I am very grateful, and I have a special affinity for these 12 Step tapes. When I came into the FA program five and a half years ago, the closest person with 90 days lived about 3,500 miles from me. These tapes were my lifeline. There were only about 10 tapes then, and my sponsor said, “Buy these tapes. Listen to these tapes.” I listened to these tapes. These were my meetings. I had AA meetings, but I listened to these tapes over and over and over.
There are people in this room whose voice I heard on those tapes, and my sponsor said, “Call them.” I called them, and I was so shy at that time I didn’t know what to say. I remember calling one speaker and saying, “I really got a lot out of your tape for about the 10th time. Would you tell me more about your recovery?” And people were there for me. I called the people who walked before me. I am very, very grateful. Very, very grateful.
Let me start off a little bit with my numbers, where I’m coming from from a physical perspective. I’m currently five foot ten and I weigh 160 pounds. My highest weight has been 210 pounds. My lowest weight was 143 pounds when I was about 5% body fat, and I thought I was too fat. My weight fluctuated before I came into this program, between 30 and 50 pounds a year, for 10 years before I came in here. This, for me, was a disease of control.
Ever since I can remember, I was trying to control my weight. I have sponsored people who have come in over 400 pounds, and I try to get a sense of how much they ate. I think I don’t know, because who really knows the volume we consume? But I really believe that I ate as much as people I know who are obese — but I could carry it. I can be 50 pounds heavier than I am now, and I just look a little fat. And I can lie to myself and think that I’m okay. But people had no idea, except the people I lived with and me, what my life was like with food.
Weight is only one symptom of this disease — how much we weigh or how little we weigh.
I come from a family of three kids. I’m the youngest of three. My sister is 14 years older than me. She ran away from home when she was 15, so I didn’t know my sister growing up. My brother was four years older than I was, and he went away to boarding school.
My mother was obese and suffered from this illness. She was 100 pounds overweight for most of my memory. She was not a fat kid, but she was overweight for most of my memory. She died early because of this disease. She was in program for a while. She tried it for a while and just couldn’t let go.
My father was diagnosed with manic depression and was hospitalized on more than one occasion from nervous breakdowns. I have a very vivid memory of coming into my home one evening after school. My father was in one of his manic phases and had taken all the pictures off the wall and put them in the middle of the floor and was pouring gasoline on them and was ready to set the house on fire. I was able to get him to the hospital.
There was a lot of darkness in my family, but there was also a lot of love. And one of the things that I know is that love doesn’t cure this disease, and a lack of love doesn’t cause this disease.
I believe that I was born with a predisposition toward addiction. I believe that I was born with a sensitive nervous system. I know that. And I know that the strength in being sensitive growing up was also my downfall. I really have come to believe that our greatest blessing is also our curse, and our greatest curse can also be our greatest blessing.
One of the things that I discovered growing up was that I was very, very alone. I can be in a room of 350 people and feel alone. I have to tell you that being at this convention this weekend is the first time that I have felt a part of a group this large. I have never in my life been open enough to be a part of a group, and I am so filled with gratitude.
I remember very clearly in elementary school feeling alone when I went to school, feeling less than, feeling more uncoordinated than all my friends. I felt very insecure as a kid. I identified very much with what a previous speaker talked about — buying love. My parents gave me a very high allowance when I was in elementary school, and I used to take that allowance and the first thing that I would do is look around the classroom and find out who I wanted to be friends with. I would take them down to the store and buy them food. I didn’t even have any for myself, but I bought them food.
I’ll give you a few images of what it was like for me growing up with food. Both my parents worked. They worked until sometimes six or seven at night. My brother was away at boarding school. My earliest memories of really using food were when I would come home on the school bus alone. I would get in about 4:30 in the afternoon. My parents didn’t get home until somewhere between six and seven, and I had about a two and a half hour window there. I believe that I was depressed as a teenager. I had that sense of aloneness and isolation. I had no alternative except to come into the house and turn to the refrigerator.
I have very vivid memories of coming in in the afternoons feeling all alone, just opening the door and there’s no one there, and yet feeling kind of relieved, because I had left school and wanted to get away from friends. It was such a dilemma, because I wanted to be with friends, but I was too insecure to make friends, and then I would come home and I would be really, really alone because there wasn’t anybody around. So what I would do is the only friend that I had when I was an adolescent was food. I turned to the refrigerator, and I would sit in front of the television. I don’t remember what was on, but I developed that pattern very early on in my life as an adolescent, where I would just eat and eat and eat.
