Whatever it takes

What is the next right thing?

I'm back. I surrender. I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable. I've been struggling for a long time. I reconnected with my sponsor yesterday. We walked and talked for about an hour before a meeting. She isn't sure she is the right sponsor for me. She has always been type A and I am certainly not. When we tried to think of someone more like me, but with strong recovery we failed. All the people I know in the rooms that have similar approach or attitude are struggling or have fallen away completely. This is sobering. This is scary.

I just deleted a lovely metaphor I constructed. I built a nice little picture to explain my half-assed approaches of the past. But it was ego and indulgence and skips around the truth. If I don't start living in a way that demonstrates acceptance of Step One (I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable) I will die. My sponsor told me I am emotionally and spiritually dead already. Like her husband was before he finally died physically. She isn't sure she has what I need to recover.

My program is simple today:

• Call my sponsor every day.
• Call two other people in OA every day
• Follow my food plan
• Ask what is the next right thing to do.
• Do it.
• When my reaction is "I don't wanna!" Do it anyway.

Asking for the next right thing and doing it is my spirituality, asking for help to do the right thing is prayer. It cannot get much simpler than that. May I be humble and teachable enough to do it.

Updated links

I've really neglected this blog and reading other OA blogs for a couple years now. I continue to struggle with relapse. I make little efforts and convince myself I'm back on track, but really I'm just doing enough to keep life bearable. My intentions mean nothing when my actions don't back it up. My food "isn't that bad." That's what I tell myself when I don't want to take an honest look. I'm missing meetings here and there. I know I have to go to both my meetings every week. That's one of the basics for me.

Doing a bit of housekeeping here on CB. I removed some inactive OA blogs from my sidebar, but didn't want to lose them entirely. There is some good stuff there even if it is old. I'd love to see fresh content from these people, but I understand how blogs can be abandoned without intent.

Foodfairy's Journey to Freedom
Last updated November 2008

It's Not About the Food!!!
Last updated January 2009

reignfyre recovery
Last updated May 2008

Recovery Girl
Last updated May 2006

Added a few people too. Sometimes I hesitate to add someone to the sidebar list because I don't agree with everything they say about OA. Mostly this tends to be specifics about people's Higher Power. But really, I guess it is like meetings, these are the opinions of individual OAs and do not represent OA as a whole. Also, keep what you like and leave the rest.

New to the roster:

• oastepper
• Overactive Fork

And while I'm at it I should acknowledge Down in Sunny San Diego. She is the most consistent OA blogger I know. So many recovery blogs disappear. It's great to find Down in Sunny is still blogging each time I come back to reading OA blogs. I'll have to use her blog list to find more people to read.

Precarious balance

Fear of changing how I handle everything. I'm either doing it or not. I'm either living a god-conscience life or I'm not. If I'm not actively seeking HP in every aspect of my life I'm sliding toward my disease and all of its many traps.

I'm afraid of doing my job well and getting more responsibility (and more chances to fail.)
I'm afraid of committing to a food plan.
I'm afraid of who I am without the habits of a lifetime.

Change is hard. Eating the way I should takes effort, planning and discipline. Going to work on time every day and working with best effort and integrity is exhausting. Exercising is time consuming and painful and I never get to a point where it is energizing and feels good. Reaching out to people decreases my Me Time. Connecting with people takes time and effort; it is emotionally risky.

Recently I heard someone say that motivation comes from taking action, not from thinking. This goes with what my first sponsor says, "Take an action, any action. Even if it is the wrong action, do something." The Big Book is loaded with action. My shrink talks to me about going above knowledge. Knowledge is a trap that is hard to get out of. Just as food can easily displace my HP, so can knowledge.

I know a lot about OA and about the 12 steps. When I started OA I bought all the literature and studied hard. I researched, I spent hours every day reading and looking for program blogs to read. I wanted to become an expert so I would know what to do. Knowledge often takes the place of my HP. I want to think about things, talk about what I should do, mull it over. I'm afraid to take action though. What if I do it wrong? What if it doesn't work? What if it does work? All the while I'm still living in my own head.

Right now, writing this post I'm in my own head. I started writing this morning just to exercise my demons. Maybe I'd send it to my sponsor or maybe I'd just delete it like I do most of the time. But writing is a tool, so I'm not going to get too hung up on it right now. Since I'm already typing it out, maybe someone will identify with it to. So I'll post it.

I'm afraid of failing and afraid of succeeding. I know what happens when I don't take action. That is where I am now. I've been here many times. It isn't great, but it is familiar. If only surrendering to HP was a one-time action, like jumping out of an airplane. It takes a lot of guts and faith, but once out the door the decision is made. Instead it is like a little switch that I have to keep resetting and watch for changes. If I don't pay attention it will switch off. Maybe instead of a switch it is a lever I have to keep pressure on. Like the short end of a see-saw. All my experience in this disease and habits of a lifetime are on the long end. In order to have balance I need to put more pressure on the short side. Spiritually I'm a light-weight. I have to use the tools, connect with OAs and work my steps to keep the pressure steady. If I stop paying attention the balance disappears and the long end hits the dirt.

I want to believe that with practice and time the apex of my teeter-totter will move closer to the middle as I experience more life in recovery. It is daunting to think it will always be this hard to stay god-conscience. Which is probably why we must focus only on today. All I can do is work OA to the best of my ability today. Right now that requires constant attention. Exhausting.

I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable.

I continue to act on my will and the results are always painful. For a while I was relieved of the obsession with food and I took it for granted. I've been slipping sugar into my meals and thought I was getting away with it. Nope. Of course I wasn't. There is a direct correlation between the food I put in my mouth and the actions I take. It goes both ways and the equation is always the same: poor food choices lead to poor life choices, poor life choices lead to poor food choices.  So around I go again.

