Food and Love

What's the problem with being a human?

There's not enough love…

What does real love look like?

Love is human warmth, compassionate, tender, humorous, open, wise, forgiving, self-sacrificing, boundaried , disciplined, funny, truthful, flexible, merciful, perseverant, courageous, dedicated, willing, humble, understanding, accepting limits, strong, faithful, hopeful, patient, prayerful, service-oriented, and non-violent physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally.

Why am I not that way?  Why are you not that way?

Because I am disconnected from my soul…That's all.

There are a lot of things that we humans do that can disconnect us from our souls and death is a good, clear, concrete way to begin to measure the absence of soul.
So, let's say we have soulful on the one extreme and death on the other extreme…

Soulful-----------------------------------------------------Death

According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta 300,000 of us Americans die each year from food related/overeating illnesses.
That's over 800 people a day, 30 an hour, or about one every two minutes.

A more frightening fact is that 67% are overweight.

And while  those folks may not be at the extreme where we are going to die from heart attack, stroke, diabetes or cancer, they may be a lot farther down that line towards death, away from soulful, than they'd  like to be.

You mean I can't be overweight and be soulful?

Food Addicts Anonymous says food addicts are typically selfish, resentful, emotionally dishonest, negative, obsessive, extreme and self pitying (Not really very soulful qualities when you think about it).

So, that overweight stuff, which is killing one of us every two minutes in the extreme and affecting 2 out of 3 of us in America all the time (including our children), is caused by the above character defects, which in turn separates us from our soul, which in turn prevents us from getting the love we need, which in turn keeps life from being great?

Yes…

God can change that...if I do my part.

"Spirituality is defined from Within"

“Spirituality without sacrifice...means nothing”
Gandhi

“Ultimately, the Second Step helped us define spirituality for ourselves.”
Hope and Recovery

“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
First Commandment

For me, I define my spirituality as the relationship between food and exercise, and I worship the God that heals those things.

Fasting and old Jewish Prayers

I humbled myself with fasting
Psalm 35:13

Declare a holy fast
Joel 1:14

Help me fast the rest of today, just to help my prayers.

Amen.

Food is health care...Medicine is sick care

"As with the body, so with the Universe"
Gandhi

“Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.”
Alexander Hamilton (This was George Washington’s and America’s very first Secretary of Treasury).

Really? That must be sad to be essentially dead at 50.

Guess he didn’t know about living foods…

Food and America

I have been working 12 Step programs for 40 years now.

In the late 80’s when the Boomers were all getting sober sex addiction was the cutting edge.

It still is.

Sex addiction is the most subtle and profound of addictions.

But America has changed a great deal in 40 years.

Now food is the greatest problem.

I commit myself to solving this problem and serving others in 2021 the way I did sex addiction in 1988.

More Food and America

John Steinbeck in his book “Travels with Charlie” circumambulated America to see what had changed since the last time he had traveled around.

This is my fourth time crossing America, my third time sober.

Americans are pretty much the same: there are good, kind, loving, open and helpful people...if you approach them that way.

Then there are some folks who are shut down and cold...no matter what you do.

What I have noticed, non-recovery, is that:

  1. Due to e-commerce there is a huge increase in the number of 18 wheel trucks on the highway
  2.  Loves and Pilot offer showers every 50 mils or so
  3. International House of Pancakes has proliferated along the highway stops

But, by far the most noticeable thing about Americans that is different from 19 years ago, 47 years ago and 65 years ago...is we are fat.

It is stunning how different we are as a people physically.

Respect...for FA

I don’t like Food Addicts Anonymous.

There are things I greatly respect. The tremendous discipline of:

Calling your sponsor each day, at the exact time, for 15 minutes

Going to three 90 minute meetings each week, without fail.

Speaking to three FA members each day…no matter how many calls you must make to do that

Reading the Big Book every day

Meditating 30 minutes every day

That’s impressive, but not revolutionary.

