The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

OK. I think we're back. Yes, we're recording again.

So I'd like to begin reading the book now. The first thing I'd like you to do is I hope you all have a copy. If you don't have a copy in front of you, there are copies here. Please read them. Please have it in front of you. It's really well worth it. Don't even buy it if you don't. If you can't. I mean, it's, it's about as cheap a lifesaver as you'll ever buy. What? How much is the soft cover? It's $10 or something like that. And the hardcover is 12. If we have a hardcover, we have lots of copies of the Big Book. So please, please borrow it.

I,

I think we need one there.

And what I'd like you to do is turn to the title page of the Big Book.

And that's before, way before page one, the title page.

So if you don't buy them, just drop them off. Just drop them back. Yeah,

if you don't have the money on you now, bring it tomorrow. Take the book home with you and read it and bring the money tomorrow. If you don't pay, it's your problem, no one else's. So you turn to the title page and you see it says Alcoholics Anonymous, the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism. You'll note that they say we covered. They don't say are recovering, but they say we covered

and the Big Book uses the word we covered all the time.

It uses the word recovering only once in the entire 1st 164 pages of the Big Book. And the word recovering at that time is used. Simply describe someone who is in the process of beginning to work the steps. But once we finish step 9, the Big Book guarantees us recovery. And they say we've recovered. What is recovery? It's to gain that which was lost. We recover something. What do we recover? Our sanity. What is our sanity? The ability to look at the foods that we know are our problems.

Why would I eat this? This is poison to me. Other people can eat it. I can't.

That's the sanity that we have recovered from.

We've recovered from insanity. Now most of you will have it will say 4th edition. Is that right? Does anyone have a third edition? OK, some page numbers are different right at the beginning, so I'll give you the different page numbers for those of you with a third edition.

OK, Next I'd like you to turn to the preface, which is found on

Roman Numerals XI 11.

It's right after the table of contents

and justice. Look at the second paragraph of that preface

and just really the first sentence there. It says because this book has become the basic text for our society,

this book calls itself a textbook.

And actually the AA12 and 12, the book called the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous also calls the big Book a textbook. Now Joe and Charlie say, what is a textbook? A textbook is a book that imparts information from people who have it to those who don't mean that is what a textbook is. That's why you study a textbook. It gives you information which you didn't have and you get it from people who have that information. And how do you read a textbook? You study it from page one on.

You start from the beginning and you go to the end. It's written in such a way as to give you that information in a way that you can understand it and accept it and it makes sense for the study of it. If you're going to study algebra and you'd never study arithmetic, you would start with arithmetic and go all the way up to algebra. So this is a textbook. There is no other book in alcohol, in a A, or in OA that calls itself a textbook. We have no other textbook in A, A or OA.

OA has a number of books.

The the OA book called The 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous is a series of essays on the steps. It is not a textbook and it doesn't pretend to be. It has it talks about all kinds of different ways of doing the steps. It is not the way of doing the steps. We have a a book called the workbook, the 12 step workbook of over. It is anonymous. It is not approved by the World Service Business Conference of Overeaters Anonymous. It was put together by the Board of Trustees of OA

and it does not represent the group conscience of OA as to how to do the steps. It just consists of a bunch of questions taken from the O 812 and 12, the 12 steps of 12 traditions. But it is not the OA recommended way of doing the steps because it was not passed by the World Service Business Conference and it doesn't represent the group Conscience of OA. The same with we. There's a pamphlet, it's hardly found in Winnipeg, but a pamphlet called the 4th Step Inventory Guide or the Guide to the 4th Step Inventory that is also not approved.

The World Service Business Conference, the group Conscience of Away. It was put together by the Board of trustees of Away and consists of questions taken from the OA 12:00 and 12:00, but it is not the OA way of doing the steps. The only book that calls itself a textbook in OA or a A is the Big Book. OK,

yes,

the A 12 and 12 talks about the big book as being a textbook, not it's a series of essays. That's all it is. OK,

I'm going to ask you to go now to the forward to the 1st edition X I I I 13 and Roman numerals. It's the same for all editions

forward to the 1st edition. This is the forward as it appeared in the first printing of the 1st edition in 1939.

