Tag: Food Addiction

Chasing the Good Dope Dragon: The Very Best High There Is

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.”
-“Working with Others,” Alcoholics Anonymous

I once heard an AA old timer put it this way, “Helping others is where the good dope is.” And it’s true. Far better dope than, well, dope, alcohol, Oreos, or obsession. The high is like no other. You feel the Universe coursing through your veins when you connect. You feel the presence of your god, and that’s what this whole thing is about. It’s the one dragon you really do want to chase. It’s pure magic.

(Magic dragon… Puff reference notwithstanding.)

Bill W. had the bolt from the blue spiritual experience and he spent the rest of his life chasing it. Him chasing that dragon led to the founding of AA which has worked profound and miraculous good in the world. When he needed or wanted an alcohol high, he went instead for the better dope, helping others. He got a better, longer lasting high, and not only kept himself sober, but built this amazing thing on which we all rely.

It is possible for us too. It is possible to be more than sober—better than sober. It’s possible to catch and kiss that dragon, over and over, and even more intimately each time.

Someone in a Chronic Compulsive Eaters Anonymous meeting once said that we must extend ourselves into uncomfortable service, which to me means that we have to, as time goes on, chase that dragon more intensely. Viewing it from a distance only works for so long. Waving at it as it flies by. Holding its claw. Feeling the heat of its fire. Counting its scales. We have to keep at it. We have to get uncomfortable. We have to get on that dragon and ride, exhilarated and terrified.

My dragon metaphor is getting a little rarified. Here’s the kind of terror that gets you there:

Talking to newcomers on the phone. They have no idea who you are, and you’re scared you’ll say something stupid.

Sponsoring someone for the first time. They’re scared of you, but you’re far more scared of them.

Leading a meeting. Eek!

Starting a meeting. Double eek!

Sending letters to professionals in the community. Heart pounding.

Actually talking to professionals in the community. Dead panic!

But man, when you do it? Oh the deliciousness of it you can sink your whole soul into. The very bolt from the blue. The electricity. The presence. “Vital spiritual experience.” Power. Higher Power.

You and the dragon, one wild force.

The very best dope there is.

Until next time,
-Michelle A.
Recovered and available sponsor in Chronic Compulsive Eaters Anonymous and Recovered Codependents.

Contact me anytime. MichelleA12Steps@gmail.com

Alcoholics Anonymous

Lustre in the Poorest Eyes

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment
“The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits.”
-“We Agnostics,” Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 53

What do you suppose the outline of faith is? Is it something you could put on paper with Roman numerals, capital letters, indents? Or is it something like the barest semblance of a figure you can make out when God stands directly in front of the sun?

The promise of the New Land, the land of faith, is a bright and lustrous promise as bright and lustrous as the sun and the god standing directly in front of it, but what to do when all those eyes really want is to close, to shade themselves, to rest?

I have albinism and am extremely light sensitive. The lustre in the eyes things sounded a little painful and dangerous to me and I was reserved about it. I stood on that Bridge of Reason a long time squinting and shading my brow with my hand. Because my eyes accept too much light, unshaded, the barest outline of God visible to anyone felt less visible to me. Was She holding Her hand out or was Her back turned? I couldn’t tell and was afraid to find out. What if I stepped ashore and all that Promise I had seen fuzzily was nothing but my foolish wishes? What if it weren’t God in front of the sun, one radiant thing haloed by another radiant thing, but merely some fluorescent light in a hospital room and I, beaten again, stepped ashore to pain?

I tried to stand on that Bridge of Reason and make up my own Land. The book talks about all these friendly hands that were extended to me from their Land and, frankly, mine was kind of lonely by comparison, but at least I could clearly define it by my own rules and be sure of what I would find there. Something I could call a god, a shady god, that let my eyes stay tired and didn’t challenge me to open them too far, to receive too much.

I loved my shady god, but, loving him and keeping my tired eyes closed, I found I had stepped wrong and right off the Bridge of Reason into the sea of… something. Not Reason, not faith, something else, murky and cold. So I stayed sick. I kept bingeing. My mind went round and round in codependency. Until…

last gasp, going down, I opened up, honestly and all the way, and let the lustre flow in and found it was God’s radiant form in front of that sun and I was more than capable of seeing Her hand outstretched to me, the “flimsy reed” that would lift me out of the swiftest, meanest currents.

“Dear Lord, we lurch from metaphor to metaphor.”
-“Praying Drunk,” Andrew Hudgins

Even my eyes are capable of lustre-receiving. The poorest eyes are. Yours are. Open them. Open them even to the sun. Open them even to your bright and lustrous God.