Then there are things that that have contributed to  “Being a spearhead of God’s ever advancing evolution”:

Surrendering all flour and sugar

Weighing and measuring all food on a digital scale

Creating a Food Plan (They actually got that from OA HOW)

But there are deal breaking faults:

The absolute worst way of working the steps in all of 12 step

The authority given to people with only 6 months experience to order people not to use doctor prescribed medications

Of all the 37 programs I have attended in 40 years, with the exception of Sexaholics Anonymous, this is the most antagonist to the use of analysis of feelings as a spiritual tool.

I am grateful for the 13 years I spent in FA.

I am even more grateful that I left…and went to PrayerCall.

Thanks FA

At 33 years old I lost 60 pounds. At 67, I weigh 131.8 pounds

I was introduced to Food Addicts Anonymous in my early 50’s.

Here were a room full of nothing but militant girls decrying the evils of flour and sugar, saying it was not God’s will to eat those things under any circumstances and that to do so was considered moral sickness.

Wow! I wasn’t expecting that...

They were incredibly disciplined. Calling their sponsors at precisely 5:00 am, Monday through Sunday, for exactly 15 minutes, going to the exact same three 90-minute meetings each week without fail, meditating for exactly 30 minutes every day, eating three “weighed and measured” meals on a digital, not analog, scale every day, reading two, not three, pages of the Big Book every day, making three successful “outreach calls” to fellow FA members (even if you had to call 20 people) and reading the “24 hour a Day“ meditation book every day.

I thought they were going to come goose-stepping in, decked out in brown shirts and black armbands.

I have seen that kind of discipline only in boot camp recruits, young doctors doing their residencies and professional monks. It was really impressive.

If I were bone crushingly honest...

There are a lot of good reasons to persist with good nutrition and exercise.

The most obvious normal thing is the way I feel and look.

But, for me, the third reason is...I really don’t want to ever have to go back to Food Addicts Anonymous.

PrayerCall works just perfectly, if I use the tools 🧰...

The "Narc" of Food

In 2003 I used to eat at what would become a famous restaurant Cafe Gratitude.

Woody Harrelson used to eat there.

He did a TV interview on what he was a raw, organic vegan.

He said he used to eat lot’s of meat, to get that “Narc” effect, that would put him to sleep afterwards.

That is any experience, too.

Eating too much makes me sleep too much…

Food and The Bible

There is something about “living foods”, foods that were in the ground five minutes before you eat them.

There is an eye-shutting, world-weariness that dissipates in me when I eat that kind of stuff.

John the Baptist was known for his honey and locusts.

Daniel the prophet was known for his drinking only water and eating vegetables….and they didn’t do too badly for themselves.

Fasting and Longevity

Karen Carpenter, a pretty good pop singer and a terrific drummer famously died in 1983 from anorexia by using OTC emetics.

It scared Americans, particularly young girls, into an awareness of the dangers of under-eating.

There is a sense of power, being in control and euphoria that accompanies food restriction and that can be addictive on the “Overeaters-anon” side.

Completely unrelated, the genetic celebrity, Cameron Diaz, used to say “Make hunger your friend”...I could never quite get behind that.

But what I do support, moderately, is “Make fasting your friend”.

There is now documented medical evidence, according to my doctor, that fasting increases longevity.

I’m in...

Food and Chastity

Since 1997, I usually think of my food affecting my sex addiction, after reading Gandhi for the first time.

But, chastity also affects my food addiction recovery.

Over and over again, in the AA 12x12, it says that we do addictive things in reaction to our poor relations with others:

Money worries, somebody says something that hurts my feelings, someone does something threatening, then I feel anxious, and I want to eat more at my meals.

Gandhi is absolutely right about one thing, if in nothing else: In chastity lies the protection of the body, the mind, and the soul.

So, if I apply that truth, and practice chastity, then when someone says or does something hurtful to me...it doesn’t hurt me

...like water rolling off a duck’s butt.

Living Foods

When I have three living food drinks per day 95% percent of my aches disappear.