We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered, again, not are recovering, but have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And this theme that there's both the mind and the body is essential to our understanding of our problem. And if we don't understand it, and I reject it, an understanding of it for seven years, six or seven years, which is one of the reasons I relapsed, If we don't understand it, we will not be able to recover to the 12th.

And the Big Book says this very clearly. When, and I'll point this out today, to show other Alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.

So the main purpose of the book is to show people what we did.

And the promise of this book is you do what we did and you'll have the recovery that we have. That's why it's a textbook. It tells you exactly what we did.

OK, I'm going to skip the forward to the second edition. I'm going to go to the forward to the third edition, which is found on 22 in Roman numerals.

And if you look at the third paragraph on that page, right in the middle of that paragraph, you'll see a sentence that begins the 12 steps that summarize the program.

And what is important for that is to realize that from the Big Book perspective, the 12 steps that we read on the wall that we read at every meeting is not the 12 steps. They are a summary of the program and from the Big Book perspective,

they are in effect the ingredients and the big Book is the recipe.

The big book, as we'll see, actually describes the steps differently from the way they're written on the wall. And we'll see that very, very specifically when we look at step 10. But we'll also see that when we look at step four and in understanding the big Books directions, we'll show you that one of the problems had in this program, and maybe some of us have in other respects, is that when we look at the 12 steps, each of the 12 steps that we read at every meeting and

for those to be the steps, we often treat every one of those steps as being exactly the same importance. And that means that we treat step 6 and step seven with the same degree of importance and time as we might treat step four or step one or step 9, the big and and hey, if it works, it works. That's I'm I'm happy if it works for you. But from the big book perspective, that's not the case.

We will find. I'll discuss this tomorrow

that there were only 6 steps to begin with and they did not include steps. Three steps six, step 7, even step 8 and step step 10. And you'll see why as we go through the steps, you'll, you'll, you'll see why the different steps have different reasons for being there, and I'll go into the history of that. I would ask you then to turn to page.

Well now this. The numbers become slightly different.

The 4th edition is XXV in the 3rd edition is

it's 23 in the 3rd edition of 25 in the 4th edition because the 3rd edition does not have two pages of the forward to the 4th edition. The 3rd edition doesn't have the forward to the 4th edition because of course, there was no 4th edition when the 3rd edition was printed. If I give you the 4th edition, subtract 2 and you'll get the 3rd edition. You've got the Doctor's opinion

now. The doctor was a man. We will not meet much in the big book because I'm not going to go through Bill's story, which which is the first chapter of the big book where he talks. I will tell you about it, though. His name was Doctor William Silkworth, and he was a Doctor Who worked at a hospital called the town's hospital in New York. If you if you have this book that I wrote, I was able to find pictures of the town's hospital and there's an ad for the town's hospital rehabilitation program in it somewhere in here, I don't know which.

And you can, you can see that it's kind of neat to look at

a doctor. And there's a picture of Doctor Silk with in the book I've written as well.

Doctor Silkwith is a he was, he was called a St. He was loved by a bunch of Ayers, loved by a lot of alcoholists as he cared deeply about Alcoholics and he treated thousands and thousands of Alcoholics in his life and considered them until a a came around to be pretty hopeless. He had a drying out facility. He administered all the treatments that you, you were supposed to administer to have people,

you know, dry out and, and, and, and get over the heebie jeebies and the, you know, the DTS, delirium tremens that you can get if you've been terribly addicted to alcohol. He dry them out in all kinds of different ways and they go out and they drink again. And then he'd drive them out again. They drink again. It was a, you know, it was a good, it was a good business. Like every diet program is a really great business. If you keep going back to it, you, you, you know, it's, it's great. But he despaired and in 1933

I might have been 1930. I think it was 33.

He published a series of papers in which he set out a new theory of alcoholism. Up to that time, alcohol, alcoholism was considered to be kind of like a moral problem, a disease of the mind, a problem of people. You know, that we hear people say why it's not willpower, It's won't power. You know, why don't you just exercise your won't power? And, and it was just sort of trying to persuade people to become more resolute and just not not drinking, just don't drink.

And he published a theory that he there was pretty radical for his time.

And it was so radical, by the way, that when he wrote these letters in that were published in the, in Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1st edition of the book, which was printed in 1939,

his name wasn't put in. It was Doctor Blank, you know, Doctor Line. It was never his, his, his name was in there because it was considered so radical that, that, that he was afraid to put, I don't know, afraid, but he didn't put his name down.