I remember one night particularly. There was a gallon of something that comes out of the freezer, and I ate the whole gallon. I was so ashamed of myself, I took the gallon out. We lived on a small acreage, and I took the bucket out into the incinerator and I burned it, thinking that my parents wouldn’t know that I ate it if I burned the container.
I know that my mother was in pain over this disease, and I remember her telling me, “Stop eating. Stop eating, because you’re going to look like me if you don’t.” I really am grateful for my mother’s attempt. I know that she tried. She really tried to help me stop eating. I didn’t know then why I couldn’t stop eating.
I found another drug when I was an adolescent, and that drug was exercise. I read a book on long-distance running and I got into track. I discovered the escape that can happen through exercise, and I started to run. The thing about running is twofold: it’s socially acceptable, because you can be successful at it and you can look good in the world — and it’s very isolating. You can go for miles and miles and miles. I was running upwards of 100 miles a week by the time I got into college, and I was all alone. I could just go and escape the world. I could escape my problems.
I had no idea that I had a problem. You know why? Because it’s socially acceptable. On the outside I looked really fit and really healthy, and on the inside I was dying. I reached the level where I was competing at a national level in running. I reached national standards. Nobody knew the despair that I felt on the inside. Nobody knew the binges that I had in between the runs. Nobody knew how I was using food in between. It was so isolating and so alone.
What happened is that I developed a pattern where I would run for six months and run so obsessively that I would get up to about 100 miles a week, and then I would injure myself. The problem is, when I didn’t have the drug, I could keep out of food reasonably well as long as I had this rigid, controlling exercise agenda. But when I stopped running and I got injured, I had no other alternative but to turn to the food. I would gain 20 to 30 pounds in two or three months while I was recovering from the injury, getting depressed. Then I would lie in bed at night, and I would feel this 22 pounds. For me at that stage, it felt like 300. I felt so bad. And then I would say, “The only solution is to get back to running.”
Then I would go back to run. I would start again. I ran with very high-caliber athletes, and they would see this 20 or 30 pounds, and I remember sometimes they would grab me by the side and tease me for coming back and being so fat. They would grab the side of me, and I felt so much shame, but I thought, “There’s only one solution, and that’s just run harder. Get this weight off.” And then I’d run harder and run harder and run harder, and I would get injured.
This cycle is progressive. This disease is progressive. I had to control the running harder, and the depressions went deeper.
During my 20s and early 30s, my life really became unmanageable. A couple of things happened. I was in a very strong religious fundamentalist church growing up, and I left that church in my early 20s and left a relationship that I was in. The church gave me some structure, so it kept my moods relatively sane and relatively stable. There was also a lot of conversation about God, and I know that God was working in my life all along the way, even though I wasn’t necessarily conscious of it the way I am today.
But one of the things that I discovered was that when I left that church, I ran from the church, and I ran from my marriage, and I ran from a two-year-old daughter, and I ran from those responsibilities, because I was always the good kid. I did what I was told. I was never rebellious until I was about 23 years old, and then I ran away from all that, and I ran away from God.
For the next 10 years, my life became unmanageable, and that’s when the disease really took over. But it wasn’t visible. It was the depression on the inside.
I used relationships. I went into relationships and used women like I used food, like I used exercise. I would go into a relationship, and when that relationship didn’t meet my needs, I would stay, on average, about a year. I got what I needed, and then I moved to the next relationship. I hurt a lot of people along the path. I’m just grateful today that I didn’t die from other diseases in that process, because my morality went out the window. Every sense of principle went out the window.
During that same time, it was progressively getting worse with my food and with my exercise and this cycle back and forth. It was completely unrealistic for me to train for the Olympics, but I had in my mind that pipe dream — that if I could just make it to the Olympics, then it’ll be okay, then I’ll get better, then I’ll be something. I wanted so badly to be worth something that I would go at any cost.
That’s where I began to learn, when I came into these walls, the nature of addiction, how we use substances. I used relationships.
What happened was that at the end of another relationship — and the other thing I was doing at this time is that I was practicing as a psychotherapist — I was really good at hiding. I was burning myself out, working so hard helping people. I remember one week. I had my own practice, and I remember one week I saw 42 families. Some of those were hour-and-a-half sessions. I didn’t have a God in those practices. It was all me. “I have to do it for all these people.” I was just burned out. Then I would go home and run for two or three hours at night after sessions.
