What Now?

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Even now, after sitting here in the kitchen and eating and eating and eating. Even now, I am in denial. I don't have a problem. I just need to be more careful. I just need to do better. Maybe I should start a new diet tomorrow. Maybe I could count calories or do Weight Watchers.

God, help me. I'm getting up early tomorrow. I have to start doing the things I did when I was abstinent before. That's how it worked for me, right? Why so stubborn?

Meetings

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

I am so grateful for meetings. I finally got my ass back to a meeting yesterday. I was warmly greeted by two good OA friends and one newcomer. I forget how desperately I need the tools of this program. Why do I keep forgetting?

I'm a compulsive overeater. I need a program of recovery. I need to use the tools. I need meetings.

I'm heading out to another meeting in a little bit. This one is a Christian recovery program based on the 12 Steps and also incorporating Christian teaching, mostly based around Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. It's called "Celebrate Recovery." I went last Friday night and really enjoyed it. Tonight I'll get into a small group. I'm excited because they have one specifically for pastors. I need that.

One of the interesting things they do is use the entire serenity prayer, as written in the 50s by Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

OA Charlie Eats

My name is Charlie, and I'm a newly-abstinent compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

If you're so inclined, come visit my newest blog, OA Charlie Eats. Warning: It's all about food. Specifically, my plan and my daily intake. Please don't visit if it's triggering to you.

Merry Christmas

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Three days till Christmas, and I'm caught up in the annual chaos. But I'm alive and I'm abstinent. This has been a rough patch, but I'm alive and I'm abstinent. Christ has come. Emmanuel means "God with us." I'm so grateful for the incarnation. God enfleshed. Miracle and mystery. Salvation.

I'm alive and I'm abstinent. Someday - after all the Christmas services I have to plan and lead, after my trip to visit family in Indiana - I'll post again.

Coming Home

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

I surrender. Again. I give up. I have to admit that I can't do this on my own. I am whipped. I am beat. I am hopeless and helpless without my Higher Power.

Since leaving HOW, I've had to experience again the insanity of my disease. I've had to go back to the sneaking food and the crazy thinking and the denials and the daily weigh-ins. I've obsessed over food and said I'd "start again tomorrow." I've gained at least 10 pounds. I've hated myself. I've given up the tools of the program, saying I really didn't need them, that I could just try a little harder, have a little more self-control.

The problem is, I don't have any self-control. I just don't. I have to surrender to the control of God. I have to give my life and my will to God's care. I'm so grateful I didn't have to gain 80 pounds back before I came home. I'm so glad I didn't have to eat myself to death. Because I could.

Thanks to all of you who have commented here and even emailed me. I'll get around to responding. I promise.

I'm back. Thanks for your love and support. I know you welcome me back with open arms. Because OA is home for me. It's home.

::sigh::

My name is Charlie, and I guess I really *am* a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

I don't want to be a compulsive overeater. I want to be done with this. I want to be normal. I want to be fixed. I want to be healed. I don't want to use the damn tools.

I don't want to gain weight. I don't want to eat compulsively. I don't want to relapse. I don't want to fail.

I want to be free. I don't want to weigh and measure and call and write and read.

I want to be thin. I want to be healthy. I want to eat anything I want to eat anytime I want to eat it... without gaining weight. Without getting compulsive again.

I. I. I. I.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

"What you deserve is to not feel shitty."

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Where to begin?

Look to your right. See the little abstinence counter? That's right. I'm starting over. Again. Since choosing to re-define my abstinence a few months ago, I've been really struggling. Just like they said I would. I hate proving them right. I hate it. I've heard so many horror stories about people who leave OA-HOW and get right back into the insanity of compusive overeating. They gain tons of weight, often more than they lost in the first place. And they either get sicker and sicker until they finally die, or they come crawling back to OA-HOW, miserable, and climb back on the willingness wagon.

I swore I would not be one of those people. And I'm not. Not yet. But I did slip. I did relapse. Damn it.

I found a sponsor in "regular" OA, and I began to work a much less structured program. This opened the door for me to eat "moderately." I eventually had an ice cream cone. Then a breakfast sandwich from McDonald's. I had pizza and dessert at a men's event at church. I stopped weighing and measuring. I started eating compulsively sometimes... quietly, secretly.

I was still running a lot. I was healthy. I was skinny. I was fine.

Right.

I got real a couple weeks ago. I saw the handwriting on the wall, thank God, and I began to pray for help. I got in touch with a program friend who has what I want, and he agreed to be my sponsor. But even then, I was not very willing... Halloween came a few days ago, and I told myself I'd have "just one" Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. One turned into ten, then twenty, just like that. Damn. I felt crappy. I "washed it down" with two hunks of bread. At 10:00pm.

Even after talking to my sponsor about it and re-setting my abstinence, I overate at lunch the next day... compulsively tearing though two big plates of food at an Indian buffet. I got scared. Abstinence reset again. That night I was online and I ended up chatting with my good friend G. Rabanon. She helped me remember some really important things... I'm just gonna copy some of the conversation verbatim, because it was so good...

Me: That's what started it last night. a frickin' peanut butter cup

G.: Understood. Those things are deadly.

Me: 20 little candy bars later, i feel pretty shitty

G.: *nod*

Me: i'm still pretty skinny! that's the thing my addict points to to justify my compulsivity

G.: Oh Charlie, you know it's not about how skinny you are. and yeah, that's what it tells us. Always, it tells us that we've been so good, or we're skinny enough, or that we deserve it... What you deserve is to not feel shitty.

Me: oh g. that is fucking true. thank you. god DAMN it.

That sentence killed me. It's exactly what I needed to hear. What I deserve, what we all deserve... is to not feel shitty. And that is what God offers us, every one of us... freedom from that awful feeling - which I can have whether I'm running 9 miles or sitting on my ass, whether I'm skinny or fat.

And so here I am again. I'm abstinent. I'm so grateful. And I'm still very cautious. I'm still very aware that I'm one bite away from a slip, from relapse. I am so compulsive, so sick. Even after all this recovery, I can so easily spiral into pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

Thank you, God. Thank you, G. Here we go. I'll go to bed abstinent tonight. How 'bout you?