OE ???

I've read a really good book recently.. called GET UP, A 12-STEP GUIDE TO RECOVERY FOR MISFITS, FREAKS & WEIRDOS by Bucky Sinister. It's about his journey from being an alcoholic punk/street-poet/barfly through the AA 12-step program and finding himself and actually becoming a successful writer and poet and human being. Very inspiring, but I like it because it talks to parts of me that still linger within me.. The guy trying to fit in by drinking and smoking, the guy going into debt to look the part, to actually appear like someone who has a college degree, but also a guy who eats why too much and has been overweight since childhood, basically because I've never developed a healthy self-image. I knew the drunk punks and burn-outs, the stoners and party people, and was among them for several years of my life. I was able to pull myself out of the "substance abuse" world before it got the best of me (though, I will say that I was seriously derailed by them), but the main thing now is that I still have an addictive behavior and my drug of choice, the #1 drug of choice is food. Overeaters Anonymous applies the same 12-steps that AA uses for Alcoholism, to eating. The idea is not to diet, or count calories, or really even talk about food that much. The idea is to spiritually awaken yourself though the help of the meetings and "working" the 12 steps, so the need to self-medicate with food simply goes away (you have it over to "God" or your "Higher Power" however you define it.. which you are totally free to do - Bucky, a self-professed Atheist, defined his HP as "My Ideal Self" - which makes a whole lot of sense to me. I'm on the fence about actually finding a meeting. Bucky says that it's harder for some to walk into a meeting than it was for, example, some to go into the worst neighborhood in town to score some crack.

The thing with food is, you have to eat SOME food, but the way food addicts eat is "insane" - meaning, thin people have a completely different relationship with food. I've been on several diets over the past 30 years, have lost and gained, lost and gained. The 12-step idea is that you don't simply become a new happy person once you remove the offending addiction. You need to fix the root first. I know that I have a lot of fixing.. That much I know is true. Maybe finding some others who have been through the same things I have will help. I don't know if I'm capable of a "spiritual experience" or whatever, but after nearly 38 years of being fat, what have I got to lose, other than 100 pounds...