I think I did some of my best therapy when I was burned out. I think I did some of my best therapy when I was depressed. Because, boy, could I relate to depressed people. We would just commiserate together. People had no idea how sick I was. I had this image. It was a relatively small community that I worked in, and I had this image that I had it all together. I ran workshops. I had a practice. People sent clients to me. I lied to myself so much. Denial is just so much a part of this. I had to just survive at that time.
Then I went through another relationship. I got married for about three years, and she left me, and it was because of the choices that I had made in that relationship. I don’t blame her for a minute for leaving. That was when I hit my first rock bottom. I went out onto the highway, and I was very serious about jumping in front of a truck. I could tell you the exact black Kenworth coming that I wanted to step in front of. I knew I had a problem, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
The trouble was that I didn’t trust any other therapists in town, because I didn’t trust anybody. Except there was a psychiatrist that I used to refer clients to when they needed to be on medication. I went and saw that psychiatrist, and that was a big step for me — to go in and say, “You know what? I want to kill myself. I’m in and out of all these relationships.” I didn’t have a clue to talk to him about food. I didn’t have any idea that food had anything to do with this. I just thought I was fat or obsessed with my body image.
What he told me after he interviewed me was: “You have your father’s illness. You are manic depressive, and you will be on lithium for the rest of your life.”
I was determined I was not going to be on medication. He had about three prescriptions that I was going to go fill, and what I did was tear those prescriptions up and go for a run. I was going to beat this. I was going to beat this.
About six months later, I got involved in another relationship with the woman I am married to today. We’ve been together since 1987 and got married in 1991. This woman was a stabilizer in my life. She was my higher power for many years, and she held my moods together. I believe that from when I first met her in 1987 until about 1993, my disease went into somewhat of a remission because I had this relationship I could hold on to, and she stabilized me.
I also went into some therapy. I saw a therapist who lived three hours north of us and went in twice a month. I drove up there because I didn’t trust anybody in town. Having that therapy every other week, combined with the marriage, stabilized me.
Until we had a baby.
All of a sudden, my wife couldn’t take care of me anymore. Her energy and her love shifted — as it had to — from me to the baby. When she got pregnant, I gained 50 pounds during her pregnancy, because her energy was going where it needed to go. I understand that now. I didn’t understand it then. What I realize now is that when she pulled away from me, I had no alternative except to turn to food.
I tried to run more, but this is progressive. Even my exercise became more weighed and measured. When you’re in love, you don’t need to exercise so much. It’s amazing. But I was mostly in lust more than love.
That’s when I started to go back to exercise more, and the mood swings began to take over. Around 1993 the food really began to take over.
I have one very vivid memory of the food. I’ll give you a few, but I’ll start with one. I got out of practicing as a psychotherapist in 1989, and I think that helped a little bit in my recovery. I have great respect for psychotherapists — please hear that — but for me, I needed to get out of that profession. It was not the right place for me. I knew that long before I came into recovery. I believed God was working in my life.
I went into consulting, taking what I learned about families and adapting it into organizations. But I remember having a great deal of self-worth tied up in my work. I had my self-worth tied up in my marriage. I had my self-worth tied up in my running. And I had my self-worth tied up in my job. That works really well when your work is going well. But when I had a bad day at work, I had no way to handle it.
I remember clearly: my daughter was about three or four months old and colicky. My wife was home with her. I had a bad day. I don’t remember what the bad day was about, but I remember that same pattern: I had no way to deal with a bad day except to go to food.
We live about an hour from where my office was. I know every convenience store between there and my home. I remember stopping at seven convenience stores that night. I stopped at one, got a bag of stuff, took it to my car, drove down to the river, and I stuffed. I just stuffed those feelings. I knew I had a colicky baby to go home to, and I didn’t want to face life. I knew I had work stress and I had nowhere to go. I had no tools. I had no God in my life. I had nothing except food.
I would stuff it down, and it felt like relief when it first went down, and then came that sense of despair when the bag was empty and there was nowhere else to go except the next convenience store. I got in and out fast. I felt so much shame. I identify so much when people talk about putting stuff in bags. I remember I would put the stuff in bags. It felt like I was buying an illegal substance. I’ve worked with cocaine addicts, and it felt like that — the sense of hiding. I wanted to get that stuff in bags, because as long as it was in a bag, nobody could see it. Then I would take the bag and put it under my coat and walk out to the car, sit in the car, speed across the street where there was a park, and look around to make sure nobody saw me. Then I’d open that bag. I would plan that. And then it would be over. And now what do you do? You have to go to the next store. I did the same thing.
