tell how fat it was because the fat, it kept all the heat

and I tried to bite off a little piece of that goose skin, but goose skin is very tough and I couldn't get a purchase and it kept slipping out of my hands too. So I put a bit more in to try and find a weak spot and to tear it off. I couldn't tear it off, so I put a bit more in to find another weak spot until the entire goose skin was in my mouth. It was completely filling my mouth. I was like a chipmunk. It was burning the inside of my mouth. The fat was dripping. I was trying to. I was chewing frantically because it was burning me.

I wouldn't spit it out. I wouldn't take it out. I was chewing frantically as the fat spread out of my mouth and dribble down my chin just 1015 feet away. There were people who, if they had seen me, would have been truly disgusted. It's disgusting even even thinking about it. But I wouldn't let it out of my mouth until I chewed the entire skin. Even then, the skin is the fat was all gone. The skin

was still, I couldn't chew it and I swallowed it. Now that's something

beyond hunger. It's something beyond imagining. No one can understand that other than a compulsive eater who may not say, oh, someone may say, oh, hi, goose skin. I couldn't do that. But there's something that person understands. There's a cake that person ate completely, or there's

chips, potato chips, or there's buttered popcorn, or there's

chocolates or something that a person just says. Why can't I stop eating this? For me, it was a goose skin.

The next story is a is, is is even more disgusting and, and, and it's a good test case for people. I'm, I'm I went to school in in the States and just a place outside of Minneapolis University. And there used to be the Winnipeg limited that would go from Winnipeg to Minneapolis overnight. And then I would catch a bus from Minneapolis to the place where my my college was. And I arrived on a Sunday morning

in March. It was spring break and I just come back from spring break on a Sunday morning. And the, the train arrived at 6:00 in the morning and the bus left at 8:00. So I had an hour and a half or an hour, 45 minutes before the bus. So I started to wander, but it was one of those dreary morning, you know, sort of a dreary winter or spring winter kind of morning.

I'd already had breakfast on the train, probably one, you know, some cinnamon banner, one of those awful things that used to sell on the, on the trains.

And I was passing by a diner and I was passing, I was on Hennepin, which was a Skid Row at the time. And I was passing by and I saw a diner and it said, you know, something like 2 hash Browns, 2 eggs, 2 bacon, you know,

toast, coffee, $0.39, which was pretty good in 1963 or 63 to me. So I walked in and it was a place that was filled with people have clearly been up all night. They were hacking, they were coughing, they were smoking,

they were hunched over their food. They were in terrible, terrible shape. Didn't bother me. I sat at the counter, squeezed in beside two other people

and I ordered my my stuff and it came and it was greasy and I was eating it and it tasted awful, but I still ate it. I couldn't stop eating. I still ate it.

Suddenly the guy right next to me on my right

vomits.

Vomits right into his plate

and

then he faints and his head goes right into his plate

and I see this

and here's the test to see whether you might be a compulsive overeater. What did I do?

Kept on eating

I know there's one person who is not a compulsive eater because if I told I've never told my wife that story, although she might have heard it, she ever heard one of my tapes, but she would not be able to eat after hearing that story, let alone if she had been there, she would have been able to eat after hearing that story. She couldn't eat if I told the middle of a meal she couldn't eat didn't bother me. I moved my I just sort of put my my back to that person. But that story has its equivalent with alcoholic and drug addicts and and

all gamblers and all that. They will go on despite how disgusting it might appear to someone else. They will understand that same story when it comes to someone else. The alcoholic might pick up a bottle that was just a drunk out of by some person with disgusting breath and smoker or something like that and drink of that ball because that person needs the alcohol. The gambler might go into the really horrible, Smokey, awful place and gamble and continue to gamble despite how awful it it might be around

that person. I mean, you know, in drug addicts, we know that they go to the most disgusting places in the world to buy their drugs and to use their drugs.

That was my equivalent.

Well, what is that? I mean, how? How can a normally sane person who's normally in control of his life give way to that kind of idiotic, stupid, awful behavior? The answer the big book provides us, we have no idea. We know that it is beyond your mind that something has taken control of your body that goes beyond the ability of your mind to control.

And it's that very fact that begins to make you hopeless. But it's not the one, It's not the only thing. Because

just like the alcoholic, if there's a person who drinks and knows once I start drinking I can't stop, then the simple solution is just not to drink. Don't begin it. Don't have that first drink, don't have the first bite. Don't do the first gamble, don't do the first drugs. Just stay away from it. Simple.

