The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

So, so these friends abstain in a different way, but they have a plan of eating Roseanne, the co-founder and AG, who's just passed away recently. But the first man in a way, both count calories. That's how they abstain. They make sure that the only calories, I mean, obviously they abstain from a whole bunch of binge foods, but they also count their calories. That's how they make sure that the quantities they take in them are what's healthy for them.

I have a friend who weighs and measures. As I told you and and and many many of his friends weigh and measure. He belongs to hoots, which generally will weigh and measure their foods.

Whatever it is, you figure out a plan of eating that allows you to abstain. What I've discovered when people relapse is that there are only two possible reasons they relapse. One is they may not be doing a step that they should be doing. That's one real reason. The other is they may still be eating something that they should be giving up, or they may be indulging in an eating behavior that they should be abstaining from.

And what I do when I sponsor people as I take them through ask. Make a list of your binge foods. Make a food diary. Let's look at at and let's be honest,

let's look at the ingredients of what it is that you eat. Let's look at your binge foods and let's be clear about them. I tell them a story and this is a true story of I once talked about the need and I'll talk much more about that on Sunday. The need to be a good message for OA if you've recovered or if I once I recovered, I, I knew I needed to look healthy. I couldn't continue to be fat and carry a message of recovery. I could start off that because I still had weight to lose, but after six months, a year,

I had to be at an at a healthy body weight in order to say to someone, I've recovered and you can have this too. Why do people come to LA if they don't come to achieve a healthy body weight? So I came. I mean, they find something much deeper than that, but that's why, that's why they come.

So

the other reason is,

yeah. So either they're not doing the steps or they're still eating something. So I say to people, I say to people, if you're not losing weight, clearly you are probably eating something that you shouldn't or indulging in eating behavior. Let's examine it again. I tell. So I tell the story. That's why I was telling the story. So I told the story about. I talked about losing weight and a person came up to me. One came up to me after the talk I gave and said I've been absent for 11 years. I haven't lost any weight. What do you say to that?

Well, I I

said what? What are you abstain from my sugar? I haven't had sugar for 11 years.

Say, well, let me try to experiment on you. I'm going to imagine that I give you a pound of sugar and I give you a tablespoon and I force you to eat 3 tablespoons of sugar. Would you feel such cravings that you couldn't stop eating until you ate that whole bag of sugar? Now I've asked some people that and they've said yes,

could not stop until I finish that back. She said, no, I couldn't do that. Said well, well, well, maybe sugar isn't your entire problem. And sugar is a waste calorie. I, I don't eat sugar because it's just a waste. It's, it's worth nothing. And why would I eat calories that that are worth nothing anyway? So I said to name me a binge food. What's your binge food? And maybe we'll look at your binge food. We'll see what other ingredients might be the problem. She said Donuts.

Oh OK. I said well you know Donuts have another ingredients. Flour. That's my problem. Flour. I can't eat any flour. I said OK, imagine I'm going to give you a pound of flour. I'm going to give you a tablespoon. I'm going to force you to eat 3 tablespoons of flour. Could you finish that? Flour said I couldn't even start. The idea of eating flour makes me sick. I said maybe flowers. Not your entire problem. There's another ingredient to donut. She said. What's that?

Donuts are deep fried fat, right? I mean, you, you, you, there's fat in them and then you deep fry them.

If you look at the ingredients of Donuts, you'll, you'll, you'll agree with me. Her response was to get sort of like a glazed look over her and to walk away from it. And I'd been in this program long enough to have gone to meetings, gone to dinners with people. I remember one I went to an assembly meeting I once went to where you had your choice of fish, meat or chicken, fish, steak or chicken. And the fish, I ordered the, I think the fish, and it was, it was fine.

The chicken was chicken Kiev. Is that the one with the butter in it? Yeah. Gordon Blue is the one with the ham and the cheese. Chicken Kiev

that it adorted. One of the people who who organized it had ordered chicken Kiev, and her absence was no bread,

no flour. OK.

