I can’t even tell you how grateful I am to be here, to be abstinent, to be thin, to not be eating one day at a time, and to not be drugging and drinking and doing all the other things I used to do. I’ll tell you a little bit about where I was, what happened, and where I am now.
I am one of seven children, second from the youngest. I had four brothers and two sisters. My family life was very chaotic. My mother died when I was nine years old. My father was left with seven children, and in my opinion he didn’t have a clue, but he did the absolute best he could. My father is an alcoholic. He had been in the Army for 28 years. That’s what he knew. He knew how to be in the Army, he knew how to work, and he knew how to drink. He knew how to keep a roof over our heads. We could reach him any time we needed him; he was only a phone call away. But you can’t bring up seven children by telephone. It doesn’t work. So it was basically seven kids bringing up themselves, and there was a lot of chaos, a lot of fighting, a lot going on.
I believe every single person in my family is touched by the disease of addiction. More than touched — owned by it. My father was over 500 pounds. My mother died in her early 40s from cancer. My oldest brother died at 48 of lung cancer. Two of my brothers were over 500 pounds and heroin addicts. My oldest sister, who took on a lot of the maternal responsibility after my mother passed away, came into this program with me at almost 300 pounds. My youngest brother died at the age of 16 of a drug overdose. Addiction is rampant in my family.
I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, but I do remember food being very important to me. I had so many “remember whens” this morning thinking about Thanksgiving. When I was a young girl, my aunt who lived in Fall River used to come visit us. She was an older woman and would come off the Greyhound bus with all the little white bakery boxes. I knew what was in those boxes and I wanted them. That was what I waited for.
Shortly after my mother died, my father sent me to Virginia to visit an uncle and aunt. I was thinking about them this morning, so I picked up the phone and called them to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. My uncle now has Parkinson’s, and his wife was in a major accident and has four crushed vertebrae, so they’re both basically invalid. I called them just to let them know I was thinking of them. We talked about when I came to visit them back then. My father had put me, at nine years old, alone on a Greyhound bus. My uncle said to me this morning, “I don’t know how you made that switch over in New York City at your age.” I said, “God was shining on me even then,” because there was this little old lady, like a grandmother, who took me by the hand and walked me through the terminal and made sure I made the connection.
We were laughing because he was saying how unhappy I was when I was there. I said, “Yeah, because she put me on my first diet and she wouldn’t feed me.” We laughed. He asked me where I was working, and I told him I was working with one of my sisters. He said, “Oh yeah, she was the only thin one in the family.” I said, “Yeah, but today I’m thin too.”
I told him that 200 pounds has come off my body and it’s been off for 10 years, thank God. I told him a little bit about program. It was a really nice conversation. Then I called my aunt who lives in Florida — she was up here for my father’s birthday in August — just reaching out to people and saying Happy Thanksgiving because I am so thankful for the life that I have. It’s wonderful.
I grew up and got into high school. By this time, my father had remarried when I was about 13. Let me back up: my father had an epileptic seizure and they put him in the hospital for almost a year, up at the Naval Hospital in Chelsea. They put him on this rigorous program and he got down to a normal-sized body. I relate to how my father must have felt at that point because it happened to me once. He must have felt like a million bucks. He went out, found himself a wife, remarried — and unfortunately they were both alcoholic. They got active and it wasn’t a pretty picture.
By that time, it was just me and my younger brother living at home. She had a daughter, and we all moved in together, and it just wasn’t a pretty picture. My younger brother ended up moving in with my sister, who had taken on a lot of the maternal responsibility, and I moved in with my other sister. They were both married and had houses, and that’s how it was.
By then I was a junior in high school and I decided I was going to quit school. I’d had enough. My sister told me that if I didn’t go to school, I had to go to work. One or the other. So I went to work in a factory. I got cured quick and went back to school.
When I went back to school, I connected with a girl who had done the same thing — she had left school, but when she came back she really wanted to do it right. We graduated high school on the honor roll, and for that I am truly grateful.
Before I even got out of high school, I moved around a lot. I stayed with friends. I was the kind of kid, even as a very young girl, who always wanted to come for dinner and never go home. I remember going across the street to a friend’s house and asking her to ask her mother if I could stay for supper. I can still vividly see what she pulled out of the oven. I wanted to stay more than anything and she wouldn’t let me, and I hated that woman for it. I was so angry that she wouldn’t let me stay for dinner.
