Positive Action Changes Everything

MHIG

MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS

What is recovery? Where does it live? Why do I want it?

Recovery is a notion that I can navigate the world without the substance I use to shield me from the feelings that life hands me. It is the notion that total victory lies in admitting that I am defeated. It is the reality of surrender and the freedom that lies within the surrender. It is work, difficult perplexing work. It is amendment of behavior, thought, and soul. It is the constant movement towards positivity without a schedule or a goal. It is renewal daily of effort and commitment to recovery. It is missteps and backslides and imperfection. It is relinquishment of the illusion of control. It is attaining the very bottom of life and climbing back out towards the top. It is love and peace, joy and freedom, but can only be attained daily there is no lifetime subscription only a daily visit to recovery. It is light and vision and self-value.

It lives in the rooms and on the phones and in the love the fellowship provides. That little flicker of hope surrounded by the blackness of desperation is also where it lives. It now moves in with me every day, a guest in my soul for as long as I allow it to stay. Recovery lives everywhere just like my disease.

Simply I want it because I want peace and joy. I want it because it's better than living in my disease. I want it because I can surrender and accept what life deals me without worry or despair. Because I can allow myself to be guided to the next right action by my Higher Power.

Serenity

Chuck

My story

Since I got to define my abstinence I made sure it was very simple. I mainly had to identify those behaviors that I was hopelessly compulsive with. They lived in my mind, thinking about the behavior was all I needed and I was off to the races. The actual consumption of the food was but a part of the entire experience all of which I craved. Once started I couldn’t stop, and I could not stop from starting those thoughts. Anything could trigger the ritual. Exhaustion, anxiety, the clock, as a part of the practice occurred at night and in front of the TV. So there it was all the individual steps or behaviors or thoughts more like obsessions as well as specific types of foods and the time of day that had to be a part of my abstinence.

No eating after 8 PM, no trigger foods, no eating from a bag as in snacks. I identified my trigger foods which amounts mostly to deserts, especially those made in Vermont by 2 hippies named Jerry and Ben. Once I had the boundaries in place I also wrote down everything I ate each day, as a record or more like a practice. And I wrote the days abstinent as well. So what I did was the leg work and established the rules, which as you can see are very simple. The actual abstaining was gifted to me, something did for me what I couldn’t do for myself. I have no clue what that power is or where it comes from. I have started to call it god but it is not the Sunday school God of my youth. That I don’t need to define it is more of a miracle than the power it has delivered. So for me, abstinence is simple thankfully as the more complicated the less likely I could abstain.

That my abstinence from food is uncomplicated is only a small part of a life-changing experience that has had me confront the most challenging and difficult aspects of my life. The difference with this round and for the 1st time I actually have evidence that I am not God and that there is a power at work that I can rely on to help me. Were it not for my abstinence and the change of mind that I was gifted with I would not have ever believed that there is a power greater than myself and it is available for me.

— Anonymous

OA Region 6 Info

OA WSO Info

Step 9 - Love

Tradition 9 - Structure

Step 9:  Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 

The Big Payoff

I took Step Nine, completely and thoroughly, thirty-one years ago. I’d been a compulsive thief and cheat and often a manipulator and bully, so I had a lot of cleaning up to do. My sponsor kept me at it, doing one thing each day. It might be searching for a phone number for someone I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, or locating the owner of a now-closed business, or cleaning out one more drawer in my home to find more stolen goods.

I contacted a cemetery I’d stolen grave markers from, a museum I’d stolen items from, people I’d babysat for and stolen from. I contacted the university at which I’d cheated on my master’s exams, ready and willing to turn in my falsely obtained degree. (This could have meant leaving my job, but I was willing). And, I contacted the government to repay benefits I had claimed dishonestly.

Some amends were ongoing, like leaving appropriate tips for waiters to make up for all the tips I’d never left in my selfishness. I stopped taking free items just because they were there for the taking. When making each amend, I explained exactly what I was doing, as suggested in the Big Book and the AA Twelve and Twelve. I stated that I’m a compulsive overeater and that part of the Overeaters Anonymous program I’m working involves cleaning up my past by making amends to people I’d harmed.

As a result of cleaning house and changing behaviors, I had a new sense of feeling clean that I’d never experienced before. I no longer had secrets and had nothing to hide. As I continue living in Step Ten, making amends whenever I make new mistakes, that clean feeling continues.

It also cemented Step One in my mind and soul forever because the truth about me was no longer a shameful secret. The fact that I’m a compulsive overeater no longer has any power over me. It’s just true. I’m so grateful for the clear directions in the Big Book and for a sane and abstinent sponsor who did not let me get away with less than what I needed to do to stay abstinent. I’ve never had to go back and clean out anything from my preOA past that I omitted from Step Nine, because everything I was aware of came out and was taken care of the first time.

When I moved a year later, I found two stolen items buried deep in my home that I hadn’t seen or remembered before. My sponsor said I didn’t have to go back to Step Nine, for Step Ten is clear: “When these arise . . .” So, I worked my Step Ten and made the necessary amends and reparations.

Thoroughness and honesty really pay off: I’ve been gratefully abstinent, one day at a time, since December 1980.

— Anonymous, London

Tradition 9:  OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

Imagine If

Tradition Nine is kind of buried, and it seems like one of those boring maxims about how we set up shop. Yeah, yeah, so we can have an intergroup and world service, isn’t that special . . . who wouldn’t have thought of that?

But imagine if the opposite were true. Imagine if Tradition Nine said, “OA ought to be highly structured and hierarchical. Every local group’s mission is to serve the greater good as determined by OA’s leadership.” Imagine the clawing and ladder-climbing that would ensue as we control-freak OA members tried to manage our way up the hierarchy, all so we could show everyone the right way to run the program. Imagine the hurt and resentment, the bitter power struggles, the rebellions, factionalism, and anger. OA would last about as long as a polar bear in the Amazon—if we were lucky.

As it is now, Tradition Nine gives us guidance about how to get things done locally and more broadly. We form service bodies that report to those they serve. That’s right, in OA, the intergroup is not the boss! The intergroup is a collection of (hopefully) humble servants who act on behalf of their local meetings to carry the message in the broader community.

OA works because it’s not organized. There are no stars or VIPs that rise through a power structure to tell us all what to do. But being “not organized” isn’t the same as being “disorganized.” Tradition Nine facilitates getting the work of OA done without dissolving into chaos.

— Edited and reprinted from OA Today newsletter, St. Louis Bi-State Intergroup, September 2017