Author Archives: seacoastoa

Step of the Month: Step 11

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11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

 

You don’t have to believe in my Higher Power, and I don’t have to pray like you do. That’s one of the beauties of OA. We each come to our individual understanding of God, we learn to depend on the God of our understanding as the steps unfold, and then we learn to communicate with God in whatever way works for us.

That’s right, while OA has many suggested prayers, not one of them is mandated. Many of us use them, and we find them indispensable, but no one can make us talk to God in a way that doesn’t align with our concept of a Higher Power or whatever practices make sense to us. After all, the Big Book tells us that “the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive….”

One way we could look at prayer is that it is much like our food plan. It needs to be tailored to our own needs, of course, but we can also adapt prayers others have used. We can express the meaning of the prayer to God in whatever words we wish to. So it might be helpful to review some prayers from OA and AA literature. They can be used in the morning, in the evening, or just when walking around or facing difficulties. The important thing is that we each have the opportunity to use them in whatever way best supports our relationship with our own Higher Power, our abstinence, and our relations with others.

OA PRAYERS
Roz’s Prayer/Unity Prayer/OA Promises
“I put my hand in yours, and together we can do what we could never do alone. No longer is there a sense of hopelessness, no longer must we each depend upon our own unsteady willpower. We are all together now, reaching out our hands for power and strength greater than ours, and as we join hands, we find love and understanding beyond our wildest dreams.”

THE BIG BOOK
Third Step Prayer, page 63
“God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!”

Angry Man’s Prayer, page 67
“This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.”

Seventh Step Prayer, page 76
“My Cre­ator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.”

Recommended to be said throughout the day, page 88
“Thy will be done.”

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
St. Francis’ Prayer, page 99
“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace – that where there is hatred, I may bring love – that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness – that where there is discord, I may bring harmony – that where there is error, I may bring truth – that where there is doubt, I may bring faith – that where there is despair, I may bring hope – that where there are shadows, I may bring light – that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted – to understand, than to be understood – to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life. Amen.”

Serenity Prayer, page 125
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

There are many other prayers scattered throughout various pieces of literature, but these should give a good cross-section of some of the more popular ones.

Step 11 reminds us to stay humble, close to God, and out of the driver’s seat. We get inspiration from God…not confirmation of how we think things should go. The prayers above and many others help us stay right sized, sane, and connected to God.

Love and Tolerance Is Our Code

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“Live and let live.” If everyone in the world applied this 12-step slogan throughout their daily lives, we’d all be a lot better off, addicts or not. But we addicts use this slogan for a reason. We find it helps us to avoid eating compulsively.

We OA members seek comfort in food or food behaviors. We want to avoid the painful feelings of our day. Sometimes what we see in a situation is real. Sometimes it’s a product of our thinking. In either event, our diseased minds use these situations to kill us by eating compulsively.

In the “Doctor’s Opinion” in the Big Book we are told that the cycle of addiction begins with feelings of restlessness, irritability, or discontent. In other words, with a thought or a feeling. This activates the obsession of the mind before we take the first bite. This means that our thinking and emotions are the trigger for our compulsive behaviors.

Enter “live and let live.” It is telling us that we should abandon our attachment to the people and events (current, previous, or future) who are triggering us. No matter what they’ve done to us, we’re the ones eating the poison we intended for them. If we simply let go of the situation, we have a shot at not taking that next compulsive bite, and at maintaining our abstinence because we have interrupted the cycle of obsession and craving.

This is true even when it is ourselves that we are angry at. We have to let ourselves off the hook as well. Are we not also people, deeply flawed in the way that all people are?

In its description of the tenth step, the Big Book has some very interesting things to say about this. First it tells us that when faced with the kinds of thoughts and feelings that lead to compulsive fooding, we should turn our thoughts to others and how we can be helpful to them. By doing so, we give our minds a break from whatever loop of anger, pride, fear, or self-pity it’s running, while putting a little spiritual deposit in the bank by doing right action. Right action, estimable acts, lead to self-esteem and connection with God, both of which are important to our recovery.