I would go up the street for Italian food, to another friend’s house for Polish food. The friend whose Polish food I used to eat — her father just passed away last week, and I went to the wake. At the wake, what did we talk about? How we used to eat together. She said to me, “Remember we used to go to your house?” In my house, we had this big deep freeze. My father used to bring home containers of things. She said, “Remember how we used to sneak into the deep freeze and get all that stuff?” It’s amazing, but we shared this disease. Even as very young children, that’s what we did. We’d go to each other’s houses and we’d eat. I knew everybody’s ethnic background, what kind of food they liked, when they ate it, and I was there. I always weaseled my way in.
After high school I got hooked up with a girl who was a single mother on welfare. She loved her diet pills. I used to go to the doctor for her because I was always obese, and they would prescribe me the pills, but I didn’t take them — I’d give them to her. She’d offer them to me, but I really didn’t want to get into it because I had seen what drugs had done to members of my family.
But I got to the point that I really wanted to take off some weight, so I started to go to the doctor for myself. At that time, I weighed 289 pounds. They started to put me on these diet pills, and I loved those pills. I swear I was born an addict. Those pills worked for me. Once I started taking them, the weight came off. I got down to 200 pounds and I thought I was body beautiful. I thought I was Miss America. I was going to go out there, find myself a man, and everything was going to be just fine.
That’s why I say I relate to how my father must have felt, because that’s how I felt. So I’m assuming that’s how he felt too. I went out to the bars and I found myself a man. I spotted him from across the bar, made a beeline over, and knew he was my prey. We got into a relationship really fast. The first night I met him, he told me he was 19 years older than me. He had a wife and a son, but he hadn’t seen them in two years or more. I thought, not a problem. I assumed he was either divorced or separated. No problem.
We moved in together, my daughter was conceived, and then I realized that wasn’t the case at all. He wasn’t divorced. He wasn’t separated. They just had a long-distance relationship and he hadn’t seen her in two years. Then he started flying back and forth. I stayed in that relationship for 11 years and I knew it was no good from the start.
Those pills worked for a while. Then I built up a tolerance. If three is good, four is better. If four is good, five is better. If five is good, six is better. For a very long time I abused those drugs. I was addicted.
When I got pregnant, I wanted a healthy baby more than anything. God has been very, very good to me, and I was given a healthy baby. That was one of the two best days of my life: the day my daughter was born healthy, and the day I was able to get abstinent in this program. Those are both direct gifts from God.
Once that baby was born, there was no holding me. I was off and running, big time. My daughter was born in October of 1979. In December of 1979, my sister — the one who had taken on a lot of the maternal responsibilities — had bought a house. She was getting a separation from her husband. She had three children, and her third-floor tenant moved out. I asked her if I could have that apartment, with the understanding that I would pay the second mortgage as my rent. That was the plan.
I moved into that apartment in December of 1979. My daughter was two months old. My sister, God bless her, was into the same things I was into. We were like the dynamic duo. We loved the pills, we loved the booze, we loved the nightlife. We loved to party. And that’s what we did for a very long time.
All my money went to addiction. Drugs, booze, cigarettes, food. That’s where it went. I didn’t pay bills. I didn’t pay gas. I lived in that apartment for six years without gas because they took the gas meter out of the house. I couldn’t shower there. I couldn’t cook there. I couldn’t heat up a baby bottle there. If I couldn’t do it on a hot plate, I couldn’t do it. That’s how my daughter grew up for quite a few years.
I was getting crazier by the minute and fatter by the minute. The weight was coming on. The pills just weren’t doing it anymore. I was eating and drinking and smoking, and what the pills were helping me do was just do all that faster. I knew I was crazy. I knew I was a drug addict. I knew I was an alcoholic. But I had no clue that I was a food addict. I just thought I was fat, and if I lost weight I’d be okay. Today I know that I am a food addict, and that is a wonderful gift — to know that, and to know there is a solution, and that this is my solution.
One day I was in my house at my wits’ end. I had three other children besides my daughter in the house, and I sat at the kitchen table and thought, “This is it. I can’t take anymore. God, please someday make me normal without these pills.” Prayer doesn’t fall on deaf ears. God heard me. It didn’t happen immediately, but it happened.
The doctors I was going to — one of them retired, the other one got his license taken away. The pharmacies I was going to for illegal refills — one of the pharmacists had a heart attack and closed up shop. The other pharmacist got arrested. His partner wouldn’t do the illegal refills anymore. Little by little, these pills were getting taken out of my life.
Then my nephew was getting married in April of 1988. In February, we went to a bridal shower. A woman I had known all my life was there. She and my sister had taught me how to walk. I had watched her yo-yo for years. Sometimes she’d be 350 pounds, then 120 pounds. You never knew. But this time she walked into that bridal shower looking gorgeous. She had this denim dress on. She strutted in like a million bucks, smiling, radiant. I looked at her and said, “What the hell are you doing?” She said, “I’m in program.”
