Game Over
I
have been a member of FA for almost six years and am gratefully blessed with the gift of abstinence from addictive eating, one day at a time. When I first became abstinent from addictive eating, I started playing excessive amounts of computer games. Computer games were my new ‘go to’ for immediate comfort and gratification. I told myself if I could not eat, at least I could play my favorite computer games. And play I did! Many nights I was up until 3 a.m. or later. I could easily play computer games for three to six hours, non-stop. Going to bed so late was not conducive to getting up early in the morning for quiet time, talking with my sponsor, or bringing my best self to work. The consequences of spending that much time on computer games took its toll in ways similar to when I spent so much time pursuing, buying, and eating food. Remorse and regret set in because I was not engaging in other activities in my life. I would tell myself, “Well, at least I didn’t eat” and that was true. I was very grateful, relieved, and hopeful each day that I was blessed with another day of abstinence from addictive eating. But I lived a secret life of embarrassment and shame about my computer game playing. connection
Although I very much appreciated and loved my sponsor, I did not want to talk about this secret part of my life for a long time. The addict in me did not want to change. Finally, I talked about it with my sponsor. In hindsight, I see that I engaged in lies of omission by not sharing this part of myself with my sponsor earlier. I was not giving my sponsor or my Higher Power a chance to help me. My sponsor was very kind and loving in her response. She suggested that perhaps I could do weighed and measured amounts of computer games. Perhaps it did not have to be all or nothing. That made good sense to me. I decided to commit to playing computer games no more than 30 minutes per day and see what happened. I reported my computer game time to my sponsor each day just as I did with my food. For about six months that worked great. I did not go past the 30 minutes and sometimes played less than 30 minutes. On rare occasions, I did not play at all. Then one night in a moment of self-will, weakness, and rebellion, I had a slip and played computer games in excess. The next day I shamefully reported to my sponsor about my slip playing computer games well beyond 30 minutes. I recommitted to 21