And his theory was very simple and it's contained in this, in this chapter. And this theory was that there's something wrong with the body of the alcoholic as much as with the mind. And it was his attempt to explain what went on with the body that really was quite radical. Everyone knew there was something wrong with the mind. It hasn't it wasn't well expressed, but the body was really important. And he developed this theory that we'll discuss as we read this chapter.

He writes 2 letters in this in this Doctor's opinion. The 1st letter is a short one. It's on the first page of The Doctor's Opinion.

It's basically a letter recommendation. It basically says what's in this book is great. And if you just turn the page, just the next page to that chapter, you'll see he ends his letter of reference, but says you may well, you may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves, which is a pretty good letter of recommendation. And then the authors of the big book in the larger typeface

begin. They they make a comment. They say the physician who at our request gave us this letter

has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe, must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. I rejected this statement for six or seven years. I rejected it consciously. I would read this and say that's not true. Doctors tell me that's not problem with my mind, with my body. It's only with my mind I can eat everything in moderation.

I believe what I was told by doctors, by nutritionists, by all the diet books I read, by all the diet magazine diets and magazines, and by the weight loss programs that I investigated and joined. You can eat anything once you lose your weight.

And I believe there's nothing wrong with my body. It was just a matter of moderation. But the big book says you must believe it. You must believe that there's something wrong with your body. And what is it that that that's wrong with your body? First of all, why they say it didn't satisfy us to be told we couldn't control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality or were outright mental defectives. These things were true to some extent, in fact to considerable extent with some of us. But we are sure, we're certain that

bodies were sickened as well. In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete. Now that's a really powerful and important statement and it's the, it's the purpose of this chapter, the doctor's opinion to explain why that's the case.

They go on and they say the doctor's theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. And I read that and I said I don't have analogy to food. I love food. I don't break out in rashes. I don't get an athletic shock when I eat food. I go into ecstasy when I eat food. I love food. How can I you say I'm allergic to food?

And my friend, this friend who really, really, really read the big book said that's not what allergy means. I said that's exactly allergy means allergy means that you take pills for allergies. The allergies give you hives, they give you rashes, they do things to your body that are horrible. Nothing horrible happens to

and he said look it up. Well, I looked up the word allergy and it was fascinating because I couldn't find it in my old dictionaries. It didn't exist in the English language until the early 1900s,

and it comes from the Greek, and it means simply. Originally, this is what it meant, an abnormal physical reaction to a physical substance. Any abnormal physical reaction. Now we've come to understand as meaning an abnormal reaction that somehow makes our bodies worse in bad shape. What we'll find out is that the allergy, the abnormal physical reaction that the doctor uses

talks about is cravings, uncontrollable cravings, and that's the allergic reaction that the doctor was talking about. So the big book says the theory that we have an allergy interests us as laymen. Our opinion as to its soundness may of course mean little, but as X problem drinkers, we can say that his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account.

So this whole concept of the allergy is something I rejected for years because I didn't understand what it meant. If I had known that an allergy means an abnormal reaction, that that abnormal reaction in the case of an addict is cravings, that would have made some sense to me. But I thought it meant something else, and I rejected the concept. Why should we believe that they that we have an allergy?

There are four reasons that make sense to me.

The first is that we should no longer feel guilt about overeating because there's something wrong with our bodies and the we should not feel guilt when we find we can't stop. Once we start. That image of me eating the food and having the the the hand come to the mouth and saying to myself, I got to stop. I got to stop. Why can't I stop? I'm gaining weight. Why can't I stop? And the food is still going.

I no longer feel guilty about that because I know it's not my mind, it's my body. And my body is overpowering my mind. It's uncontrollable, my body. Can I stop blinking? Well, for 5 minutes maybe. Actually, no, I can't stop blinking 5 minutes. Stop blinking for one minute. Can I stop breathing? Two or three minutes.