She told me she’d found a boyfriend in program too. He had once weighed 485 pounds and now had a normal-sized body. She was very happy.
Before that, one of my brothers — both of my brothers had gone to prison — but one of them met someone from program who went in there to do outreach. He lost 130 pounds in prison. He wrote me a letter and gave me a phone number to call. I wasn’t interested. I wanted the pills to be my answer. I couldn’t function without them. So I put it away.
Then, at that bridal shower, this woman looked so good and so happy, and I started to pay attention. Around that time another friend of my sister said she knew of a doctor who would give me four months of pills if I lost weight — but if I didn’t lose weight, he’d shut me off. No script.
Then the wedding came in April. The same woman showed up at the wedding with the boyfriend. They danced, they looked happy, and I thought, “This really looks good. Boyfriend, thin, happy. Why not?” I figured: I need to lose weight, I can get four months of pills if I can lose weight. In four months I could drop 50 pounds, no problem. Then I’d be out. I honestly figured I’d explode afterward, but I didn’t care. My focus was: get the pills, get 50 pounds off, get a little relief, and then you can all kiss me goodbye.
So I went to a meeting. It was on a Thursday night in Chelsea. My sister and I went together. We walked into that room and I remember looking around and seeing that the majority of people there were thin. I couldn’t understand that. I heard people get up and say they had lost 135 pounds. One woman said she had lost 165 pounds. She looked like a million bucks. She looked like she had never had an extra ounce on her. I couldn’t figure out where all the hanging skin was. I couldn’t figure out where the fat went. She looked like maybe she’d lost 10 or 20 pounds. What did I know? But she said 165.
Another woman got up and said she’d lost a huge amount of weight and was happy and her life was turning around. Another guy got up and said, “The only exercise I do is bend my knees in the morning and at night,” and I thought, “I can do that.”
I sat and I listened. During the break, a greeter came over to me and showed me her pictures. She was a very kind older woman. She talked to me and asked for my phone number. I said, “I don’t have a phone.” She said, “Oh, we’ll have to do something about that.” I thought, “This woman has no idea who she’s dealing with. There’s no way I’m going to have a phone.” I just dismissed it. That’s how I handled anything I didn’t want to deal with — I dismissed it.
After that meeting, I went home knowing there was something in the house I was going to eat. I went home and I ate it. I had eaten it before, but it just wasn’t the same. Somewhere in program I had heard that once you come in, it’s never the same. And it really isn’t. I promised myself I’d go to another meeting.
The next meeting in my area was Saturday morning at St. Luke’s Church in Chelsea. I went. When I walked in, the same greeter from Thursday saw me from across the room. This big smile came across her face. She came over and said, “I’m so happy to see you. I’m so glad you came back.” I thought, “She’d better get a life. What does she want from me? Why is she so happy to see me?” I couldn’t figure it out.
Now I know very well what it’s like to see a newcomer in that kind of condition come back and keep coming back and get well. It’s such a gift to try to help somebody else get what you’ve been given.
I sat in the back of the room. A lot of what I heard probably went over my head, but I remember a few things very clearly: “Don’t leave this room without a sponsor,” and a lot of hope. A lot of people talking about their lives changing.
At the end of the meeting I cried because I related so much and I was desperate. People had stood up to be greeters, sponsors, whatever. I went around to everybody asking, and I was so emotional. By the fourth person I was like, “Who the hell is the sponsor?” I was sobbing and carrying on.
I remembered that the woman I had seen at the bridal shower had also stood up. She was at that meeting. I went straight to her, crying so hard I could barely breathe. She took me into the corner, hugged me, and said, “Everything’s going to be okay.” I asked, “Will you sponsor me?” She looked a little scared — the way I saw it, she really didn’t want to, but she was afraid I wouldn’t ask anybody else — so she agreed.
We went outside and she told me about all the tools of the program: sponsorship, literature, writing, all of it. She said, “If I tell you what to eat, will you remember?” I said no. She said, “Okay. Go home, get me your sister’s phone, and either I’ll call you or you call me. Write down everything I tell you.” I said okay.
As I was about to leave the church and click the gate, she held up her finger and said, “No medication.” In that instant, she burst my bubble. I thought, “Well, I’m not going to say anything.” I went home, got near the phone, did what she told me, wrote down all the food. I still have that little notebook. I decided to just ignore the “no medication” thing. I dismissed it, like I did with everything I didn’t want to deal with. At the time I called it dismissing, but now I know it’s lying by omission.