On this particular night, I told my wife that I’d be home at six o’clock for supper. I walked in at 9:30. I was so stuffed, and I was so full of self-loathing. I hated myself.
My wife is the kind of person who never complained. She just said, “Your supper is in the fridge. You can heat it up.” I could hear the baby crying. I took my supper — frankly, I didn’t want my supper at that point. What I wanted was sugar and flour, because the only way I knew to fix how I felt was that. I went to the fridge, got all the stuff that I wanted, and I went down to the television room without hardly saying a word to my wife. I turned on the television, just like I did when I was 13 years old, and I sat in front of the television with the stuff around me.
My wife came down. She needed some support. I didn’t want to be around anybody. I pushed her away. I could hear the baby crying upstairs, and I didn’t care. All I cared about was: give me my food, give me my television show, and leave me alone. I hated myself. I ate until about one o’clock in the morning, until I heard the baby stop crying.
I got up to go out to the convenience store because we were out of food. My wife came downstairs. The baby woke up. She brought the baby down and said, “Would you please? I am absolutely exhausted.” She didn’t ask for very much. She said, “Would you please take this baby? I am absolutely exhausted.” I was on my way to the convenience store, and I said, “I cannot right now. I’ve had a bad day,” in a much harsher tone than that — yelling at my wife.
Then I went to the convenience store, and for the next hour I wandered around the neighborhood with a brown bag of stuff. I came in to a quiet house. I went upstairs to our bedroom and I got angry at my wife because she wouldn’t have sex with me.
If that’s not alcoholic, what is the difference between what I did and what an alcoholic does when they’ve got a jug of whiskey in a brown bag?
Was every night like that? No. And that’s the problem. That’s how cunning, baffling, and powerful this disease is. Because at that stage I probably only had one of those days every three or four months. But what happens is those kinds of days get closer and closer together.
I lived with a rage-a-holic. As I said, my mom was a food addict. We lived with rage in my family. The trouble with rage — just like the trouble with those kinds of cycles — is you never know when it’s going to come. So you live in it 24 hours a day. I don’t know how often my mother exploded, maybe every three or four months, but I lived in it all the time because I never knew when the next one was coming.
My wife lived with that kind of fear. It was an abusive relationship. I never hit her, but it was an abusive relationship. I know that today. Thank God for the tools of this program, that I’ve been able to make amends and that we’re still married today. I have two lovely daughters.
Another thing I want to share before I talk about recovery and what happened in recovery is that I did cross the line into bulimia. As this got progressively worse, I hired a trainer. I thought maybe if I got a trainer who told me how to do an exercise program, maybe that would give me a solution. I started to train for a marathon. Maybe that would give me the solution. I was always looking outside of myself. I still hadn’t gone on any medication. I still fought the diagnosis. I had never gone back for any more diagnosis.
But that unmanageable, addictive pattern began to take off again. We were out in a summer cottage. We didn’t have a food store close, so we had to go into town, which was about five miles away. We were staying in a summer camp. Summer was always tough for me. Every time I slowed down, it was tough. As long as I could stay hyper and not face myself, I was okay. But as soon as I slowed down, I had no tools for how to slow down and be with myself. So summer holidays were always tough.
We went into town, bought a week’s worth of groceries, took them out, and I was determined I was going to be on a diet. I read all the diet books. I never went to diet workshops, because I was beyond all that — I didn’t need all that. I just read the books at home and did the diets at home. I was on this particular diet, and I knew intuitively the stuff I needed to stay away from. I was determined I was going to stay away from it. I got into it anyway. And once I had that first bite, here’s what it was for me: “I’ll start again tomorrow.” As soon as I said that, it was all bars off. As soon as I said that, I knew I was gone.
I started to eat at about seven o’clock at night, and I ate until about one o’clock in the morning. I ate all of our week’s worth of food, except anything that was nutritious. At one o’clock in the morning, I hurt so badly. I could not go to bed. I could not lie down. The only thing I could think of was to eat more. Then I realized, “I wonder if there’s a food store around.” I started to panic, because there was no other alternative. I went outside and started to wander around the neighborhood. I was so stuffed I could hardly walk, and I was looking for a food store, for a solution. I was desperate.
That’s when I stuck my fingers down my throat, and I learned about bulimia. It was this mixed feeling, because all of a sudden I realized, “My God, it’s freeing. I can get rid of this stuff. I found a new way to control it.” But at the same time, I knew enough to realize I was in trouble.
