OA Horror Stories

[Guest guest]

Gosh, I did the OA thing (largely intermittently for nineteen years)! My turning point, the one which finally got me through the exit for good

was a share at a speaker meeting by an "old timer" who had long-term "abstinence". I had seen this woman around the rooms for a couple of years and know that she sponsored many and was for many an iconic "has what I want" sort of figure. This particular morning she talked about the importance of being gentle with one's self (this was the topic) and she proceeded to describe the breakfast she had had the morning before...5 huge bowls of cereal, which she admittedly ate because she was feeling tender (man, I've definitely been there about a million times, haven't we all)! She followed this pronouncement up with a "thank God she hadn't lost her abstinence. The notion of binging on cereal as a

grounds for abstinence stunned me. I had been in relapse for years and

every morning, when it came time to raise our hands to acknowledge how many "days of abstinence" we had, I felt ashamed of myself...that I couldn't seem to string together more than a couple of weeks or so...this went on for me for 7 years...and here was a woman, binging the

same way I was binging...and raising her hand for "over ten years". I walked out of the rooms of OA about three months later and never looked back!The only thing I want to raise my hand to today, is to acknowledge that I am a pilgrim on the road to healing my relationship to body and food and a woman learning how to be a child again and heeding my body signals.Namaste!