That really matters to me as I get older.

I really don’t want end up sitting around and talking to other old people comparing aches as a form of intimate conversation.

I do not want to live like that...living foods rescues me from that fate.

For Dr. David S...on "The Devil Juice"

People ask me “Steve, what’s the big deal about coffee?”

Even in the Big Book, on page 135, there is a defense of coffee.

So what’s up?

For me, I love being high on coffee. I love a Starbuck’s double latte Grande, or two, or three, or quite frankly...four.

And I can maintain that high for a few days, but...

On the third day I become so rattled that my food addiction kicks in and I have to eat meat or dairy...and a lot more of it than I would like...to calm down.

That makes me look old and fat...which triggers my sex addiction because, as a sex addict, even if I am 90...I still want to look hot.

At this point I have activated three addictions...

By the way, on that same page 135, there is also a defense of smoking...which is what actually killed Bill Wilson, the Big Book’s author.

My 100 year old sponsor, Father Malachy, when he fell in the monastery infirmary, where he knew he was dying, was asked if he wanted anything...he said “Coffee”.

But he could do something I can’t do...he could stop 🛑 I can’t...

And even if none of this we’re true...I am too vain to be fat.

Besides, peace of mind, satisfaction, contentment and serenity are not possible with caffeine.

Joyousness and happiness, maybe...but how can you be peaceful with a double Latte coursing through your brain?

Anti-sexiness

Downsides of Caffeinated Foods:

(Hit it Dave)

Acid reflux

My body starts to stink

Gain weight

Heart hurts

Congestion

Headaches

Burping

Gas

Itching

Red blotches on my legs

Feel heavy, torpid

That doesn’t sound to sexy to me...

Someone told me that people who don't eat flour and sugar are insane, today...Hmmm

Here are five things that Gandhi said. He might have been smarter than this person...

"I found that complete control of the palate made the observance of the vow very easy."

"Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet."

"The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting."

"I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in the fear of God and would see him face to face, restraint in diet, both as to quantity and quality, is as essential as restraint in thought and speech."

"My experience teaches me that, for those whose minds are working towards self-restraint, dietetic restrictions and fasting are very helpful. In fact, without their help, concupiscence cannot be completely rooted out of the mind."

The Horse and The Mule

I do not want “to be like the horse or the mule”._Psalm 32

I know that, for me, God wants me to have health.

I know that, for me, that means no binging on food.

I know that, for me, caffeine leads to binging on food.

So, that is not God’s will...for me.

I know that, while God accepts me if I smoke, that that is not healthy and, trying not to be as dumb “as a horse or mule” that it is therefore not His will, for me, to do that, either.

These are really sensitive topics for lot’s of people, but I must “To thine own self be true”...and these are my truths.

Food and Erection

Sometimes people wonder why we talk about food on essentially sex addiction site.

Gandhi was the first person that I know of who could connect the dots between sex and food.

Dr. Terry Mason, Urologist for 37 years, is another: “Erectile dysfunction is actually the first clinical indicator of  generalized cardiovascular disease".

It’s the thing that let you know that you have some significant vascular disease much earlier than with a heart attack.

I don’t know about you, but it’s important to me that my sexual organs work…

I mean, I’m a sex addict…I like sex.

When comparing obesity or smoking, now.

“Obesity is the most serious condition.”
Rand Research

Guess those Big Mac’s gotta go...

Ancient Greek Character

An Ancient Greek’s character was judged by his “Fairness and courage and ability to meet any crisis that arose”.
Introduction to Homer’s “Odyssey”

“Security based on our own belief in ourselves is the only security that lasts. As hard as it may be for adult children to learn they can trust themselves...it still is the only lasting security.”
DOH, DOJ

I want a completely different direction in my life. How?

I want to embrace anonymity as a form of grateful humility.

If I lose my abstinence from food, I lose the joy that comes from the freedom from all addictions...and the self-esteem that comes with it.

