First 90 Days
My Power Supply
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t was a brutally hot, sticky day in Au- city shut down. At first there was a good gust 2003. I was living in Brooklyn, a deal of panic and speculation whether this borough of New York City, and com- was another terrorist attack, but we soon muting a good distance to attend gradu- learned that it was just an electrical ate school on the Upper West Side. I was brownout affecting Manhattan and all two weeks abstinent and, frankly, a basket five boroughs. The taxi cabs were already case. I was hungry, taken and the subtired, detoxing, ways weren’t runFor the first time in scared, and unsure if ning, so I wasn’t sure I was a food addict. how to get home. over a decade, I hadn’t Yet I clung to the I gratefully pulled Food Addicts in Reout my weighed and eaten addictively for covery Anonymous measured dinner, (FA) program, my which I brought two straight weeks, fellows, and my with me just in case I and I felt a sense of freedom was running late. I Higher Power as one would to a life found a park bench raft. For the first and tentative hope that I could and thanked G-d for time in over a my abstinent meal. I have peace around the food. decade, I hadn’t then joined a throng eaten addictively for of New Yorkers two straight weeks, and I felt a sense of crowding the sidewalks trying to get freedom and tentative hope that I could home. Somehow, I managed to walk have peace around the food. more than four miles to my aunt’s apartThen the lights went out—literally! ment. She had also lost power, so all her New York City was experiencing a food had spoiled and it had to be thrown brownout. I was at my graduate school, away. Our cell phones weren’t working, so just about to get on the subway, when the I worried about how I would call my sponconnection
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