So I was on one hell of a diet for quite some time. I was weighing and measuring for the most part. I wasn’t eating flour and sugar for the most part. Every once in a while I’d go out on a little toot. Sometimes I’d tell my sponsor, sometimes I wouldn’t. The weight was falling off my body. When you’re that size and you stop eating flour and sugar for the most part, and you weigh and measure for the most part, the weight comes off. It’s inevitable. You have to do a lot of eating to maintain that body size, and when you stop, the size comes down.
People thought I was doing marvelously. The doctor who was giving me the four months of pills thought he was wonderful. He thought I was fabulous. He thought everything was terrific. I swear that doctor would have kept writing, because I was doing so “well.”
But now I was coming to meetings and hearing how people were getting healthy and happy. Their family life was changing. Wonderful things were happening to them. And I really wanted to be normal someday without these pills. You have to remember: that’s what I had asked God for.
About four months in, my sponsor said to me, “Look, darling. I don’t know what’s with you, but you really have to participate in this program. I understand you don’t get up and share because you’ve broken your abstinence, you don’t have 90 days. I understand you don’t get up and share. But you have to get up and read. You have to read from the Big Book. You have to participate. Participation is a big part of this program.”
So at a Thursday night meeting, I raised my hand. What do I get called on for but ‘How It Works.’ I got in front of the room and I read ‘How It Works,’ and that was the first time I really heard it. I think that’s my favorite part of the Big Book. I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t keep reading. I put the book down and sat. There was a guy in the front row and he said to me, “But we love you anyway, darling.” That sent me off. I started to cry like I’d never cried before. I went home and cried and cried.
But I made myself a promise, because I had always thought I was one of those people who was “constitutionally incapable.” The Big Book told me that if I got honest, I had a shot. I had the gift of desperation. So I promised myself I was going to get up in the morning, call my sponsor, and tell her everything I was doing.
The next morning I called her, crying like there was no tomorrow, and I said, “Remember that day outside St. Luke’s Church?” I told her everything I was doing. I said, “You told me ‘no medication,’ and I’ve been taking these pills, and I’ve been lying.” She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never said that to you.” I said, “Of course you said it to me. It’s been on my conscience ever since.” What we figured out was that she hadn’t said “no medication.” She was telling me about the tools of the program, and she said “Oh — meditation.” What I heard was “no medication.”
I can tell you story after story of how God has taken care of things in my life that I could never have dreamed up in a million years. I had one just this morning. It’s a wonderful thing.
At that point I made a decision: I was going to give this program my all. I was going to get honest. I was just going to do it. I heard, “If you work this program the way your disease worked, you’ll be a winner. Stick with the winners, you’ll be a winner.” I did everything I heard. I heard a woman get up in front of the room and say she was going to 90 meetings in 90 days and she was doing fabulous. I could see her getting better and I could hear it. So that’s what I decided to do. I decided to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I did that for a very long time. Nobody told me I had to. I knew I had to.
Instead of popping a pill, I went to a meeting. Instead of taking a bite, I made a phone call. If I wasn’t on the phone, I was at a meeting. If I wasn’t at a meeting, I was on my knees. If I wasn’t on my knees, I was taking quiet time. I was reading literature, I was writing, I was doing whatever I had to do not to eat, one day at a time.
I took a lot of showers. I took a lot of naps. I did a lot of everything. And it was wonderful, because I was starting to feel good. I was starting to feel human again. A lot of weight had come off my body, and I was able to get on a bicycle and ride with my daughter. We went bike riding all over the city of Chelsea. We rode down to Revere Beach. We were all over the place. We had a wonderful time.
The way I see it is: God took my mother when I was nine, and God gave my daughter back her mother when she was nine. By the time she was nine years old, I was abstinent in this program. She had a mother, and I am so grateful for that.
That first sponsor I had ate. Then I got a second sponsor, and that sponsor ate. By that time I thought, “What is going on here? Am I bumping them off?” I got a third sponsor. They were all very special people in my life.
With the third sponsor, I was hemming and hawing about this chicken. In my abstinence I was eating two pieces of chicken and a can of green beans. That was my abstinence. Everybody else was doing four ounces or six ounces, but I was doing “two pieces of chicken.” My “two pieces” were two large boneless breasts. Those suckers weighed about 10 ounces. She said, “Oh no, darling. Not two pieces of chicken. Four ounces. You put it on the scale.”