“Love and tolerance of others is our code,” the book also tells us. If we live and let live, if we love people despite their flaws, tolerate the same kind of utterly human behaviors that we commit, and seek compassion for them, we will be the ones who get the benefit. We will gain some softness in our heart, some insight into how we can help others, and some more bankable spiritual moments.

We often eat because we haven’t developed yet the capacity for tolerance, compassion, and love. It’s been said that while alcoholics stop growing emotionally in their teens, food addicts stop growing around age five. Our substance is freely available at an early age. That means that we may need the emotional growth suggested by the Big Book in a deeper way than even it had considered. Many faith traditions place heavy emphasis on either or both of good works and compassion. Doing for others and trying to walk a mile in their shoes makes us better, deeper people. We can feel for others instead of always making it about ourselves inside our heads. We can grow emotionally as we were meant to do.

What an idea! But also what a journey.

We won’t get there overnight. This is a lifelong process of prayer, meditation, spiritual action, listening to others, helping others, and having our own limitations in mind at all times so that we can avoid repeating the patterns that got us here. Love and tolerance will make us feel better and eat better. It will calm the pounding urge inside to eat, and it will give us a pause in which we can ask our Higher Power to help us before we do our usual, death-wish thing.

After all, we find in our inventory that God has loved and tolerated us. If God can do that for us with our flaws, why shouldn’t do the same for others?

Tradition of the Month: Tradition 10

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10. Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

Imagine this scenario:

May 25, 2016

Overeaters Anonymous, the nation’s largest food-addiction support group has entered the increasingly divisive debate around whether sugar is addictive. OA’s World Service released a statement which indicated its position. “A vast majority of our members claim sugar as one of or the major food substance to which they are addicted. We are sympathetic with those who argue for increased attention to its addictive qualities.” Sugar industry representatives called the statement “irresponsible,” and one shrugged off the statement, wondering whether OA would have the government classify sugar with cocaine or heroin. Medical and nutritional leaders told reporters that the organization was overreaching its mandate by commenting on the controversy and suggested that OA’s recovery program is not scientifically based.

In this entirely fictitious scenario, we can understand the motivation for OA issuing a statement about sugar like this. It would raise awareness of the problem, provide an avenue of hope for those who read it. It would be a way to carry the message to those who are suffering.

Our fifth tradition tells us we have one primary purpose, to carry the message, and anything that might keep us from that purpose is probably a bad idea. How could telling the world about the addictive properties of a substance that many of our members know to lead to compulsive eating damage our primary purpose?

For one thing, internally, OA is not exclusively composed of people who identify as sugar addicts. By sending a message to the world about what part of our fellowship experiences, are we excluding others? Would that affect our OA unity (tradition 1)? Why would we even want to find out?

For another, once we enter any fray publicly, we are stepping into advocacy. When we take a side, we tell others they are wrong. Wouldn’t that possibly limit our ability to attract newcomers?

As the scenario above suggests, when we take a position, we also open ourselves up to being stigmatized by others who have a differing agenda or those who are simply ignorant of OA’s program and principles. Many people and organizations in the world are far less principled than OA is, and when we oppose them, we are providing opportunities for them to spread misunderstandings. Clearly, negative press coverage or publicity could inhibit our ability to carry the message of recovery to those swayed by news reports.

Perhaps most importantly, getting involved in controversy takes our focus off of recovery. If we are busy debating the merits of OA’s position on an issue, we aren’t busy getting better or helping others get better. If we are busy crafting position statements, we aren’t busy setting up workshops and other valuable events. Then there’s the whole issue of managing public relations in the face of public position statements. What a vortex of time, work, and personality!

The whole point about controversy is that it separates people. If, as Bill W. wrote, we are an ever widening circle of peace on Earth and good to will toward our fellow man, then why would we allow divisiveness into our fellowship? Even if it seemed like it was for a good cause.

 

 

Step of the Month: Step 10

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10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Steps 10, 11, and 12 are often thought of as maintenance steps or walking-around steps. With them we live the OA program on a daily basis and keep away from food. They give us structure for our days and guidelines for our conduct. In particular, step 10 keeps us out of trouble and from worsening the sorts of self-made predicaments we addicts put ourselves into.

