(N.B. - this post will be sent off to the OA Lifeline. Now, I'm not saying that it will be PUBLISHED there, but it's my intention to send it there)
Well, the Mon/Tues/Wed/'Thurs night meetings of Overeaters Anonymous at the North Scottsdale Fellowship Club formed themselves into a group - the Into Action group of Overeaters Anonymous.
We got ourselves a chairman, two co-secretaries, filled all of the office, got a checking account - and, when we tried to get registered with the World Service Office in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, we ran into a little hitch.
OA doesn't have "groups".
Forgive me - OA has groups, that are MEETINGS, but if you have more than one meeting, each meeting has to be a group. We do NOT allow "groups" to form that have more than one meeting.
Now, this is Overeaters Anonymous, the bunch who says "...we use AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, changing only the words "alcohol" and "alcoholic" to "food" and "compulsive overeater"." Now, that's not entirely true - we got rid of a comma in the Twelfth Step, and we added "television and other public media of communication" to the Eleventh Tradition.
I don't know how we got smarter than the Big Book and decided to rewrite the Step - I suppose that we, as a fellowship, must have approved that. And I can see how "television and other public media of communication" is in the spirit of the Eleventh Tradition, although I've noticed that AA has managed to get along without updating that wording; folks aren't stupid, and AAs seem to be more concerned with leaving openings for weirdness to sneak into their program than they are with having to cover all of the bases.
But this particular bit of strangeness - forcing each meeting to be a group - seems, right off, to violate the Traditions immediately by blowing off group autonomy - I can just imagine what would happen if AA's General Service Office tried to tell some group how many meetings that they could have.
In addition, it messes with the Second Tradition, by (it seems) allowing folks to belong to more than one group, thus allowing their votes to be reflected more than once at Intergroup, Region and World Service levels.
But more than that - it's a concept, a restriction, that is completely foreign to the AA way of implementing their Traditions. Most AA groups have more than one meeting - many of them have as much as (say) 35 meetings/week (early morning, noon, early evening, evening, late night, for seven days a week).
But OA has decided that we won't do things the AA way.
So why are we still saying that we follow AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions? There is nothing about the difference between compulsive overeating and alcoholism that would require a different interpretation of these Traditions.
I reckon that this is just a small part of a much bigger issue - that being that we keep moving away from the way AA does things. It seems to me that the further away that we get from the AA way, the worse the results get. Yet we seem to keep trying to be creative; trying to prove that we are more than just an AA knockoff.
And that's just a bad idea. What in the world is wrong with copying the Miracle of the Twentieth Century? - it reminds me of some NA bumper stickers that I've seen - "My book isn't Big - it's Basic" - loudly proclaiming "Hey, look - we're different than AA!".
Yes, we are different from AA. And the more different we get, the more obvious it is.
"It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done"So they are going to tell us what they have done - this means that, with few exceptions, Bill and his buddies are going to give us leadership by example, all the way up through Chapter Six. Every now and then they will break out with specific advice, but usually they keep things in the tone of "here are the things that we have done", with an understanding that, if I want what they have, then I'll be willing to do what they have done.
"Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember they are very ill."When I finally got to thinking about why they do this, it hit me like a ton of bricks - it's because I am now one of the we!
"Perhaps we were not acquainted with any drinkers who wanted to recover. We could easily find some by asking a few doctors, ministers, priests or hospitals"No, they have to say -
"Perhaps you are not acquainted with any drinkers who want to recover. You can easily find some by asking a few doctors, ministers, priests or hospitals"(italics mine - jim p)
"After a while, turn the talk to some phase of drinking. Tell him enough about your drinking habits, symptoms, and experiences to encourage him to speak of himself. If he wishes to talk, let him do so. ... If he is not communicative, give him a sketch of your drinking career up to the time you quit.... If he is in a serious mood dwell on the troubles liquor has caused you, being careful not to moralize or lecture. If his mood is light, tell him humorous stories of your escapades. Get him to tell some of his."...and I thought back on all of those first conversations I've had, after a meeting or when they first give me a phone call, and I realized how perfectly the above instructions map into these thoughts about "Panic Zone, Growth Zone, and Comfort Zone".
"Maybe you have disturbed him about the question of alcoholism. This is all to the good. The more hopeless he feels, the better."So the comfortable ones get "disturbed", and that's a good thing - they get pushed out into the Growth Zone. Maybe not right away - but perhaps a few more episodes, a few more binges, might get them there - especially when they have our words still ringing in their ears.
And that may, indeed, be the case - I might still believe that."Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things" (Philippians 4:8).
" Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!"...and I really took it in, it sorta gave me the heebie-jeebies. I mean, do you know any alcoholic who has gotten rid of selfishness? It doesn't say "have it reduced", or "maybe not be quite as obnoxiously self-centered as we were in the old days" - it says "we must be rid of this selfishness...or it kills us".
Live And Let Liveand I recall spending a surprising amount of meeting time talking about them. They kept coming up; they seemed to be important, but I was never sure why. It seemed to me that four of them indicated attitudes that I was to take, and the fifth (Think Think Think) was an action that I was supposed to do.
Easy Does It
But For The Grace Of God
Think Think Think
First Things First
"At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.So much for "Think Think Think". It's basically a slogan that is telling me to rely on something that the Big Book says will not, can not, work - the problem being that, when folks try this and then it doesn't work, they have little choice but to say "AA didn't work for me", since it was the AAs who told him this silliness in the first place."The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
"The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove." -- page 24
" the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly any exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience." -- page 39
"Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power." -- page 43