Can I stop my heart from beating? No

parts of my body I cannot control. And what I have to understand is I can't control these cravings. It's like Audrey the flower and Little Shop of Horrors, you know, more, more and my body's more blood or whatever. She said I want more, give me more, and I cannot stop. That's the first reason. The second reason is that clearly the answer to the allergy is the answer to any allergy. Don't go near the stuff

that causes the allergy. You abstain. You have to abstain from the things that cause the allergy. Now that's enough for any alcoholic to know because alcohol is joint alcohol. It's anonymous. Drug addicts join Narcotics Anonymous or Cocaine Anonymous. Gamblers join out Gamblers Anonymous. They know you abstain. You stop from your addictive substance or behavior. You just don't take it. You don't go to alcohol and say I'm going to continue to drink and and work the program

and, and you know that. But for us to know a We have another problem

because we are not Chocoholics Anonymous, we're not Fataholics Anonymous, we're not Sugaraholic Anonymous, we're not Flouraholics Anonymous. We are a group of people who all agree we have a compulsive problem and that we are addicted. But as it turns out, each one of us has his or her own particular allergy.

And there are people in this room. And I certainly know people in no way probably people in this room. And I know, I know for certain in OA who can eat everything I cannot eat and I can eat everything that they can't eat. So that from an extreme point of view, there are people in OA who have absolutely different allergies or allergies to different things. Many of us overlap, most of us have a lot of similarities. But one of the most important things.

Reason why this is important from OA to understand the allergy is that understanding the symptom of the allergy allows us to figure out what we as individuals have to abstain from. And what I have to abstain from may be very different from what you have to abstain from and vice versa. And the one thing that stands for, because we have a pamphlet called The Dignity of Choice, which represents the group conscience of it, was passed by the World Service Business Conference.

Don't accept another person's plan of eating because that person's plan of eating may not be your plan of eating. Don't just accept it. Wholeness bolus. You may you may have different problems and you may have to abstain from different things.

The fourth reason that is good to know that we have an allergy is that it provides us with a wonderful excuse for those among us who are people pleasers. And I venture to think that there may be some people pleasers in this audience. I know that I have been a people pleaser and I I know many people who identify with people pleasing in OA. And that is if someone offers us something that we know we can't have, we can say no thanks. I just found out I'm allergic to it.

Who would give you something you're allergic to? Now they may go so far as to ask you what happens when you when you ingest it. I'll give you 3 answers that I've heard. My answer is simple. I break out into under uncontrollable cravings so I can't I can't have it. Another person said I break out in fat. And the third one, I love this one. My bum begins to swell,

which I was pretty good. You could say my stomach swells or something like that, but that's pretty good too.

But I prefer to say uncontrollable cravings. But whatever it is, who's going to give you something you're allergic to? Who's going to say, oh, you can have a little bit if you're allergic to it. You know, I know there's one person assume is allergic to peanuts and and I know that that person has actually taken risks because of the compulsive eating aspect. I'd never take a risk with peanuts. I'd never take a risk with shrimp. I tell you I don't like peanuts or shrimp that well, that I would take that kind of a risk. But I fully understand how someone could

because I've taken risks with all kinds. I watched my mother who had diabetes and ultimately died of diabetes or diabetes related illnesses. She had diabetes. She's told you can't have sugar. You know, they probably changed the diet since then, but this is back in the in the 60s. And I remember watching her eat things with sugar in it and joke about it and say a little bit won't hurt me.

And it did. In the last four years of her life were pretty difficult, miserable years for her. She had a stroke. A woman who talked brilliantly and wonderfully and eloquently was reduced to a couple words at a time. She couldn't talk very well because of the stroke. She was in constant pain. She was a very difficult time. And, and, and how did that happen?

She didn't abstain from things that she clearly should have abstained from.

But I got to tell you certainly, I mean, I haven't had peanuts for a long time because I, I stay away from peanuts. They're one of my binge foods. I'll, I'll talk about the exceptions to that. But but shrimp is something I eat. But I'll tell you very frankly, if someone told, if I found out, I'd get an athletic shock that my neck would, would happen. It swells and I, I choke. I'd look at shrimp a little differently. I'd say, Gee, it was a good ride, but I don't want shrimp anymore. You know,

my wife was a chocoholic. If she were told you can't eat chocolate anymore, we just discovered that you're allergic to it. Well, I've asked her how she would say. She would say I would resent it terribly. I would weep about it, but I would never have another piece of chocolate. Sane people don't have things that cause them illness,

right? So that's, that's why we do this. Now

let's just go on. What is this allergy? What is the symptom of this allergy? I want to point out if you look at the bottom of that same page we're looking at, which is 26 XXVI in the 4th edition, 2420 third, it says more often than not, it is imperative, it's necessary that a man's brain be cleared before he's approached, right? In other words, that he stopped drinking.

