Member Stories: 3/12/2002
A share of My Greysheet Story:
"I don't have time for….."
My name is Mary C. and I have 188 days of Greysheet (GS) abstinence.
I first heard about GS abstinence over 20 some years ago when I lived in
Berkeley and was dabbling with Overeater's Anonymous (OA). There was a
lovely tall, thin combination Nordic princess and California girl who I
saw at the OA meetings. I subsequently met her again in AA meetings. My
vague understanding was that she was doing some radical food program and
I didn't want to know what she was doing. Besides, I was working two
half-time jobs, in the middle of a divorce, and running the lives of a
dozen people at my church, my school and my workplace; I did not have
time for cooking a lot of food or even real meals. She was calm in
recovery and I was frantic in recovery. I was too busy to do one more
thing and I didn't.
In the subsequent 20 years, my life has been variations on the theme
of "busy". Although sober in AA during this period, I have
continued in the frantic school of alcoholic recovery. Often I have been
more avoidant than peaceful. Success meant overwhelming jobs and
appointment books with every space filled. I have been grateful for my
recovery but aware that my life continued to have some of the craziness
that is the daily reality of the addict.
Though busy I have managed to periodically gain and lose 50 pounds. In a
fictional story I am writing, I described a woman with the same kind of
history this way:
"She began the see-saw adventure of gaining and
losing 50 or more pounds every few years. She had begun to look at this
relentless dynamic in Biblical terms as seven fat years and seven lean
years. This monstrous pattern seemed beyond her control and not even in
her consciousness much of the time. When she was gaining weight she was
captured and lost under the power of her will to overeat, and when she
was losing weight she was imprisoned by her judgmental reason. When she
was gaining weight she felt free and scoffed at her past discipline.
When she was losing weight, she was sure that she had found the secret
and would never gain weight again. There were the vows and promises
while the weight was being lost and the blank angry hunger when she was
gaining weight. She was divided within and her body was a battlefield
that received all the damaging blows of a hundred years' war in which
there could be no victory and no peace."
The awful reality of addiction is that you can have great insight,
intellect, reason and willpower and you are still not able to change the
relentless destruction both inside and outside of yourself. I have, at
times, been able to see myself living a life that I could name as
"monstrous, imprisoned, angry, damaging, without victory or
peace" and considered it simultaneously reasonable that I did not
have "time" to deal with it. This now seems especially crazy
since the time necessary is about an hour a day chopping vegetables and
making a few phone calls.
I feel blessed that I had the experience of recovery in AA because I
learned that a substance, innocent to many people, was deadly for me. I
had no ability to manage my drinking by the time I got to AA. While I
was drinking, I was in denial about the negative impact that alcohol had
in my life. I thought my problems were at work, in my friends, in my
luck and anywhere but in my dependence on alcohol.
I experienced a tremendous change when I stopped drinking. It was not
easy but I felt immediate relief and I began to have some physical
recovery that led to a change of heart and a spiritual awakening. My
life began to change and I began to see that my problems were an
"inside job". I began to rely on a higher power that began
with the AA group and a sponsor and became the God of my childhood
faith.
I have a friend in AA who advises people with many years of recovery
to not be so sure that every emotional and spiritual difficulty means a
return to working Step One. Sometimes we have more than one problem
wrecking havoc in our lives. He advises that when it feels like we are
at the bottom again that instead of Step One, we look to the 6th Step in
which we are ready to turn all our defects of character to our higher
power. In my case, food addiction was that kind of problem. I was using
food to manage my life and it was killing me. There was no amount of
deciding that I was powerless over alcohol that was going to salvage a
lived-out addiction to other substances. I am an alcoholic, but I am
also a food addict. I have to find the willingness to let go of my
defects in order to be truly healed, useful and the person God meant me
to be.
But doing Greysheet meant giving up my addiction to certain foods and
to a way of using food. I hit bottom physically, emotionally and
spiritually. In that dark, lonely end of the road, there was a light. I
ran into three people who were doing Greysheet over one weekend. As
unlikely as Scrooge being visited by the three Spirits of Christmas,
there were these three people walking into my life inviting me to come
to the GS Saturday morning meeting. (Remember how small a program
Greysheet is and you get the dimensions of the miracle.) Even more
miraculous, I decided to accept the invitation.
I didn't think that I could do this program when I read it twenty
years ago. My fears had not changed. But what changed was that I was
going to try to do it and not decide against it based on my doubts. It
took me about a month to get my abstinence date. Even before that date,
I began to experience the benefits of the program physically,
emotionally and spiritually. I have begun to have some of the serenity
that is the fruit of a life not dependent on substances but instead, the
support of a higher power in my sponsor, the group, and my God.
I am still working on my busyness. It's a problem in my thinking and
the way that I live. But I know that if I stay clean, sober and
abstinent that I will find my way.
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