That episode of bulimia started to become more frequent. Within the next 18 months, it had moved toward bulimia about once a month. I’ve had some sponsees who have been bulimic 5, 10, 15 times a day, and I know that’s where I was headed. I know that’s where I was headed, because this is a disease that progressively gets worse.
My sister is also a psychotherapist. She lives in San Francisco, and she recommended that I try a 12 Step program. I remember going for a run with her once. Whenever she would come up to Canada, I would work really hard at losing weight so that I could be thin when she got here. I’d go for a run with her and try to look good. It never worked. The harder I tried to lose weight, the fatter I felt. I was on a run once and I had an emotional binge and said, “This is terrible. Something’s out of control. I can’t stop eating, and I can’t control my weight.” I had no idea. She said, “Why don’t you try a 12 Step program? I know you’ve referred people to AA before. Why don’t you try a 12 Step program? I know there are 12 Step programs for food. I don’t know anything about them. Why don’t you give it a try?”
It took me another six months. I came at that time to my first OA meeting. We didn’t have 90-day meetings in those days, but I came to my first OA meeting and I sat in the back of the room and judged. Actually, in those days it was a circle, and I sat behind the circle and judged. I judged all the women — 95% of them were women — and I judged all the reasons I didn’t belong there.
I remember defining my own abstinence. I don’t blame that program at all. I was not in a surrendered place. That’s why I didn’t get better in that room. But I did lose 60 pounds and got down to about 150 pounds, which is 10 pounds lighter than I am now. And I felt hot. I was training for a marathon. I was going to get back into running again.
During that whole year that I was losing weight, I still didn’t get freedom from food. What happened was that two women came from Boston and told me about this program. The word that I heard was “neutrality.” A lot of people have come up to me since I mentioned that word and said it’s really important. What they described as being neutral around food was that they had weighed and measured meals, and when their meals were done, they were done. I had never in my life had neutrality around food. I was either white knuckling it, trying to lose weight, trying to control it. I never had neutrality.
Today, I’ve learned to have neutrality around food.
One of these two women I called. I took them out for dinner. I had, according to my definition of abstinence, 17 days of abstinence, because I was counting the days. I pretended when I took them out for dinner that I had this long-term abstinence. I know how to talk recovery. And one of the things that’s really important for me is to realize it’s not what I say here. It’s the actions I take when I’m done here. That’s recovery. What I say is just such a small part of it.
I remember once getting bulimic on my 23rd day with my sponsor, because we had the kind of program where you only had a sponsor for 30 days. As long as you could get through the first 30 days, then you didn’t have to call them. That worked really well, as you can imagine. I remember getting bulimic on my 23rd day and going upstairs, and I remember saying, “Well, I have to get my 30 days,” because there was a big ceremony at the end of 30 days. At the end of that 30 days, I said, “I want my 30 days so badly that I won’t tell my sponsor I was bulimic, because it’s gone anyway, so let’s not count it.” That’s how dishonest I was around food. You can imagine: I could lose weight that way, but I didn’t get freedom that way — the freedom that I have today.
I had my last binge in a health food store on the day before New Year’s 1996, the last day of December 1996. I binged, went home that night, and I was sitting in front of the porcelain bowl, having a temper tantrum, with my hands pounding the floor, having an emotional binge, wondering how I was going to get through this. I remembered that two weeks before, a woman from Boston had talked about neutrality around food. I had some kind of vague image: This really isn’t neutrality around food, and I think she has something that I want. That’s the night that I called her and I let go.
When I came in, I was 95% surrendered. I really wanted this program so that it could stabilize my weight so I could start to run marathons. I was surrendered to everything except exercise. When I came in, I lied about the exercise. I knew you have to get honest to get better in this program. I was honest about everything except my exercise.
I was exercising about 15 hours a week at that time, and I said, “I might have a problem with exercise, but I don’t exercise that much. It’s not that important to me,” because I know what to say. I’m an addict. I know how to manipulate people. The trouble is I got a sponsor who knows more about addiction than I do, someone who’s walked down this path before. You can’t pull the wool over her eyes. She said, “How much do you exercise?” I said, “Well, I exercise every day, but I don’t exercise that much.” She said, “Why don’t you try exercising three or four times a week?” Great. So I still exercised 15 hours a week, but now I only did it in three or four days a week.
