On a quiet Christmas Eve in the house of an OA maintainer, everyone had gone to bed for the night. Carole lay awake in her bed, though, contemplating tomorrow's planned gathering of family and friends. She thought of two Christmases past, when she'd been losing weight and couldn't partake of the various treats at the party. But this year would be different; she'd been maintaining since March. "Maybe I could taste just a little bit," she thought as she drifted off to sleep.
Klump! Klump! Klump! Carole awoke and sat up quickly.
There at the foot of her bed stood a rather obese woman in a torn flannel gown holding a plate of food. Her hair was a mess, hanging down as she stared at her plate. She slowly looked up at Carole, her face smeared with jelly and crumbs and a tear trickling down her cheek. Carole gasped and thought, "She looks just like I did before I came to OA!"
Who are you?" Carole asked. "What are you doing here?" The sad-faced lady at the foot of the bed said with a shaky voice, "I am the ghost of Christmas-Bingeing Past. I have come to remind you how it was." As quickly as she'd appeared she was gone.
"What a dream," Carole thought, "I must be on a guilt trip about all the food I'll be serving tomorrow." She went back to sleep but was soon awakened, this time by a voice. A woman stood in front of Carole's mirror; from the woman's reflection, Carole could see the hurt and anger in her eyes. The woman was cursing her dress, which she couldn't zip up. She gave up in frustration.
"I don’t understand it," the woman said as she looked into the mirror. "I didn't eat any more than anyone else over the holidays! Why me? Well, I’m not going to that OA meeting now that I don't have any clothes that fit right." Carole asked, "Who are you?" The woman in the tight dress replied, "Well, if you have to know, I'm the ghost of Christmas-Bingeing Present. All I had was a couple of small pieces of fruit cake and some eggnog." With that, she vanished.
At 4:00 a.m., Carole felt like she had just dozed off when she was awakened by the loudest, most uncontrolled sobbing she had ever heard. It was coming from the kitchen. She approached the room cautiously; as she looked in, she was shocked! It was a mess; dirty dishes were stacked on the counter with open food containers everywhere. The cupboards were open, and food was all over the table. A woman weighing over three hundred pounds stood peering into the refrigerator, sobbing loudly. "God, please make me stop," she wailed. "I don't want to die of overeating!"
Carole couldn't stand it. She approached the sobbing woman and said, "Who are you? Haven't you ever heard of Overeaters Anonymous?"
"Who am I? Have I ever heard of OA? I'm the lady who was in OA for three years and maintained my weight loss for ten months," the woman answered. ''I'm the one who quit going to meetings because my size-nine dress wouldn't zip up, and my pride was hurt. I'm the ghost of Christmas-Bingeing Future, and I could be you!" Carole ran back to her bed as the ghost disappeared. Mercifully, sleep finally came to her.
Carole awoke in the morning without any doubts of her abstinence. She thanked God for the beautiful day and for her family both at home and in OA. As Christmas day progressed, guests arrived and gifts were exchanged. There were also many treats. Each time Carole was asked to sample something, she just smiled and said, "No, thank you. I'm quite full with what I have inside right now.”
Anonymous - Canada
Relapse Revelations
Two weeks ago I gave in to the compulsion to overeat, and I've been in a major relapse ever since. I'm by no means happy about this, but looking back, I've learned a lot of lessons I hope I'll never forget.
• I can no allow longer allow myself the luxury of a "one-day" binge. My illness has progressed far beyond that point.
• When I'm in relapse there's never enough food. I run frantically from sweet to salty, from cold to hot, and start the cycle all over again - never finding that one elusive "magic" food that will sedate me at last. I'm like a wild woman, cramming down food well past the point of feeling sick and stuffed - yet already planning what to eat next.
• The food I binged on didn't do one thing to make me feel better. All it did was steal two weeks of my life.
• When I'm in relapse, I become so obsessed that I can think of nothing else. Each evening is spent planning my binges for the next day, wrestling with the compulsion monster far into the night, wondering: "Will I binge tomorrow? What will I binge on? How will I sneak the food? Where will I hide the wrappers?" Even in sleep the obsession controls me.
• When I give in to the food, my disease rapidly reactivates. I find myself behaving as destructively as I did in my pre-OA days waking up each morning thinking: "This is it! I'm going to be okay today"- only to find myself diving desperately for the food just a few hours later .
• I haven't forgotten how to be sneaky. I caught myself secretly eating large amounts of food when no one was around, then hiding the trash. What I had forgotten was the tremendous amount of guilt and self-hatred that go along with that behavior. When I'm sneak eating, I feel like a phony while my true self gets lost under mounds of food and negative behavior.
But perhaps the most important realization that's come out of this is that I do know how to surrender after all. I always questioned the concept of surrendering to a Higher Power. But now I see that for the past two weeks totally surrendered to food! I'd given food complete control and power over me. I was no longer in charge of my life or how I spent my time; the obsession decided that for me.
Since I already know what it means to give something complete power over me, why not surrender to what will truly care for me and love me as food never can: a loving Higher Power that choose to call God?
As I've heard said so many times, and now truly believe: "It's much harder to get abstinent than to stay abstinent" and "Nothing tastes as good as abstinence feels."
- Florida USA