Up until this point I never knew what to call myself. I didn’t know if I was a compulsive overeater. I didn’t know if I was a food addict. I was 350 pounds — you’d think I would have known — but I wasn’t convinced. When she told me “four ounces of chicken,” that was the convincing moment. I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to starve to death without my chicken. I cried over that chicken, I screamed, I fought. She was kind, loving, and consistent. She kept saying, “Just one day. Just do it one day perfectly.” I kept saying, “I can’t, I can’t.” She said, “You’re absolutely right, you can’t. But you and God can. You ask God for help. You drop that chicken on the scale. You weigh four ounces. You dump it on your plate. You eat it. You know that it’s enough. You’re not going to die. You’ll be okay.” She kept saying, “Less is more.” I thought, “Yeah, right. Less is more. I’m going to starve.”
But I had the gift of desperation, so I was willing to try. I showed up at the scale. I asked God for help. I dropped that chicken on the scale. I asked God to help me stop at four. I dumped it on my plate and I ate it. And it was enough. Less was more. I couldn’t believe it.
That was the second most fabulous day of my life. One: the day my daughter was born healthy. Two: the day I found God by dropping the chicken on the scale. I knew without a doubt that that was God doing for me what I could not do for myself.
Ever since that day, I’ve been abstinent, one day at a time in this program, and for that I am forever grateful. Over 200 pounds has come off this body, and it has been an incredible journey.
At that point I thought that sponsor was nothing but a controlling witch and I was done. Even after that spiritual experience, I still fired her. Then I got my fourth sponsor. I got into an AWOL because I wasn’t taking the pills anymore. I was in AWOL with that third sponsor, and we were on the Third Step in that AWOL when the chicken thing happened. Then I got my fourth sponsor, and that sponsor helped me through the rest of that AWOL. Many, many changes happened. I got a full-time job. I got off welfare. A lot of wonderful things happened.
I had that sponsor for about four years, and then she ended up eating. That was devastating. It was a really hard time. But the good news is I ended up with the sponsor I have today — a woman I respect deeply, who has been part of my recovery since the very beginning. I met her at that Saturday morning meeting. I saw her get up and share. She was one of the co-leaders of every AWOL I’ve been in. She has been a wonderful presence in my life, and I am truly grateful for her.
I have so much more I could tell you. I can tell you that I did a lot of crying. The co-leader of the AWOL called me up one day and said, “Come over to my house.” I went over. She said to me, “What’s with all the crying? This crying has to stop. What’s the deal? What do you want from this program?” I sat there and sobbed and said, “All I want is to be a mother to my daughter. That’s all I want — to be a mother to her.” She said, “I guarantee you that if you keep going to your AWOL, keep coming to your meetings, keep asking God for help, keep not eating, I guarantee you’ll be a mother to your daughter.”
She has never lied to me, because that’s what I am today. I am in recovery, not eating one day at a time. My 19-year-old daughter just moved back into the house last week, and I am a mother to her. For that I am truly, truly grateful for my life, and it’s all because of this program.
Many things have happened — many wonderful things, many happy things, many sad things. On the way here this morning I was in a car accident. That’s why I was late. I got hit by an 18-wheel truck. But I’m fine. My car is a little banged up. If it had to happen, it couldn’t have happened any better. The guy got out of the truck and said, “I know it was my fault. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” We looked across the street and there was a state trooper. He came over, called AAA. AAA came. I gave them the keys to my car. They dropped me off here. I’m qualifying. I’ll go back, pick up my car, and I’ll be on my way for Thanksgiving Day.
I can’t believe my life today. I can’t believe that I have a car in the first place. I can’t believe that I stand before you in a thin body, with a sane mind, with this peaceful, easy feeling that I have most of the time — actually all of the time. I have this inner peace that, fundamentally, all is well. Because you know what? The food doesn’t own me. The drugs don’t own me. The booze doesn’t own me. The cigarettes don’t own me. I was able to get out of that lousy relationship I was in for 11 years. My daughter was able to go to camp. I’m able to function. I’m able to take care of myself and my daughter.
My sister left program and has been in relapse ever since. My first sponsor has been in relapse ever since. I have a front-row seat to see how progressive this disease is. But I also have a front-row seat to see how wonderful this recovery is. I know many people, and I happen to be one of them, and I hope — one day at a time for the rest of my life — to be involved in AWOL and living this program to the best of my ability.
The program I know today is FA. The program I knew then was OA. But it was always the same program I know today. I was very fortunate that I came into meetings that were good and strong — 90-day meetings — with people who knew they were food addicts and knew how to treat this disease one day at a time. That’s where I want to be for the rest of my life.