Now just go right over to the bottom of the next page where the doctor, we've now got smaller writing here. This is the doctor writing says, of course an alcoholic ought to be freed from his physical craving for liquor. You see that those are the only major mentions in the Big Book of Sobriety.

The Big Book assumes sobriety as Alcoholics Anonymous assumes. You just assume, of course you're going to be sober when you work the steps. How can you work the steps and and be drunk? I suppose there are Alcoholics who think they can do that, but very few of them end up succeeding. And yet in OA, as I've been in it for a long time and their people have been in it for a long time, who Who I'm sure will agree with me. There has been a time some people have said

I can work the steps

and still eat, and the steps will give me recovery. I've heard that. As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine in this program, who knows who knew the big book better than I'll ever know it, died in this disease,

died by his own hand in this disease. And he thought he could work the steps without getting sober, without abstaining.

And I know that person because I, I, I talked to him about it.

The big Book takes sobriety for granted, and I take absence for granted. For me, step one begins with absence. One wonderful speaker who's passed on now once said at an OA meeting years at an OA convention years and years ago. Step one is all about abstinence,

and it is the beginning. We get sober, we stop eating, and then we're in a race. Are we going to work the steps and get to Step 9 and recover before our mind comes back and gives us permission to eat? That's the race we're in. The faster we can work the steps, the more we will, the more we'll beat our minds. But if we wait a long time, our minds will come back and say you can have some. You've been really good for a while

and that's the race that we're in. I'll, I'll talk more about that. So

if you look at the top of that page that we were just at from the doctor, which is 28 Roman numerals and 4th and 26th Roman numerals and 3rd, the first full paragraph says, we believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic Alcoholics

is a manifestation of an allergy. A manifestation is a symptom of an allergy. And what is that manifestation, that symptom, The phenomenon of craving. Now, what's a phenomenon? We're going to meet this word a few times in the big book. A phenomenon is an occurrence for which there's no explanation. It's just something that happens. We don't know why it happens, it just happens. The plural of phenomenon, it's a Greek word, is phenomena.

The phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker.

So once you take in alcohol, you get cravings. That's the manifestation of the allergy. So the allergy is not hives, it's not a swelled throat, it's not coughs, it's not wheezes. It is cravings. That's the way the doctor has done it, OK,

he goes on, right at the bottom of that page.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.

The sensation is so elusive, it just runs away from you. It's so elusive that while they admit it's injurious, while the minute injuries them, they cannot, after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. I tell you, you know, when I was going out with my wife and I would take her to these fancy restaurants. Well, not fancy, but it's great ethnic restaurants

and she would study the menu and order a toasted chicken salad sandwich

and or we go to Chinese restaurant, we order these exotic things in cheat order, you know, sweet and sour chicken balls, you know, which is sort of, I would look at this. That's not Chinese food that may be served at Chinese restaurants. Not but the Chinese eat.

And then we go to movie and she'd have some licorice or something and I'd have a huge tub of buttered popcorn and, and her some of her licorice and something else. And then we go out to a pizza place for a snack, and I'd have most of the pizza, and she'd sort of move the food around, you know, a bit and pretend that she ate.

I began to think, you know, I'm falling in love with her, but she's sick. She's really sick.

She doesn't like food

and and I worried about our relationship, about whether it could survive the fact that she didn't like food. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And it's true. I grew up in a family of compulsive eaters. I grew up in a family where you have to eat. Eating was love. And that's true for virtually every ethnic group except my wife's ethnic group, which was English and, you know, judging with all due respect to her mother, who might adored and it was a really a very fine pastry chef

when it came to cooking.

Baking she was great at, but cooking food dinners

was pretty boring. And if I were my wife, I guess I'd be bored by food too, if that's what food was.

But I began to think that she was sick and that's a good example to them. Their alcoholic life seems the only normal. I mean I remember after we married and she I was doing the cooking, she she never learned to cook. Now she's a very good cook, but she had never learned to cook when she was young.