I simply want to get completely free of all addiction...at any cost.

The Right we have as 12-Steppers

“Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?“
Page 12 Big Book

For two months I have participated in Zoom Christian book club with the priest that helped me start getting sober 40 years ago.

The priest, while the most dynamic Christian I had known, 40 years ago, is now so obese that he wears nothing but extremely large black sweatshirts to hide his shame of girth.

There are 16 people, 4 of them men.

They are all in their 50’s to 70’s, upper middle class, liberal, white, mostly widows, spinsters and therapists.

We have been reading a horribly negative book called “The Denial of Death” which is so creepy that I have actually had nightmares about it.

So, I have to ask myself “What is it about me that needs to be accepted by them?”

Because I leaned on this church so heavily when I first got clean and sober I have the delusion that this group of church people is what Christianity truly is...and I do not want to be left out of my religion.

But the truth is I do not believe what they believe.

The truth is that, after 57 years of being a “ cradle Episcopalian “ I studied for a year and became a Catholic.

I am no longer one of them.

Also, while my religion is important to me, it does not come before my program.

I believe that overeating and not exercising enough is my number one addiction problem.

I believe that God will help me if I ask Him.

I believe that the Healing God manifests in community.

In the last three years two of the most religiously faithful people ,closest to me, were decimated by food.

Religion is no match for Food Addiction...

Outer Circle

Okay, I made a mistake.

Five years ago, at 62 years old, my body began to change and I couldn’t process the amount of food I ate as quickly.

I didn’t want to gain weight after keeping over 50 pounds off for 30 years so I made myself a deal:

If I gave up eating for pleasure...I could read all the books I wanted.

I’ve read a major Victorian novel every ten days for over three years.

...it’s been one of the best deals I ever made.

A couple of weeks ago I sorta wanted to start doing some more musical type business and the books fell by the wayside a bit.

I had abandoned my “outer circle” around food recovery.

The addictive desire began to reappear.

I regrouped, started reading two books for me, two with my son, and one with my wife.

The addictive drive started to disappear because I had something fun to do.

Vanity or Sanity?

HP,

Sometimes my memory lies to me, sometime.

Not really lies, just leaves out important facts...lying by omission.

It says that coffee or a lot of food, or a cigar would be good.

But that is “euphoric recall”.

Coffee feels cool, exciting and sexy for 45 minutes and then it’s misery the rest of the day with the only way to stop it’s nutritional ravaging is by overeating.

Cigars stink to high heaven, cost $20/apiece, hurt me like little knives stabbing me in the back of my throat and give me smokers cough...besides smoking a cigar while walking with a baby in a carriage is a good way to die by drive-by shooting.

Too much food makes me feel bad and look old...and God has restored me to vanity.

Old and Fat?

Why is it that food always get’s older addicts?

Think about it...

How many 60-somethings’ bodies can get away with heroin addiction?

How many people in their 70’s, still left standing, can tolerate the alcohol hangovers of their 20’s?

People still smoking in their 80’s are often carrying around a portable voice box...sounding like Peter Frampton.

But food...that’s another matter.

There something very siren song-esque about the comfort, the laziness of food.

HP, help me stay within my boundaries. Amen

Food, Sex and Surrender

HP,

To the best of my knowledge, I am fully surrendered to you today

As I am reasonably clear, help me access as often as possible my soul

When I start to workaholically ignore my soul, please help me to focus and concentrate

Help me to breathe slowly and deeply and focus on my solar plexus, as though it were a doorway

While I access my soul, let me stay fully ensconced in my group of friends, to stay grounded

Help me be grateful that I have escaped so terribly much wreckage, by the Grace of God

Help me stay solid with my food plan

Help me stay chaste, just for today

Help me, please, please, please...

Break my Fast?

HP,

Help me to fast 12 hours a day between my dinner meal and breakfast meal…

That is why they call it breakfast…I break my fast.

Please help me not let overeating food, compulsive eating or obsessing over food impact my capacity to feel my soul, just for today.

