For Today: April 17th

For Today: April 17^th

They do not love who do not show their love.

William Shakespeare

Do I hug fellow OAs and say I love them, but have no time for them between meetings? It is easy to say the words---and mean them----but words are not enough. Love is shown in action: by caring, doing, remembering, listening.  Love is being strong enough to put one’s own problems aside to be of use to another. Love cannot flourish in the presence of obsession; there is no room. Romantic songs notwithstanding, it takes emotional maturity to be capable of showing consistent, enduring love.

For Today: As I practice the principles of this program, my capacity for love expands.

One of my definitions of Addiction is, “to the exclusion of all else.” How can I have time for others if I’m spending my life obsessing about food? What to eat, what to cook, where to shop, recipes, watching The Food Network, not to mention the time spent eating the lavish meals. 

There can BE no room for real love in my life if I am practicing my addictive behavior. I am not emotionally available…..I am too busy figuring out how to sneak food & remove the evidence of it.  Too busy planning & plotting my selfish escapades.

It hurts to say that, it hurts to know that, but most of all, it hurts to treat my body like that.

No matter how much trigger food I consume, it’s never enough anyway, so what is the point of starting to begin with???

Everyone suffers when I am practicing addictive behavior. It’s easy to lie to myself & say that’s not the case, but it IS. How can I be a good wife, a good mother, a good employee, a good sister, a good daughter, or a good friend if I’m in a food fog, and hating myself FOR it?

It’s a no-win situation for everyone. While a drug addict may be literally ‘out of it’ when he’s high, I am literally ‘out of it’ when I’m  compulsively overeating. It  may not be as easy to see in me as it is in the drug addict, but the effects are identical. I can more easily cover up my tracks than the heroin addict, but the scars are still the same.

For today, I would no more inject my veins with illegal drugs than I would consider eating sugar. Isn’t it just that serious? 

For today, I will not try to convince myself that I can drink a beer & still stay sober, just as I will not try to convince myself that I can eat one cookie & still stay abstinent.

Taking either one of those actions will have the SAME result: disaster.

For today, I ask God to help me stay on track & cognizant of what my addictions will do to me if allowed to.