We, we went, we went to her parents for, for

supper on a Sunday or something like that. And it was springtime and, and her mother was serving and my wife went bananas. She's, oh, mom's serving spring potatoes, roasted spring potatoes, those little, the little potatoes, you know, those little small potatoes that used to come out only spring. You can buy them all the time now. And, and she put them at the bottom of the roast pan and they would get a very crispy, you know, they'd be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. They said they tasted good

and my wife would take these little potatoes and I remember 1 dinner, she, she, she, she got these potatoes and she'd cut them in half and gobbled the half. Just

gobble, gobble, gobble. I was, I'd never seen her eat this quickly or this, this with so much zest, you know, so much relish.

And she got to half a potato. Her plate was empty except for half a potato. And she cut that half a potato into half. She ate 1/4 and she put her fork down

and I looked at that quarter of potato.

You all know it. And I looked at that quarter potato and very nicely and gently I said, aren't you? Aren't you going to eat? That

said, Oh no, I'm full,

I said. I said but but, but you love it

And she said, oh, I just loved it. It was so good. I haven't had these potatoes for a year. I love these potatoes. And I yelled at her, why aren't you eating them?

And she looked at me and I, I have this. I mean, it's, it's a long time ago. We've been married almost. Well, we've been married over 37 years, but so it must be about 37 years ago. She looked at me and she said I'm full.

And I was angry at her. I could not understand why she couldn't eat that quarter of a potato she'd already eaten, you know.

OK, anyway, so to them their alcoholic life seems the only one. Now here's some important words. They are right at the bottom of that page. They are restless, irritable, and discontented. Right at the bottom of page 28 Roman numerals in the 4th edition or 26 in the 3rd edition. They are restless, irritable and discontented

unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few tricks. I want to look at that sentence for a while. Not that long, but for a while.

I understand that sense of ease and comfort with food. I know that when I was into my illness, when I was into my addictions, only certain things would satisfy me. I would be restless or irritable and discontent. My body would be round. I just wouldn't be. And then suddenly I would have an ice cream or I'd have a cracker or a potato chip, or I'd have,

you know, a cheesecake, or I'd have goose skin. I don't know. And suddenly

my body would say I'm at home just a ha.

And I know that feeling. I, I might not say it quite like that, but that same sense of I'm at home, I'm here. And then maybe I would switch from ice cream to crackers or from crackers to ice cream. I, I might say, well, now I need something else to make me feel at home because as the big book says, it's elusive. It, it runs away from you. So you might feel at home and then suddenly you need something else to give it to you. Just as the in a, in a more dramatic situation, the alcoholic might, might switch from rum to vodka or, or something like that. Or the drug addict might search for

harder drug or a bigger dose or something like that. But whatever it is, that sense of ease and comfort now when I drink, I get a sense of unease and discomfort when I have too much. Just as my wife gets a sense of unease and discomfort when she eats too much of something she even loves, like the chocolate that she, the chocolate dessert that she had that she got too full at. She would bite into it, say there's a greatest dessert I've ever had in my life and eat only half of it because at a certain point,

body set, I don't want anymore. And I think I told you, I did tell you I had a $90.00 bottle of wine. I was given a big glass of it. I drank it. And believe me, there is a difference. I'd never had in my mouth any taste of wine ever like that. It was the greatest wine I'd ever had in my life

and I couldn't finish this very full glass because at a certain point my body felt unease and discomfort, even though the taste was great. Now that's me with wine, that's my wife with food. That's never me with food. That's the out. That's never the alcoholic. With alcohol,

we have a different body. There is something different about us. Or if you're like me, there's something different about you. There's certainly something different about me. For me, certain things give me the sense of ease and comfort that makes me want more, that gives me these cravings. And Dr. Silkworth goes on at the bottom of that same page. He talks about I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control. He gives that simple example, the one that I joked about with my friend about the person as the appointment on A

and he has a drink on the Wednesday and then wakes up in the hotel room on the Friday. And you know, I've never had that experience, but I've certainly had the experience that when I eat my mind goes completely into the food and doesn't and isn't on anyone else. And I'm eating relentlessly while all around me people are saying, well, let's do something else. So let's let's go off and I'm just eating and eating and my mind just is on it on the eating. And he goes, if you turn the page to page XXX 30 of the 4th edition OF28XX VI I I of the third.