Sacrifice

When I feel untethered, unmoored or disconnected I remember what what Gandhi said:

“Religion without sacrifice means nothing”.

Recovery is the same.

The healthiest posture, for me, in my life, is to be surrendering behaviors that are self-destructive to a Power Greater than myself.

Earlier in my life this meant things like alcohol, drugs, smoking, masturbation and affairs.

Now it means being overly sexual or overeating.

Saint Augustine said “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.

Today, I surrender both sex and food to the Universe, that non-verbal void, that, honestly I feel no emotional connection with at the moment.

In humility, I know that this is the next right thing for me to do…just for today

Just Another Bozo on the Bus

HP,

New outlook:

I am as healed as I am going to get...without alienating every single person I know!

The struggle with food is finally gone and all the losses associated with that struggle were worth it.

I will do and live as directed.

Consolidate wins and be kinda normal…

Millennial Malaise

Sitting to this generation is what smoking was to my generation.

“Digital Death” is forever sitting down.

Turn off your phone, unplug your computer....Run down the street naked if you have to!

Food and Sex

As Gandhi said “The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting.” And “At that time I did not understand, or nor did I believe in, the efficacy of fasting.”

I wanted a spiritual food plan, and I didn’t like the spirituality in FA. It was weak and shallow, so I researched the old Jewish texts and I found:

Declare a holy fast” Joel 1:14

“I humbled my self with fasting” Psalm 35:10

“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals. Ezekiel 4:10

From the book of Daniel I took:

But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.

Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.

At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.

To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

To temper my research I threw in a little Gandhi: "Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake they're all on them."

Shut Up!... about the Food 1

People ask “ Why do you talk about food all the time?”

I could say “ Gandhi did and he was smarter than me”

Or they ask “These guys here are sex addicts, why are we talking about food?”.

One reason is that excess weight dramatically affects sexual desire and desirability.

I am 67 years old, but I do not want to stop being sexually desirable.

I don’t want to let French Fries, Cheeseburgers, Pizza, Pepsi, Snickers or Spicy Buffalo Wings determine the frequency, duration or even the possibility of sex...Yuck!

What kind of “Temple of the Holy Spirit” would that be?

I am a Real Sex Addict

Shut Up!... about the Food 2

There were three really big things that changed my life:

Stopping drinking, stopping masturbating and staying at the exact same weight every day.

That last one required that I carry a 10 ounce metal food scale on the back of a bike 1000 miles through six countries in Southeast Asia for 16 months.

There is a famous old Scriptural line “Their God is their stomach”.

I hate to admit that that was me..but it was.

The Old Physical Strength B Office

He is richest who is content with the least...for content is the wealth of nature.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

Any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete.

Physical training should have as much place as mental training.

As with the body, so with the Universe.

Food should be limited, simple, spiceless, and, if possible, uncooked.

In chastity lies the protection of the body, the mind and the soul.

My body speaks for itself.

Just breathe.

My Dead Best Friend

My oldest friend of 35 years is an African-American man with Type II Diabetes, lethal levels of potassium due to kidney failure, high blood pressure and is also 85 pounds overweight

I hadn’t seen him in nine years and when he began to start passing out at work, and taken out in an ambulance, I sent him an airline ticket to visit me, with his 14-year-old autistic son who he raises by himself.

My most regular friend the last 17 years, my former bass player, who is a doctor, invited us over to listen to his stereo. Afterwards he told me simply that my friend was going to die if he continued to do what he was doing.

I had promised my friend to raise his child, upon his death...If he bought a life insurance policy to help with the costs of raising his son as San Francisco isfive times more expensive than Atlanta, Georgia where our friendship started.

I called Georgia Regional Health Center, the state agency for autism. I got him a job interview in his chosen profession ten blocks from my house. I researched free medical care for him and his son, and researched low cost and even temporary free housing for them.

The whole time he was here he simply drank liters of Pepsi and ate “Hole in the Wall” pizza…An excellent pizza choice.