-Michelle A.
Recovered and Available Sponsor
Chronic Compulsive Eaters Anonymous
Recovered Codependents

If I can help in any way, please reach out: MichelleA12Steps@gmail.com

Alcoholics Anonymous

“Redouble” Means “Quadruple” I Think

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“…he must redouble his spiritual activities if he expects to survive.” –Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 120

Did you know there are people who own a 1939 dictionary for the sole purpose of understanding the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, word by word, better? I’m not going to judge because, for me, judgement means it will happen to me, redoubled, and I’ll end up owning not one, but two 1939 dictionaries, maybe the Webster’s and the venerable, 600lb OED, so I can understand the Big Book, word by word, double better.

It’s “redouble” I want to talk about.

I’m a hopeless compulsive eater and codependent. That’s what brings me to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. (If it works for the drunks, it can work for us food drunks too.) The first time I read this passage, in my most hated chapter, “To Wives,” I was in the middle of a week long binge, beating my brains out with program stuff, clinging to reaching out to newcomers like cellophane clings to a cold bowl (I stole that line), and still I was bingeing. Work work work, binge binge binge, what seemed like endlessly. And I read that passage and what it seemed to me was that it was saying that the efforts I already doubled, I had to double again if I expected to survive. I couldn’t imagine a more unfair thing. Not two times as much service now, but four. How long did they want me to spend in a day on this? Did they really want me to be accepting phone calls in the wee hours? (They did.) Did they really want this interfering with my work and leisure? (They did.) Did they really want me to let a food drunk codependent set my mattress on fire? (They mentioned that specifically.) Did they really want me to be this uncomfortable? (Sorta.)

What they really really wanted was for me to be sober. All that discomfort and interference stuff is how they got there and, double double toil and drunken trouble, that’s how they want me to get there too.

I have, just in the last couple of weeks—double a week—gotten food and codependency sober. I had to go through the process of utter desperation again (double), I had to go through the steps a third time (triple), and I had to redouble that service (quadruple), and, after all that, (especially the double desperation part), my Higher Power did relieve me of the compulsion. Turns out that redoubling stuff works even if I only sort of know what that word means. Where’s that old drunk dictionary?

And while we’re on the subject, along with my double dictionaries, I’d like a 1939 Urban Dictionary too because my “imperious urge” wants nothing more than to know what a “whoopee party” is and how to best word inviting myself to it.

-Michelle A.

If you’d like to talk more about Big Book focused 12 step recovery for compulsive eating and/or codependency, please feel free to email me at: BigBookBlogM@gmail.com

Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book

I Must Have This Thing

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“…he commenced to present his conception to other alcoholics, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others.” p. xxi, Alcoholics Anonymous

I have this wonderful image of Bill W., long white hair pointed straight up like Doc Brown. He is wearing a long white shirttail nightgown. He is standing on an ottoman in the day room of some nuthouse surrounded by equally scraggly nuts also in long white shirttail nightgowns, man-hairy legs and feet bare. Bill is gesticulating wildly, proclaiming to the rafters and all the sad drunks the miracle he has found in giving himself to God—and to them—and they are listening to him, but not too seriously. Several of them wonder when the men in white will come for him with the butterfly net. Religious weirdo converted by some other religious weirdo seeking to make more religious weirdos who will go on to hatch even more religious weirdos, ad infinitum. One, big, ex-drunk pyramid. But this pyramid you don’t have to sink your life’s savings into like the condo or cruise or Herbalife pyramids. Keep your life’s savings and invest your life itself. This pyramid is solid and crystal pure. God the four-pointed foundation. Pointed toward God. God shining at the tippy top.

They say Bill had to learn a lot by trial and error. I heard recently that he went around yanking people off bar stools. “You must have THIS THING!” And his zealotry was a buzzkill. I imagine him being tossed out of bars often, landing on his wild head like Brainy Smurf. I’m sure it hurt, but not as much as it would have for him to bust through the window “sash and all” and splat on the sidewalk below, a fate to which he was dangerously close, not too long ago. But then there was God. “Listen fellas—then there was God!”

You must have THIS THING.

Over time, and lots of tossing I’m sure, he learned to handle himself and the drunks a little better. A non-pushy zealotry. All lit up by spirit laughing with the jittery drunks about the times they were all lit up with spirits. Gaining their confidence this way, through sharing their outrageous escapades, then laying the God thing on them once the laughter and bad boy connection had warmed them up.

The trick was not Bill saying, “You must have THIS THING.” But the drunk looking at Bill and saying to himself, “I must have this thing.”

-Michelle A.

If you’d like to talk more about Big Book focused 12 step recovery for compulsive eating and/or codependency, please feel free to email me at: BigBookBlogM@gmail.com

AA Big Book