The real problem we have is exemplified by the following stories. I have a list of here's Here's my my generic list.

I'm standing up. It doesn't count.

I've been very good for a year, a month,

a week, a day, an hour. I didn't eat the bun at supper time so I can have some.

I'm really depressed.

What'll make me feel better?

I'm really happy. How can I celebrate?

She's not looking at me.

I can have some. It's whole grain, it's stone ground. It's, it's, you know, the, the, the, the IT was made with organic molasses and cold pressed organic oil. So it's good and I can have some. It's got to be healthy.

I have to taste in order to see whether it's okay.

They gave it to me. How can I not have some? They made it especially for me. I'll never be able to have this again. The chef just died

the recipe or or it's a new flavor. Try it.

It's a nice way of committing suicide. My wife won't blame herself because it'll be obviously my fault. I've had those thoughts. Very deep, awful thoughts. Yeah, this is going to kill me. But my wife isn't going to blame herself. If I took a knife to myself, if I killed myself in other ways, she would always wonder what could I have done to stop it. But this way

I'll die early and that'll be OK. How will I fit in? Otherwise

it'll go to waste. It's free.

Walking around in Costco, it's free.

How can I say no to it?

At least people can see what my weakness is. Now. These are excuses. These are just. But I've had all of them. And, and for me, the the amazing and The funny thing is that I can use as an excuse. I'm so depressed. I'm so lonely

and I could also use an excuse. I'm so happy and too many people love me and,

and both of those are excuses that seem somehow valid to me at the time and allow me to go back and have the first bite.

And their excuses that work for Alcoholics, they work for drug addicts as well. They know the consequences and yet something clicks on them and they go back and they have that first bite.

I've told the story before about

how there was one time in my life, back when I was about 22, when I, I lived on very little money and lived in, in Chicago, walked everywhere and ate only food that I could afford, which was a lot of rice and powdered skim milk. And I, I, I lost a lot of weight and I was thinner than I'd ever been. And after a year of that, I came home to live in the wonderful, loving and ultra

giving

a bosom of my family where I could have any food I wanted. And I decided I would have bananas and cream, which would used to be a real treat for me, which I couldn't afford when I was living on my own. But here it was my opportunity at bananas and cream. And bananas and cream was may have been my own invention. You, you cut up bananas, put them in a bowl. You fill the bowl right to the top with cream and then you add sugar until it, the sugar sort of towers above the cream. You quickly eat the bananas. So you've got sort of like flavored,

flavored sweet cream, and then you gradually, not so gradually eat the sugar cream mixture until it's all gone.

So I said I'm not just going to have ordinary cream, I'm going to have Devonshire cream. You know, that great English cream that's so thick that you bite in a can. And I chilled it

and I got it already. And I took a spoon. Yeah, I take a spoon to take it out. It gets it gets so it's so thick. And I put on the bananas, I put the sugar on. I started to eat it. And my body rejected the fat in that cream for the first time in my life. I had not had that much fat in in it for a year. And my body was actually rejecting it. I got sick and made it nauseated me. This had never happened to me before in my life

now. I had been fat all my life, all my conscious life. As I said, I was thin when I was five or six, but all my life I've been fat. I was finally thin. Fat now

makes me nauseated. What's a rational

response for me to have? It is, wow, isn't this wonderful? Go with it. You know, for the first time in your life you don't want fat anymore. Here's your chance to continue to keep at a thin, thin weight. What was my real response? My actual response? I'd better go into training. I'll start with 2%. I'll go to whole milk. I'll go to 10% cream. I'll go to half and half until finally I can have my Devonshire cream. And within a year, I was fatter than I had ever been.

Because I went back to all the foods that created the problems.

Now that's my qualification. Once I start eating certain things, I can't stop.

That's my body just saying I want more. I want more and you're going to give me more and and you're not going to stop until there's nothing left.

But that's not my real problem because if I knew what I couldn't eat, I wouldn't eat. I shouldn't eat it. But my mind says you can have some this time. You can have some. Here are 25 different reasons. Pick one, anyone, and that'll be that'll overthrow any other rational reason that you may have for not starting again. You can start again. So I can't stop once I've started. But my real problem is is I can't stop from starting.

That's my real problem. And what the steps do

is give us a mind that can stop before it starts.

It's as simple as that. It gets rid of the mind problem so that I always know I have the body problem. So when I look at butter today, which for me is one of my real binge foods, I look at butter and it looks. It represents to me a descent into the madness that I used to have. It doesn't represent something that tastes good to me. It represents poison to me