My wife who has the compassion of the Virgin Mary (if she can put up with me) finally said to me “Steve, there’s nothing that we can do…He won’t help himself.

In the last 32 years I’ve worked with well over 50,000 addicts and I have walked away from tens of thousands of men who just simply weren’t ready to do their part, yet.

But this was my oldest friend…I sobbed like a child.

Paul McCartney has an old song that says “Live and let die”... and that’s what it finally came to.

I am going to live by trying to do God’s will around food to the best of my ridiculously flawed abilities…And I am just going to watch my best friend die.

In AA we believe that it is God’s will for us not to drink.

And Sex Addicts Anonymous we believe that it’s God’s will for us not to use porn, masturbate or cheat on our partners.

The question I have to ask myself, as I cry over my oldest friend… Is there a will of God around food?

Death and Acceptance

My best fried of 35 years died from renal failure caused by diabetes.

He was not only been my closest friend for 35 years, he was my bass player for a good while.

Five years ago, Mark T., a former bass player of mine died. I remember in his wonderfully cynical, darkly humorous way saying to me,
“I’m on my way out, Duke”.

My beloved Brother Wayne went "his way out"…and the reason is because of his food. All sugar, quesadillas, pizza and Pepsi.

I have learned after 42 years of studying addictions, that eating disorders have more denial than any other disorder…and I am at peace with myself with that .

How did I love my friend?

Not by confronting him (which anyone who is reading this has probably experienced from me) but rather by accepting him.

How? Accepting is "being positive about a situation or person".

I loved him by accepting the positive in him…and turning all the rest over to God.

Amen

Moderation...where the yellow stripe lies?

I have never liked moderation.

In the 60s we had an expression that said “The middle of the road…is where the yellow stripe lies”, implying that moderation, if not cowardly, certainly showed a lack of commitment.

That is a very bad slogan for an addict to adhere to…because addicts are extreme by nature, or more precisely, by nurture.

But here’s something I am absolutely certain of: It is God’s will for me to eat moderately.

If I don’t eat enough…I starve.

If I eat too much, I get fat and become subject to diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease, cancer…And most recently COVID-19.

...And it makes me feel and look bad.

God, please help me to be moderate with my food. Amen

My Son's Best Chance

The most important thing I can do for my child is to stay alive and strong...He needs me.

How?

The obvious answers are about not doing anything addictive:

Drinking and driving is hazardous, smoking will kill you, opioid pills are an epidemic, unsuccessful treatment of sex addiction leads to depression which can lead to suicide. All these are extreme behaviors and consequences.

But the thing I can do, moderately and consistently, is turn my life and will over to God around food and exercise.

That is my son's best chance.

Help me to "Mind my own business"

HP,

“As with the body so with the Universe”

…help me to take care of myself in an “Enlightened Self-Interest” sort of way and to “Mind my own business”

….by following my food plan and exercising

"We were reborn"...

The Big Book says “We were reborn”
p.63

When does that happen?

It has happened three times for me.

First, when I got clean and sober from drugs and alcohol in 1988.

Secondly, two years later when I achieved my first chastity period in 1990.

Thirdly, thirty years later in 2020, when even though I was consistently thin, my weight became dead-on-stable-everyday.

What does being reborn mean?

Initially, it means freedom from some particular addiction.

But, positively, it means I can feel more, I have more intuition, more self-esteem, more power in personal relationships, more social resilience and my memory improves.

My posture improves. I smile more and laugh more easily.

I am more interested in other people, yet I take better care of myself.

This third and last “Rebirth” in 2020 was weird.

I felt like I imagine the first amphibians who ever made it to shore felt: panting for breath, not sure where I was, just grateful to be alive.

It can be rebirth from anything:

Years of depression

Smoking

Porn

Poverty

Codependence

Victimhood

As Dr. Martin Luther King would say: “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty I am free at last”.

