An Addiction Connection

This post follows in the wake of the previous post --- its prior lessons leading me to an epiphany of hope for recovery from my addiction to compulsive overeating.

The lesson emerges from the same Source. If the power of my Higher Power can, which He can and does, procure for me release from edging, then He can and will also release from me an urge to eat compulsively. 

Me at ten years old at my Grandmother's house in San Francisco

A reflection on the matter. I had my food addiction when at five years old, eight years before puberty, at which time I began to seriously edge and masturbate. Here's an example of the over-eating severity. Picture it. I'm a ten year old  kid in Los Angeles County about to go on a three week summer vacation at my grandmother's house. Prior to the eight hour bus ride to San Francisco, I buy twelve candy bars. I tell myself these are enough to last the entire Greyhound Bus ride. But before the bus even leaves L.A. County, within an hour I have eaten all twelve! Once I started, I could not stop! 

Thirty years later, acting on the suggestion of my then wife, I attended my first meeting of Overeaters Anonymous (OA) --- the first introduction to me of the system of the 12 Steps of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not eat compulsively afterwards for one year. 

A further reflection: I experienced through my first year in OA the power of the 12 Steps. However, by the time I had acquired this experience, I had become mired in my addiction to sex and pornography so much so that, one could say, my life depended on my sex addiction. I needed to do what I couldn't stop doing. I thought about women constantly. I fantasized about having sex constantly. Sex and porn became my master, and I a slave to both food and sex. 

As written about in the last blog, for me, edging itself turns out to be the principal "culprit" leading to porn usage. I cannot NOT edge if left to my own devices. But if my HP can, which He can and does --- remove my desires to edge, then surely He can and will remove my desires to eat  compulsively. 

Disclaimer: I still over eat! Again and again. And I edge still --- again and again!

But I do continue to go to OA and SPAA meetings. And I continue to work on doing Step Work.

It simply matters less the clean time and more the giving and receiving to be had in the fellowship at the meetings.