There’s no sugarcoating it. Even after doing steps 1 through 9, we will still be prone to behaving selfishly, dishonestly, and fearfully with self-seeking tendencies. That’s be because we are flawed, imperfect human beings. Our inventories showed us that. So it’s good to be reminded in step 10 that we have to be vigilant. We have to watch out for our old ways of thinking and acting. They will pop up again, and they can still cause harm to ourselves, our relationships with other people, and to our relationship with God.

So we watch for them carefully. The Big Book is very specific about what we should do when we see them recur:

When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. (84)

In other words, step 10 is steps 4 through 9 all rolled into one. We are recognizing and admitting our shortcomings, asking to have them removed, and making amends for their results.

 

Here’s what we don’t do. We don’t stew on our shortcomings and tell ourselves that we’re bad people…or that the other person involved is. We don’t endlessly ask ourselves how this could happen to us as recovered people. We don’t worry what another person will think of us. Those are old ways of thinking that got us sick and kept us that way. Step 10 shows us a new way to be: mindful of our own behavior, willing to take action on it, and quick to remedy it.

There’s this part of step 10 that might seem foreign to us. The part that begins “when we were wrong.” Many of us have one or both of a deadly pair of long and tightly held beliefs: one, that we were never wrong, and/or, two, that if we were wrong, we should never let it be known lest we lose face! This is, of course, pridefulness. Many of us have enjoyed running others down for these very faults, yet we ourselves did the same things.

Step 10 tells us to put an end to it.

We saw in step 4 that resentments often affected our pride. We got puffed up with it when angry, or another’s actions or words would shoot it full of holes. It often connected with harsh judgments of self and others, with mistreatment of others, and with a rigidity that perversely robbed us of our joy and dignity. But as we worked steps four through nine, we found ourselves gently humbled. God showed us right-sizedness, and we realized that our lack of humility and self-centeredness was killing us. God also showed us that being wrong wasn’t so bad—after all we did it a lot! In fact, it was utterly human to be wrong. The problem was actually with us and our fears about what it meant to be wrong, the story we told ourselves about it.

So now, in step 10, we allow ourselves to be wrong and be human. We find it hurts much less to admit our wrongness than to hide it. Even with little things and especially with big things. As our relationships improve, we find that people like us better for admitting when we’ve been wrong. The admittance actually strengthens our relationships. By being wrong and admitting it, we gain the credibility with others that we had so long feared losing. It isn’t always easy and doesn’t always feel natural. Sometimes the admittance comes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes late. But never too late. It’s never too late for the tenth step…but we should try to be prompt about it.

So as we walk around, being human and trying to be better humans, we have step 10 in our pocket. It’s ready to pull out at any moment, the ultimate Swiss Army knife for spiritual living.

Announcing Our November Workshop on Steps 10-12

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Seacoast OA is excited to announce our next workshop! On November 15th, we’ll be hosting a free workshop on Steps 10, 11, and 12. Everyone is welcome. We ask that you please register in advance so that we can reserve the right sized room. Be sure to bring pen and paper as well as your OA 12×12 (optional).

Share this  flyer with your home group!

To register by email, click here and give us your first name and last initial. Or call 603.418.4398 and leave your first name, last initial, and your email address.

Here’s all the details:

Steps 10, 11, and 12 Workshop
How do Perseverance, Spiritual Awareness, and Service help us maintain our recovery?
Sunday November 15th
1:00 to 4:00 PM
Portsmouth Community Campus
100 Campus Drive
Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801

Directions to Portsmouth Community Campus from I-95:

  • Take Exit 5 for the Portsmouth Traffic Circle
  • Exit the circle for Route 1 South and travel 2.7 miles
  • Turn right onto West Road (across from Corpus Christi Parish Church) and follow as it becomes Campus Drive
  • Community Campus will be on your left, please use the front entrance.

There’s No God in Gossip

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Today a guest poster takes on a topic of subtle importance.