Food and Freedom

“Control of the palate is very closely connected with the observance of celibacy. I have found from experience that the observance of celibacy becomes comparatively easy if one acquires mastery over the palate. This does not figure among the observances of time-honored recognition. Could it be because even the great sages found it difficult to achieve?”

Gandhi is saying that even for the most spiritually gifted sages of all time controlling what, and how much, food, goes in your belly is hard to do.

It was absolutely pivotal for my recovery.

I was just stuck in third gear for a long, long time.

Conquering the food kicked my recovery into overdrive.

And now I am free...

Say you want a Revolution...Well

HP,

The only revolution I can start…is in me.

Revolution in a 67 year old man?

Revolution in cardio-vascular exercise...will do very nicely.

Hunger and Chastity

“Control of the palate is the first essential in the observation of the chastity vow”
Gandhi

Why does that work?

Because when I am super hungry...A pretty girl is not near as interesting as a broiled steak.

On “Improving Our Relations With Others” The White Book

What are the 3 A's in Al-Anon?

Awareness, acceptance, and action…

Awareness:

In the past, it took me months to become fully aware that a qualifier that I loved had an illness, and I have dated more than one addict in my life: My second wife and I met in an OA meeting, my last girlfriend I actually 12-stepped into SAA, I met one of the loves of my life in a DA meeting.

I would just keep trying to reason with someone who was doing something self-destructive…and you can just imagine how that went.

Once, it took 200 days, of incredible misery, to accept illness in someone I loved.

I could see addictive illness in myself clearly, but, like any good Al-anon, I thought I was “ talking bad” about my qualifier, if I accepted illness in someone else.

Acceptance:

So awareness was first, but being “ like the horse or the mule”, in other words me being incredibly stupid, has always been an unfortunate, but necessary, component, for me, to “hit bottom” and accept that someone in this world had an illness…besides me.

The reason for that is my own character defect.

I was 35 years old and sober in AA seven years (5 plus 2) before I realized my mother was an alcoholic.

She told me that my father was an alcoholic but that she was not…And I believed her. I did not question her. That would’ve been “talking bad” about my Mama… Something you don’t do in theSouth.

Action:

One of my best sponsors died at 91 years old, with 54 years of AA sobriety.

He was a crusty, difficult old man, but he had one redeeming moral quality:

He would always inventory his thoughts, words and behaviors and ask himself one simple question: Is what I am doing loving?

That works a lot better than trying to beat a qualifier to death with reason… And it gives me “The priceless gift of serenity”.

On The “Our Father” Prayer

“Our Father”

I feel relaxed when I hear those two words. It’s because I believe that someone else is in charge. I am responsible, but I am not in control.

“Who art in heaven”. Most of my life I have thought of God as being poised in the clouds in the sky someplace, not quite identifiable on the radar. But, now, I believe, as my betters Saint Augustine and Gandhi believed, that God is within.

“Hallowed be thy name.”

If even God’s name is holy, then how indescribably holy must all of God be.

“May thy Kingdom come” means that Love and Truth reign Supreme, because that’s how you get to the Kingdom.

“May thy will be done” . This is a prayer affirming that the Kingdom coming into being, is God’s will.

If that is true that the Kingdom of God is within then, when it says “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it means that whatever Love and Truth is on the inside, of me, I am supposed to bring to the outside, of me. This is the crux, the pinnacle of the prayer.

“Give us this day our daily bread”, is a simple admission of our dependence, not just on the metaphor, food, but everything.

But, then we take a hard left and are guided in our relationships with others. “ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

“Lead us not into temptation” Why? Because it leads us away from the Kingdom.

“But, deliver us from evil” This is the tragic result of losing the Kingdom.

“For Thine is the Kingdom”. Truth and Love are God’s, and anytime I am with Truth and Love I am with God.

“The Power and the Glory”, These are simply too wondrous for humans to understand…just nod and smile.

“Forever and Ever” The Kingdom is eternal.

Amen…which just means “Let it Be”.