These men were not drinking to escape. They were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. This is the key. It's a craving that overpowers their mind.

And he then goes into a whole bunch of different kinds of Alcoholics. He talks about the manic depressive one. He talks about the psychotic ones. He talks about the same ones. He says there's nothing they have in common except one thing, and that's found in the second last paragraph on that page. All these and many others, all these different types have won only one symptom in common. And what is that symptom?

They can't start drinking without developing the phenomenon, the occurrence of craving. The only thing they've gotten in in in common. The psychotic person, the manic depressive person and the same person may have nothing else in common

other than if they are Alcoholics. Once they start to drink, they get cravings that are beyond their mental control.

This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation, the symptom of an allergy which differentiates these people, which sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been by any treatment with which we are familiar, been permanently eradicated, gotten rid of. So there's no way that and, and it's still true now, there's no way that medical science knows to get rid of that craving. Once you've got it, you've got it.

And he says the only relief we have to suggest

is entire abstinence, abstaining from the substance that creates the cravings.

Now this paragraph is a very important paragraph in the history of Overreaders Anonymous.

For two years from 1960 to 1962, this program did not have an idea of sobriety. There were diets that were floating around and people would work the 12 steps, but they were diets. And most of the people were following a program that was similar actually to the weight loss program that I used to follow, which gave you a lot of free foods. You could you you ate all the time, but you would eat a lot of foods that didn't have any calories in between your meals. Your meals would have sort of met weight and measured

foods, but you would eat celery and carrots and hot air popcorn, and you chew gum and you drink diet drinks and you do whatever you can to keep your mouth busy. And one day, about two years into the creation of this program, Roseanne, the co-founder of OA, went to an open a a meeting where they read this particular paragraph that ends with the only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence.

And she suddenly had a brainstorm.

She said this is what we're missing in this program. We do not have a notion of sobriety. The alcoholic knows you go into alcoholism, Alcoholics Anonymous, you don't drink. You go to Gamblers Anonymous, you don't gamble. You go to Cocaine Anonymous, You don't take cocaine. You go to Narcotics Anonymous, you don't use.

Well, what is it that we don't do in in OA? So we don't have that notion. This is what we have, the word abstinence. We abstain from compulsive eating. And she wrote a letter to the few OA groups that exist at that time. And I've seen that letter. It's actually, I think in the book she wrote called Beyond Our Wildest Dreams. Maybe not. I've seen it anyway. And she says she said something like this is what we've been missing. We have to abstain from compulsive eating. And that means that between meals we can't eat.

We have to eat 3 meals a day, nothing in between, a day at a time. We cannot eat between meals because if we eat between meals, we're overeating. Even if we're not eating

foods that have calorie content, we're still eating.

So I, I love that. I'm so pleased to know that, that I, I mean, for me, the word abstinence, although I disagreed with what it meant for six or seven years, was the thing that kept me in a way, because I knew that in OA, somehow if I work the program, I would find a way to abstain. And I finally did it after I finally accepted the notion that there is something wrong with my body.

No, this is a disability in the same way that someone who has a, who gets

an, an an anaphylactic lactic shock from shrimp or peanuts has a disability. It's something that goes on in the body. People who have, who have lost a leg have a disability or they're challenged. Whatever the words you want to use, they, they, they are people who do not have who, whose bodies are different from you want to say, normal people or other people.

My disability is that when I start eating certain things, I get the phenomenon of craving. And when I get a phenomenon of craving, it overpowers my mind and I can't stop. And I know that to be true. It accords with all my experience, my goose story, my the fact that I ate in the midst of this guy vomiting, the fact that I continue to have my hand come to my mouth and bring me food while my mind was saying I got to stop.

The fact that I couldn't stop. This is a disability.

It's no longer my fault. My only responsibility is to acknowledge it.

I wear glasses. I don't throw my glasses away and pretend I don't have glasses. I don't need glasses. I need glasses to see and I don't. I don't cry by the fact I need glasses. I just accept this disability, and when I go out driving, I recognize that I better have my glasses on or else I'll drive dangerously and I'll put myself and other people in danger.