There’s no God in gossip. I learn this at work, at home, among friends. Sometimes by positive reinforcement (I don’t gossip, and I feel better for it), sometimes by negative (I gossip, and I feel worse for it or confused by it). When I gossip, it’s because I want control. By pulling the information I want out of others and by doling out morsels as I see fit, I feel like a master spy orchestrating events to come to a conclusion of my devising. The reality is, in fact, humiliating.

You see, when I’m gossiping and trying to gain control, it’s usually of situation that doesn’t exist now and probably won’t ever. Or it’s of a situation I can never control. It’s all a fantasy world ordered by my ego, designed by my mind, and shaped by my fears. When I gossip, I am trying to dictate the flow of information to fill in the missing parts of the fantasy world in my head. Is this person my friend? Who is allied against me? What can I count on happening? What surprises lay in store for me? What’s the real scoop?

The sad part about it? I’m wasting all my creative energies by taking bad things that happened before (and maybe not even to me) and projecting them into the future. What if instead of gossiping and indulging these dark fantasies I simply applied my focus to the task at hand? My work. My marriage. My friendships. To helping others, in other words. That’s where the program tells me God is. Not in controlling.

In fact, gossiping can be harmful not only to me, but to others. Obviously, I’m wasting others’ time to begin with. But by gossiping, I’m yanking people out of reality and into my projections. I’m potentially filling them with misinformation that they might act upon or that might negatively impact their perception of another person or a situation. After all, slander is gossip’s frequent traveling companion. I’m sowing seeds of confusion or even enmity.

At its most reductive, when I’m gossiping, I am substituting gossip for God. I am not trusting and relying on God, I am trusting and relying on my smoke-filled back-room skills. Just like I substitute food for God when I’m eating compulsively. The hit from food doesn’t last very long. It’s a poor and short buzz. Gossip is little better. I want to know more and more, and I like the surge of power that comes from sharing it with furtive declarations such as “This has to stay between us….” But anything that gives me that surge is suspect. It’s always my self-centeredness trying to wrest control of me from my spiritually awakened self.

There can be a fine line between gathering necessary information and gossiping. Anyone who has worked in middle management knows that when you are trusted with the care of others’ professional lives, it’s important to know what changes may be coming or what tensions exist between departments. The question is how to know the difference between necessary discussion and gossip.

It seems that, for the most part, my intuition signals me. When I’m about to cross the line from legitimate water cooler talk to gossip, I tend to get a strong gut-level indication. A wincing of my conscience, perhaps. Sometimes I listen to that signal, sometimes I don’t. When I do, I feel freer. As I write, I realize that the best way to handle these situations is to enter them with God. If I ask for help and guidance before beginning to speak with someone, I stand a better chance of listening to that intuitive thought. If I listen to that thought, there’s no doubt I’ll have a better day.

In the end, the biggest of the big pictures is that God will help me no matter what the outcome of any situation. I can count on that, so the need to control doesn’t exist. Literally does not exist. It only seems real, but it’s a figment of my addict mind’s imagination. Just like the magical powers I give to food when I eat compulsively.

Tradition of the Month: Tradition 9

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

Tradition 9 is kind of buried, and it seems like on of those boring things about how we set up shop. Yeah, yeah, so we can have an Intergroup and a World Service, isn’t that special…who wouldn’t have thought of that? But imagine if the opposite were true! What if tradition 9 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 OAs try to manage our way up the hierarchy. All so that we can show everyone the “right” way to run the program. Imagine the hurt and resentment, the bitterly contested power struggles. The hammers coming down all over the country on groups that didn’t run their meetings precisely as “OA’s leadership” told them to. The rebellions, factionalism, and anger. We’d last about as long as an Eskimo in the Amazon. If we were lucky.

With tradition 9, we are guaranteed freedom from…our own power driving, domineering, and the worst of our bright ideas. The truth about people like us is that we are in OA because we couldn’t run our own lives. Now we have to run OA? Like in most human endeavors, among our party are some who, if given a little taste of authority will unduly enjoy its exercise. Some of us are very good, indeed, at telling others what to do (and not necessarily doing, ourselves, what we say others ought to). We’re good at plotting and planning, and not so good at cooperating to get things done.