I've been eating the corn bread with honey butter that comes with some of the entries at one of my regular lunch places. First time it came I was surprised and decided to eat it anyway. Now I'm struggling not to ask for seconds. This has lead to escalating damages: more honey butter, sampled sweet bread, sugar-free instant pudding (one box equals one serving right?), 1 fortune cookie, and snacking all weekend.

Last night I ordered Chinese take-out right after my meeting. This is a known bad thing even if I don't have explicitly sweet foods. I eat too much and it leads me to more food later. Last night I ate two fortune cookies and used three packets of sweet sour sauce. Then I stayed up until 3am surfing the internet. I could not stop it even as I watched the time tick by. I managed to get to work on time today, but am tired and craving sugar.

Also, I intended to eat a Girl Scout cookie at my sister's last night before the meeting. I saw them open and scattered on the kitchen table. I planned to go to the bathroom and then pick up a cookie (or two) as I left. While in the bathroom I debated if this was really such a bad plan while part of my brain was already plotting a trip to Dairy Queen. Luckily my sis came into the kitchen while I was doing my business. I was disappointed and relieved.

So of course, there are about 20 boxes of Girl Scout cookies on my manager's desk to be handed out. He will put some out on the table to share like he always does. I once asked him not to do it. He listened to me for a day.

So I pray for the willingness and ability to follow HPs will not mine. Mine just brings me misery. I also pray that someday this lesson will sink into my soul and I'll stop reenacting it.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who has left me encouraging comments! They mean a lot to me. I have not responded to each one as I feel I ought to. I feel more guilty about it the longer I wait. It's not you, it's me. Thank you for taking the time to share with me.

Availed us nothing

Will there ever be a time when I’m not fucking up? I’ve been in the sugar again. Not horrifying spectacular binges where I’m sick to my stomach and can feel my heart pounding, no I’ve kept my dignity. Ha! That is one of the many lies I tell myself. Unfortunately, my “moderate” sugar binging has the same devastating results. The next day I’m exhausted, fuzzy-headed and unable to wake up and go to work. Then I sleep all day. I’ve called in sick three days in the last two weeks. My allergies are bad, but they ain’t that bad.

Am I sick and tired enough to do whatever it takes? I had a good meeting last night and a good therapy session yesterday. I intend to go back to my Sunday meeting this week. I haven’t shown up there in months.

I want all the things I had when I was sober. I feel gross and ashamed of myself. I want the recovery back but I don’t want to work hard for it. So nothing new there, other than I have a better idea of what is required for long-term abstinence than I did first time around. It takes daily work. It takes discipline to do all the things I find difficult. I have to call OA people every day. I need to be in regular contact with my sponsor. I need to sponsor others, I need to do service and attend meetings. I need to do daily inventory and meditation. Some of these things are easy for me. Some feel impossible. All are required. I need to act as-if, especially when I least want to.

I don’t know that I have the energy to do it, but I know I’m not going to feel any better if I keep turning to the food instead of my HP. It isn’t going to get any easier by waiting. There is no burning bush, just a series of choices, one after another. Fuck.

Half measures availed us nothing

I'm still pissing about with my program. Half-assed abstinence. Gaining weight. Going to only one meeting a week. Haven't called my sponsor in so long.

I think I need to get a new sponsor. I've got so much guilt about this one. She is great but I cannot call her when I need to. I won't call her when I should.

I haven't binged on sugar for a couple months now. It has gotten so ugly when I do. Mostly I'm eating too much at meals, choosing fatty empty calories, snacking at night and playing with foods I know I cannot handle.

Part of me thinks I'm getting away with it. But the rest is pretty sick and tired of the game.

Where have I been? Relapse.

Under certain definitions of abstinence I’ve been in relapse since spring. Messing with my food was just a blatant symptom. Long before I started “getting away with” slips in my food I was abandoning the parts of my program that keep me abstinent.

How far did I go in relapse? All the way down baby.

Sugar! I dove, teeth first, into sugar in November. I ate a tiny piece of Halloween candy in the office, followed by three more pieces, followed by a trip to the vending machine, followed by two months of miserable binging.

One evening at a time, I worked through most of the foods I had abstained from for three years. My disease had indeed been doing pushups in the parking lot as I sat in meetings. It was stronger than before but now I was mostly conscience through all the food. There was very little unconscious eating for me this time. I made the choice over and over to binge just one more night. I didn’t get the release I got before OA though. I had a couple 24 hours without sugar, but they never lasted through temptation.

It didn’t take long for all the tiny miracles of program to disappear once I hit the sugar. I isolated, over-slept, and I stopped doing the little chores that I had started taking for granted. Garbage built up at an alarming rate. Wrappers and takeout containers once again formed a ridge around my recliner. I lost motivation to put out the garbage every week. Eventually I stopped walking to the garbage can and just let wrappers, boxes and bags fall where I was. Nasty and unpleasant to live in. I had regressed completely to my most cave-like dwelling.

I did continue to attend one of my three meetings, but one isn’t enough. Often I was the only one there at my remaining meeting; therefore it wasn’t a meeting at all. I missed eight weeks of my Sunday night meeting before I dragged myself back. I took the meeting bag for a month so I had no excuse to miss. I still have not returned to my Tuesday night meeting.

So, I haven’t had sugar for three weeks now. I’m mostly stuck to my new food plan (still too many fat grams and I have trouble getting all my veggies in).

I really need to work my steps, which begins with calling my sponsor and taking her suggestions. I know that without step work I’m just dieting. Since dieting does not work for me, I better get my ass in gear.