Can you imagine being on this food plan with no grains, exercising 15 hours a week, running 15 hours a week? That’s when I got down to 143 pounds. She said, “Send me a picture.” She couldn’t catch up to me. So I sent her a picture. I felt fat, but I thought, “Wow, this is what I want from program.” She got the picture and said, “You are too thin.”
That was the moment my recovery began. I knew I needed to give up running. Running had been, next to relationships, my stabilizing force in my life for 25 years, and I knew I had to give it up. I knew I had to give up the dependency on it, because it was what held me together. That’s when my recovery began.
Here’s what I’ve discovered: if there’s 95% surrender, it’s the 5% we don’t want to surrender — that’s where the recovery is. That’s what it was for me. It took me a weekend. I cried for two days when I had to let go. She said, “Let’s try not exercising for six months.” Are you kidding? This was everything in my life. I knew I had to do it. She didn’t even insist on it. I just knew I needed to do it. It took me a weekend, and I made a commitment: one day at a time, I’m not going to exercise.
When I wanted to go out for a run, I learned to pray. I learned to find a God in my life to replace that running, to replace that food.
My weight has not fluctuated more than five pounds since I got my weight back up to where it needs to be. It hasn’t fluctuated more than five pounds in the last four and a half years. I’m not on any medication. For the last five years, since I’ve been working this program, by the grace of God, I have not had any symptoms of what the psychiatrist said was manic depression, and I don’t take any medication.
What I do is work the tools of the 12 Steps as I’ve been given them. I make three calls a day. I weigh and measure my food. I have a clear definition of abstinence. I have a fellowship. I take quiet time. But I have to work these tools.
I need two things in my life. I need structure, which these 12 Steps give me. And I need God in my life. If I have structure without God, I’m back in the old pattern. But if I have God without structure, I can’t do that either. This program gives me both.
I have to tell you, I had a spiritual relapse last year, and I feel strongly that I need to pass this on. I stopped talking to people. The thing about sponsoring is you have to show up every morning at the same time, and that’s when I started. For the first two months I was in recovery, I think I cried every morning. I cried about everything, because my emotions were so raw. I’ve learned to live my life not in how I feel, but in what’s right to do — what’s God’s will.
Where I slipped was I stopped reaching out. I made calls every day, but they were always to newcomers, because we have a new fellowship and I was just trying to get it going. So I’d make calls and say, “How are you doing?” and I’d take care of people. That old pattern, from when I was a therapist, from when I was five years old trying to fix my parents’ relationship — trying to take care of everybody else. What I wasn’t doing was talking about me.
Now I have a daily discipline where I pick up the phone and I talk about what’s going on. I talk about the insecurity that I feel when I take my kids and drop them off at the bus. I talk about the insecurity I feel when I’m overstressed. I talk about the fear. I talk about how yesterday, when I led a session, I felt so fearful afterward that I’m going to talk to somebody about it today. I need to report out every day, and I need to make that an important part of my discipline. Just picking up the phone — it doesn’t have to be a crisis. Just talk about the little stuff.
I had to make that a discipline in my life because what happened was I didn’t talk. It built up and built up and built up. I had what I would call — what I would have called in the old days — a nervous breakdown. It was an anxiety attack in my daughter’s school. I just got to shaking. It was a simple thing over some photocopying, and I started to shake. This was just last December, and I realized I hadn’t been working the tools. I hadn’t been putting my recovery first.
The message that I have is that there’s hope here, and it comes with surrender, and it comes with that God-given willingness to do whatever it takes — to go to any length to get this. I have begun to realize freedom today from food and from my mood swings, and that is the greatest blessing I have, the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.
I had an experience doing a radio interview where I talked for an hour on the air in Canada. We got a lot of newcomers out. I learned the principle of anonymity because I used my middle name and I was completely anonymous. We had people coming into our program because of that radio interview, and there are people here today because of that radio interview. What I got from that was, for the first time, an awareness that it’s not me. Because nobody knew who was talking. There’s a power bigger than you and me that’s working this. I could not be here today but for the grace of God.
I want to express my gratitude for being a part of this group, for the level of acceptance. There are people in this room — you know who you are — who saved my life in those early days.
Somebody asked me last night, one of the people who flew down here from Canada, “What does this fellowship mean to you?” How do you put it into words? How do you tell someone what it’s like when they get you out of food, they get you out of your addiction, and they give you some sanity in your life?
What I’d really love to do is point to a picture of my family. That’s what I have today. They have a father who’s really learning how to show up and how to be a father and how to be a partner in life.
Thank you very much.