Tradition 9 gives us guidance about how to get things done locally and more broadly. We form service boards 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 its local meetings to carry the message in the broader community. Intergroups don’t make rules for meetings, because their job is to serve meetings. In some instances, that can mean challenging meetings that have gone astray of the traditions. In protecting the traditions, an intergroup protects the meeting too, because meetings that don’t mind the traditions often fail.

There’s an important feature of tradition 9 that deserves one final mention. In tradition 5, we are counseled that every OA group’s primary purpose is to carry the message and help other compulsive eaters. The ninth tradition enables individual meetings to focus on their primary purpose. If individual meetings were constantly trying to plan uncoordinated events, they would drown in the details, but an intergroup can support that sort of wide-reaching event more simply. Another example: Individual meetings pass money through the intergroup where it then disperses money across the service structure of OA. Can you imagine what a pain it would be if at each business meeting, a local group had to go through the treasury in that kind of detail?

OA works because it is 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, and tradition 9 facilitates getting the work of OA done without dissolving into chaos.

Step of the Month: Step 9

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

Here’s a big question to ask ourselves about the ninth step. Do we sincerely wish to right the wrongs we have done others, or are we simply doing what we’re told? In some sense the answer doesn’t matter: We need to do this work in order to recover. If we do not make our amends, we are very likely to return to compulsive eating. In another sense, it matters quite a lot.

If we look closely at this question, it helps us gauge our spiritual condition. The Big Book tells us that we must enlarge our spiritual life…or else. It tells us that “What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” It also tells us that becoming spiritual means deflating our ego through thought of others and action on their behalf. In other words, we are striving to be rid of selfishness and self-centeredness.

If we are doing amends because we are told to, we may be doing the right thing out of selfish motives. Are we attempting to recover only to escape the pit of sorrow and calamity? Or do we see how our recovery is a tool by which our Higher Power can help others like us escape from the doom of compulsive eating?

Making amends can give us deep, deep insight into our affliction, our solution, and our spiritual path.

  • We see how our disease affected others, and we have the singular chance to see it from their point of view.
  • We gain perspective on how the steps have changed us and develop greater motivation to continue living in the solution so that we do not bring more pain and suffering to those around us.
  • Equipped with a sense of other’s suffering as well as our own, we are now able to walk the road to recovery with others, sharing our newfound understandings as we guide them to a new, happier way of life.

But if we are simply checking off names on the list, we may miss these lessons. We may not, of course. We might well enter our amends with a selfish attitude and exit them with a selfless attitude because God can do that for us. But why stubbornly cling to the idea that are amends are merely something we have to do? There’s no upside in it.

Amends are sometimes easy. Sometimes they are very difficult and require vast courage. In every case, they require a reliance on our Higher Power to see us through with grace, dignity, and openness. If we approach them with humility, an honest desire to set right the wrongs of the past, and with the idea that we are doing spiritual work, we needn’t worry about the outcome. If it goes well, that’s great. If it doesn’t go well, we seek the counsel of God and our trusted friends and always, always remember to avoid doing anything to harm the other person. The question then is whether we will see each of our amends as bricks in our spiritual foundation or items on our OA honey-do list. The choice is ours.

Wanting, Wanting, Wanting

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Nothing is ever enough. We always want more. We are always wanting, wanting, wanting.

The food is the most obvious example. We finish a meal and want dessert. We finish dessert and want a little something more. We finish that and wonder how it is that two hours later we want a little culinary nightcap.

On the way home from work, we stop because we want a little something, a treat for a hard day. Something sweet or salty or crunchy or all three. We eat as we drive, finish it fast and then stop again. And again. The only limit to our stops is the length of our commute.

Always wanting more. One isn’t enough. One thousand isn’t enough. Humiliation, heartburn, explosive gas, the runs, headaches, grogginess, morbid obesity, type-II diabetes, heart disease, hip replacement, and rotting teeth won’t keep up us from trying to get more. Nor will financial uncertainty, a doctor’s orders, and the concern of loved ones.

That’s just how we food addicts roll—when our disease is left untreated.