And

they, the people order chicken, including the person who had ordered the chicken, like who arranged for this is the chicken thing. They they put their knife into the chicken and the butter sealed the bowl of the plate, filled it, and they were sopping up the butter. Weren't eating flour. Oh, can't have any buns. You know, they weren't eating any buns and they were fat.

And I thought to myself, have they really thought about what it is that they shouldn't eat? Have they really thought about what it is that they should be abstaining from? I know people who follow who have followed what's been known as Gray sheet, and it great. And it gives you bacon.

And they've said to me, you know, I hunger for that bacon and I make sure that the bacon I get is not, has almost no meat in it. You know, it's almost all the fat from the bacon. And then and they've admitted it and have agreed that that's that's not good. So taking someone else's plan of eating may not be a good thing. I mean, I avoid white flour. I avoid white sugar or any kind of sugar because I find them to be empty calories and not particularly nutritious. But I don't run away from them because for me, they don't cause cravings

with fat. The fat causes cravings, Fat and sugar, fat and salt. Oh yes, those are my cravings and certain foods are my cravings. But that's me. Other people do have problems with sugar and do have problems with flour. And all I ask them when I sponsor them is to be honest with themselves, not with me. I mean, I asked to be honest with me too, but not to follow me and not to say, Oh no, my problem, I can have sugar and flour. Maybe they can't because it's their program, not my program, their plan of eating, not mine.

I asked them to be honest with themselves. Is it really the sugar? Is it really the flower? Could it be the fat? Because one thing I've noted in a way is that a lot of people do not accept that fat may be a problem for them, and it may not be, but they don't consider it. And they don't look at fat content as much as they will look at sugar or flour content. So for me, I, I, I emphasize that only because I think it's something that is worth looking at, not because I think people should necessarily abstain from butter.

A very close friend of mine, one of my mentors in a way, who's been in no way so long, very long, thin as a rail, more spiritual than I'll ever be, easily has a role with butter at a meal.

Doesn't cost cravings in him. It's no big deal to him. So I know perfectly well that a lot of people can eat butter. I can't,

but a lot of people can. So I don't try and impose my plan of eating on anyone else. But I cross examine, I question my sponsees to make sure that they're honest with themselves. And the other thing I say to them is as long as they're honest with themselves, they can start working the program. And the promise is by the time they finish step nine, they won't want the things they're abstaining from and as they work that they may discover other foods they have to abstain from or other eating behaviors.

Now recently, well, about 5-6 years ago, my, my doctor, who has had been very happy with my weight, said that he had, he had come across some new studies which showed that he thought I should lose more weight. So I did. And, and I, I, I lost more weight by examining my plan of eating,

by looking at areas where I could control quantities even more. I ended up leaving something on my plate because I noticed that I have a tendency, not a tendency. I needed to finish the plate up. So I deliberately left something on my plate that was hard. That was really hard.

I ended up at one point saying if I start wondering whether I should be eating, it's time for me to stop.

And I lost the weight. It's pretty simple for me to do that, you know, So these are the things that I've done. I have people who said, you know, my eating behavior is eating after 6:00. I will abstain from eating after 6:00. I will abstain from eating while standing up. I will abstain from eating while reading. Oh, that's one thing I did for a long time to lose weight. I stopped reading while eating or watching TV while eating. Boy, did that change my eating style. I was born.

I couldn't. I mean reading

while eating allowed me to forget that I was eating, allowed me to increase the quantity so I lost weight by not reading. People have said to me I will not watch TV and eat

or I will not eat because obviously many of them say I will not eat between meals. Our pamphlet and Dignity of Choice has a wonderful series of suggestions and even some sample plans that people have adopted. They give examples of how you might be able to find a plan for yourself. And I'll be happy to talk to anyone about finding a plan of E.

