Essay

The Twelve Steps are guides to a journey. It is a journey that some never start. Others start, but falter. They may come back sometime. It is a journey that lasts a lifetime; there is no destination understood as some fixed point to be reached. Most truly, the journey is home.

The first thing we learn in order to begin the journey in recovery is about ourselves. We have to admit a horrible truth: we are powerless over our compulsive behavior with food.

Probably most of us eat too much. Others eat too little. Some eat too much, but use unhealthy means to do away with the results. Whatever, we have an unnatural and unhealthy relationship to food, to eating, to a desire for satiety, to an image of ourselves that is not sane.

I can well imagine that most of us have tried everything we could think of on our own to do something about our condition. Nothing worked, or it only worked temporarily. We probably know people who have died from the disease we have.

To make matters worse, there are so many health problems associated with compulsive eating that many of us suffer from other diseases brought on or abetted by compulsive eating. There is heart trouble, diabetes, malnutrition, acid reflux, rotted teeth, to name only a few. And far more compulsive eaters suffer from depression than the general population -- although it is difficult to know which came first.

The first thing we have to do to recover is to get honest. Honest with ourselves, with others, and with our Higher Power. Honesty is the first qualification. Without honesty, there is no recovery. As the Big Book says, even those with grave emotional and mental illnesses can recovery if they have the capacity to be honest.

The admission of the first step begins in defeat. We have to admit that we cannot control ourselves, and that as a result of our insanity, our lives have become unmanageable. We spend money we do not have to spend, we are often slovenly, messy. We do not take good care of ourselves. We sometimes steal, especially when food is involved. We like to think of ourselves as normal people with a little problem, when we are insane people with a life-threatening problem.

We often hear Lao Tzu misquoted, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." Actually, he said, "...with the lifting up of the foot." There is a step before the first step. That step is to get honest. Only then, can we begin the journey. We don't even have to be completely honest all at once. We can progress! We just have to be honest enough to admit we are defeated.

Then we can begin the journey.

Be sure to have a sponsor to work with. I do.

Love,
John

Once I considered surgery, and I understand that surgery helps some people, but I was afraid to try it.