If we are fortunate enough to find OA, then start to unravel the mystery of all of this wanting. First we find out that our bodies don’t respond like that of a normal person’s to specific food substances: sugars, flours, salts, fats, whatever our trigger foods may be. Where a normal person can take it or leave it, we have no control. None whatsoever. What we want, we eat, and all of it. The more we eat it, the more we want it. It’s a physical, bone-deep need. We crave the substance.

Eventually we realize, however, that this craving is only related to the physical aspect of our disease. Maybe we abstain from our trigger foods for a couple weeks and discover that we no longer crave them after a few days. But we are still obsessed by them. Our bodies no longer need this food, but our minds do. We are still plagued by thoughts such as A little bit of this would be good; Wouldn’t it be nice to have some of that?; I bet just one would be OK. And worst of all I’m making a too big deal out of nothing. We are still wanting, wanting, wanting.

The obsession with food strongly suggests that the problem isn’t really physical in nature. It’s our thinking that gets us in trouble. After all, we know that our trigger foods lead us to danger, but we eat them anyway. If someone is allergic to shellfish, would that person spend a lot of time, money, and energy getting and eating shellfish? Of course not. But that’s just what we do with our trigger foods. So the initiating factor for our eating is our minds.

Our minds tell us that we want something. But what is it that we want so badly that we are willing to risk despair, sorrow, and, eventually, death? The answer, at least according to the “Doctor’s Opinion” in the Big Book, is that we want “ease and comfort.” We are always trying to take the edge off of life. We want to feel OK about life, ourselves, everything, and food gives us this for mere moments. But the feeling is quickly gone, so we need more. As time goes on, we need more food to feel better, but the feeling goes away even more quickly as our bodies become accustomed to the substance.

So, here comes the spiritual part of the program. We have a defective mind that can’t discern what’s toxic to us and continually tells us to eat poison. That sick mind can’t heal itself, especially because it is seeking relief from itself in something that isn’t designed to provide relief. The relief we seek can only come from a Higher Power.

We need the spiritual part of the program because only something more powerful but just as intimate as our own thinking can fix us. We need a Higher Power personal to us that will restore us to sanity not only around food, but also around wanting. If we are to live honest, fulfilling lives, we must seek our ease and comfort from a Higher Power who can relieve our constant wanting. If we are willing, merely willing, to entertain the idea that this power exists and will help us, we are on our way to soothing the wanting that traps us in our disease.

Step 3, One Day at a Time

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This week a long-time member guest posts about their experience with step 3.

As I became acquainted with the steps, the more I began to feel anxious about step 3. In some ways, step 3 is the first step to as a commitment from me. What does it mean to give myself and my life over to the care of God? To me, it didn’t really matter that it was a god of my understanding. The bottom line was I was pledging to leave the actions and decisions of my life to someone or something else. The lack of control—which as a child I experienced as painful and humiliating—was something I vowed never to endure again. Not in a job. Not in relationships. And so I went about my merry way—only it wasn’t too merry.

So, when I allowed myself to even contemplate the third step, the first image that came to me was of a mostly deflated balloon, with no direction. Without the helium of my personality, who would I be or become? I felt as if the third step was asking me to rid myself of everything I was or knew (as if that would even be possible!) and allow the program to brainwash me. Was it a cult, as I ‘d read online?

In time, I began to see that the third step was not the first step in becoming a humorless automaton but an invitation to become an active cocreator in my emotional and spiritual healing. What I was saying yes to was not deprivation and loss but real power to conduct the life I was meant to live—full of integrity, meaning, joy, sorrow, compassion, and love. I was agreeing to do the right thing, and I’d be given the necessary power if only I asked. My childish “wants,” which were mercurial and unending, were put aside until it was clear whether they were important or just distractions or illusions. Nothing I needed was kept from me, but lots of things I thought I needed were examined.

I am slowly (and I mean really slowly) becoming disciplined. I can see that discipline equals freedom. Discipline with food, discipline around not acting out my mercurial feelings, discipline around fulfilling obligations to others and myself.

Step 3 is necessary to work the steps that follow. But I also see that I have step 3 work to do when I bristle at doing something I don’t want to do or when I want to eat something I shouldn’t. Yes it is a step I take before I being making my moral inventory, but it’s also a step that I can take each and every day.