So I want to, we have about 10 minutes. I just want to talk. So that's all I'm going to say now about abstaining

and, and it is for me, the first part of step one, we admitted we are powerless over food. And for me, the fact that part is that once I start eating certain foods or indulging in certain eating behaviors which it's up to me to figure out,

I get uncontrollable cravings. So I'm powerless. Once I start, I can't stop.

The second part of step one is that we were we may be proud for for that our lives have become unmanageable and you note that unlike the way many people read it, it's not we admitted we are powerless over food and that our lives have become unmanageable. It's we admitted that we were powerless over food dash that our lives have become unmanageable. And for those of you who are grammarians, I'm one, you will know that the that our lives are becoming manageable is a

for the word powerless. It is not this two sentences together. It's not and they're not two things that we admitted. We admitted that in relation to food and the powerlessness of her food, our lives have become imaginable. For me, that means, and I think it's it's clear from the big book approach that the unmanaged ability is that I cannot manage abstaining. I can't manage not going back.

It's the mind thing. It's the mental disability that says I can have some. I can't manage it. The big book says that our great obsession is that someday we will control and enjoy our drinking or our eating or our consumption of drugs or gambling or whatever. This whole notion that we can both enjoy it and control it,

that we can even moderation and still enjoy it, never happened to me. Boy. I mean, it happens to me now and I don't eat the foods that cause me cravings. But in the old days I could never and I cannot eat and ice cream in moderation and enjoy it. If I eat in moderation, I won't enjoy it

if I don't eat. If I eat it immoderately, I may enjoy it, but I won't control it. I can't control and enjoy. So for me, that's the second part.

Just in the short time we have, I want to ask you to look at Bill's story very, very briefly. Bill's story starts in Page one, and now we're on the same page for for everything. Bill Wilson is the guy who wrote most of this book. He was a hustler. He was a high flying kind of guy. He's not a guy that we we can all identify with. Most of us in no way have been couch potatoes. Those of us who have been overweight

or are overweight, our people who are lethargic. Food is an anesthetic to us and are weight creates us

a slow moving kinds of people. Even though alcohol is an anesthetic, really it seems to act as a stimulant to a lot of Alcoholics, not to all of them, but to a lot of them. And the story of Bill and of most the people in the big Book is a story of people who who drink and go out and do these weird and not so wonderful things, weird and wild and the self-destructive and destructive things and don't even necessarily remember it when they come out of it.

But we still have the same craving and

and I'm going to tell Bill story. I'm not going to tell it very. I'm just going to very briefly summarize it.

Bill

start off thinking that drinking was fun and ended up it's becoming a luxury. It was a luxury. And then it becomes a necessity. He knows he can't get along without it. He makes money. He loses money. He continues to lose money. His wife is the only support. He drinks and drinks and he can't get out of it. He goes to the town's town, town's hospital. Doctor Silkworth. He meets with Doctor Silkworth. Doctor Silkwith explains to him, Bill, you have an allergy of the body and a mind

that continues to send you back.

Maybe if you can just understand your allergy, you just keep from drinking any even one drink will set you off. So you can't have so much as one drink. Ah Doctor, now I understand I can't have so much as one drink. He goes off, he gets involved in the business ventures which will finally set him up for good. The the the deal he makes is if he doesn't drink before the contract is signed, you'll become the president company, make money.

Three days before the contract is signed, he's sitting in a hotel room with a bunch of guys. It's prohibition. Guy brings out a jug. He says, Boys, I got some applejack whiskey from I don't Tennessee or something.

I'll pass it around. You want some build? No, no, I don't drink.

It's good stuff. Pass it around again, Bill, you want some? No, I don't drink. Third time around someone says young is Applejack whiskey. Bill, you can't get that anymore. Drinks

loses his money.

Is he insane?

