Full Time Solution

Recently I heard someone say at a meeting that working the FA program is like working a part-time job. Looking back over the 28 years I have been free from flour and sugar in FA, I can understand what she meant. If I had heard that statement when I first came to FA, I would have left. I wasn’t looking for a job, I was looking for a solution.

Before I found this program, I was 22 years old, weighed 280 pounds, and was 5-feet, 6-inches tall. I was in an unhealthy, volatile relationship, living in a basement apartment with a man who was also an addict. My life revolved around eating. If I wanted to go home from work early to eat, I did. If I was lethargic from a night of eating, I didn’t show up for work. If I woke up hungry at 2:00 a.m., I’d get up to cook and eat my favorite foods. When I did manage to get out of bed the next morning, I’d eat the previous night’s leftover dessert for breakfast, and then head to the bakery for more. All my relationships were centered around food, too. I thought I cared about other people, but food came first. Physically, I had heart palpitations, chronic insomnia, panic attacks, my knees ached, and I couldn’t shop at regular clothing stores. (I wore the biggest size in the only specialty store that existed back then for people my size.)

I wanted a different life, but had no idea how to get it, so I continued to eat, thinking that eating would make me happy. Twenty minutes later I wanted to eat more.

Then came FA. My sponsor gave me a food plan and told me to imagine I was in intensive care. She suggested that if I were a drug addict, I would be in a detox facility, so I needed to treat myself the same way. Food was my drug. And the most important thing I needed to understand and admit was that I had a disease. In those early days, I remember asking my sponsor what she’d think if I missed one of my regular, committed meetings for a social occasion. She likened my meetings to dialysis. “If you had kidney disease and needed dialysis three times per week, would you say ‘I think I’ll skip this appointment because I have a party to go to’?” I never forgot that conversation.

I went to as many meetings as I could. In the first few weeks, I went every day. I didn’t have a car, so I took the bus or got a ride with the generous people I met at FA meetings. I went because I desperately needed to hear hope. The hope I heard in those meetings gave me the strength to stay away from my drug, one day, one hour at a time.

I also heard people talk about making telephone calls (which I had already been doing because I had so many questions). I also heard about taking quiet time, practicing writing, and about the other tools we use every day to stay abstinent. Slowly, these tools helped me take baby steps toward a better life; a life without my drugs, flour and sugar.

The result? Today, I am a competent and trusted full-time employee, an empathetic and attentive parent, a good friend, and a loving spouse.

I don’t view FA as a job or something I need to balance with my other priorities. I am an addict. If I don’t take care of myself by putting my recovery first, I am no good to anyone and in danger of eating addictively again. And for me, to eat addictively means certain destruction of this wonderful life I’ve been given in recovery. In FA, I’ve found something better than a part-time job. I’ve found a solution.