He knows he can't drink, and yet somehow his mind just went blank. He goes back to the town's hospital and Doctor Silkwith tells his wife he's doomed. I can't save him. He's got the mind of an alcoholic. He will never be able to stop from going back to drinking. And Bill goes through. And if you read Bill's story, you'll see he goes through step one very clearly. He's desolate. He knows he's in a vicious circle. Once he starts drinking, he can't stop. He knows that his body has this allergy that creates the cravings,

but he also realizes his mind cannot stop him from starting again. His mind can't remember. You can't have this Bill at a certain point, and it says to him, you can have it. So he can't stop from starting again, and he's doomed. Into his life comes an old, old friend of his named Abby Thatcher. And Abby was a guy who was a worse drunk than Bill used to be.

Bill Newman is a hopeless drunk. And Bill said, if I ever get as bad as Ebby, I'll have to stop drinking when Bill had gotten worse than Abby ever was.

And Abby phones him and says, and he's sober and every says can I come and visit you? Bill says sure. And Bill tells the story. He tells it on on on page page 8. And he says, well, it'd be great. We can drink. I can drink in front of him because he understands drinking and maybe he'll have a drink with me. Have you ever tried to undercut someone else's diet? I have. I know what that's like. And that's what Bill's doing, wants to undercut, undercut Abby, right. And Abby comes in on page 9 says the door opened and he stood there fresh skinned and

there was something about his eyes he was inexplicably different without any explanation was different. Would it happen? I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. He said I'm not drinking. Disappointed but curious. I wondered what it got into the fellow. He wasn't himself, he was different. Come, what's all this about? I queried. That's that's the way Bill talked Come, what's all this about? I queried. He looks straight at me simply but smiling. He said I've got religion. I'll come back to Abby's story, but

Abby explains how we found a spirituality that God rid of the mind that sent him back to drinking.

Heavy described how he found a higher power and it was very simple. What Debbie said. Debbie said to me, you know, you get honest with yourself, you get honest with another human being. You make amends for the harms you've done. You pray for guidance from God and you help other people without hope of reward or or prestige. And when you do those things, somehow you're in tune with a higher power and you don't drink.

You hear the steps in that right? You get honest with yourself, Step 4. You get honest with another human being, step five. You make amends for the harms you've done, Step 9.

You pray to God for guidance, step 11. And you help others without hope of reward. Step 12.

Those were the steps that Abby knew. I'll tell you tomorrow where he got them from and his story. But Bill went back to the town's hospital. Actually, he stews about it. He gets drunk about it. He thinks there's a solution there. There's something there. He he goes to visit Abby's church and he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at the church. He drinks about four days later, he buys 4 bottles of beer and he walks to the town's hospital. And with his last bottle of beer, he walks in the town's hospital. He says,

spoke with Doctor Silkworth this time. I've got something. And Doctor Sucker says, yes, I think you do, my boy. And he puts him in in the drunk tank. And he he sobers him up. Ebby visits him. Bill goes to the the steps. He gets honest with himself. He gets honest with another human being, with Debbie. He works out as amends. He begins to make an amend to his wife by just changing himself. And suddenly the world changes for him. He he, this is like a mountaintop and the wind blows through.

He feels clean and he hasn't had a drink ever since that time he calls Doctor Silkwood. He says, am I nuts? And here's one of those threads that hold that kept a A together.

What would a normal doctor have said? Am I to that question? Am I nuts? I've had this wind blowing through me as I feel, God, there's a white light going on.

Many doctors might have said, well, you haven't had a drink for four days after being drunk for the last year. You might be suffering a little bit of withdrawal, a little bit of DTS, the heebie jeebies. Yeah, maybe you are a little crazy, but Doctor Socrates said something else. He said you have something that's better than what you had before. Hold on to it.

So he gave Bill this feeling that there was something there,

and that's AA began. Not at that point though, but the seeds of A began at that point. And I'll tell the story more, but it's 930 now, so we'll quit for the day and I'll see you tomorrow at 9:00. Thank you.