I’ve been debating myself on whether or not to take-on that seeming “sacred cow” that is the twelve-steps. On the very pro-12-step side of my family, they were very clear that I could be KILLING people (yes, killing them) by turning people off to “the program,” as they call it.
The thing is, the years I spent in AA and OA (alcoholics anonymous and overeaters anonymous) were some of the worst years of my life, hands-down. My alcoholic biological father kept at me that I was some kind of alcoholic, though most of the time I didn’t like alcohol. I had spent some time in my early 20’s binge drinking and that was enough for him to label me. Beyond that, he knew my weight went up and down (due to the eating disorder that he refused to acknowledge existed) and he also pressured me into OA.
My biological father is quite a disgusting character. When 9/11 happened, he lured me from New York with promises of paying for my university and some of my living expenses. It started out okay, but slowly and surely, he attached strings to everything, before I hardly had any control over my own life anymore. At the same time, he helped less and less with my uni and living expenses. After I had been living near the bio-idiot in a whole new city and region of the country for nearly a year, I disclosed that I felt a horrible depression coming on and that I really, really, really, really didn’t want to become suicidal again. I asked for help of some sort to make the madness stop. So, bio-jerk got me a therapist. The therapist, however, is awesome. She has saved my life. But, when I really started showing improvements to my mental and emotional health, the bio-idiot tied my going to 12-step meetings to his helping me pay for therapy (therapy in my case wasn’t cheap). It felt like 12-steps were undoing all the good I had done in therapy already and was pulling me back into the depression I was just starting to get some small distance from.
What were my problems with the 12-steps…? I had lots…
I will start with their beginning creed. Before every meeting, someone read this statement about how if you are willing to be honest with yourself that this method will work for you. Period. Only years later did I realize that the success rate for AA was something like 5%, which is the same as the people who spontaneously get sober without any kind of help. It was beaten into my brain (and a vulnerable brain it was in those years…) that if I could just get it right that I would get better.
In OA, there seemed to be this overwhelming fixation on this “no white flour/no sugar” diet that supposedly cured “food addiction.” This was before I realized food isn’t addictive – period. I realized that what really worked for me was working on the underlying issues (PTSD, abuse, ADD, depression, etc…) and intuitive eating… but, I couldn’t find support for this within OA. I don’t know if any IE or HAES people were active in any of the meetings I went to. The only talk I ever heard was of “unclean food behavior”, constant weigh-ins, food addiction and the no white flour/no sugar diet. I was told by my own sponsors and several other people of influence from OA and AA that wanting to process my issues (like the decades of abuse I suffered) was something like mental masturbation and that I needed to just get a life and stop eating flour, sugar and all that…. then everything would be peachy keen. *headdesk*
People who left the group were described as “somewhere… I don’t know… out there…maybe dead!” I never saw it assumed that someone might have found another path other than 12-steps and gotten better. It was 12-steps or die.
One thing that always rubbed me the wrong way was the nasty self-talk. Meeting goers overwhelmingly talked about themselves as if they were bratty children who would try to get away with anything if it might over a millisecond of “fun.” I started to adopt this self-talk myself and descended further into self-hate and righteous self-bashing that was ultimately self-destructive. I got to the point where I couldn’t stop crying due to the constant self-criticism and obsessive self-analysis.
My therapist explained to me that sometimes the 12-steps REALLY, REALLY, REALLY don’t work for some people. Some women who have never felt like they had any control in their lives do not react well to the creed that we are “powerless” over our problems and need to blindly follow direction to get better. Heck, I’d been admitting powerlessness my whole life and blindly followed whoever since I was a little kid! The 12-steps wasn’t something revolutionary to me… it was the same old crap.
Other things that bug me about “the program”:
– it supposedly has no religious affiliation, but is chock full of god-talk and it was obviously and largely xtian god-talk.
– it is said in one of their creeds that the steps are merely suggestions (implying that you don’t have to take them 100% literally carved in concrete), but I never found a single group (and I went to dozens of meetings in a huge metro area) that didn’t put enormous pressure on attendees to follow the steps AS-IS with little to no deviation.
– the program seems to straight-up lie… and it doesn’t even try to lie subtley. They say OA is not a diet program, but most of the people are on the no white flower/no sugar diet! They say anyone who is capable and willing to be honest with themselves can succeed, but only 5% of people who go to AA meetings ever become lastingly sober. Then there are the other hippocracies I’ve already listed above… Not to mention the bit about theirs being a program of “attraction not promotion.”…. LOL… that might be the biggest lie of all. 12-step groups have lobbied for decades to become the default program forced on people who end up in jail or in psych wards with drug or alcohol problems. If that isn’t promotion, I don’t know that is. I simply cannot put my faith in a group that is based on so many lies that are fundamental to the whole program.
If 12-steps has made you a happy and truly healthy person, then more power to you. I am not claiming that it doesn’t work at all. Maybe it does work for some. My point is that contrary to popular and regularly reported creed – the program doesn’t work for a lot of people and this has nothing to do with those people being unwilling to work hard or be honest and all that. I am sick and FREAKIN’ HUGELY TIRED of seeing people beat themselves down, because this program obviously isn’t a good fit for them, but they are so brainwashed into believing “it works if you work it” that they are afraid to give up… and ya know… maybe die “out there.” At best, it might work, if you work it… but that doesn’t have the same emotionally feverish punch does it?
I have more than one motivation for writing this post. First off, it is cathartic. I went through hell with the 12-step groups and a whole different kind of hell with my 12-step obsessed family members. My stomach turns when I see the popular myths about 12-steps being perpetuated and the program being forced on people who might do a heck of a lot better with some other method(s). Plus, just thinking about writing this post made me nauseas and made my heart pound… that usually means there is something to process and I’d rather face my fears (in this case, my fear of expressing my beliefs about 12-steps) than sit on them. My mind goes right back to that memory of a scary AA old-timer screaming at me how I “kept my own counsel too much,” because I was following an IE/OO/HAES path which is self-loving and kind and stopped talking mean stuff about myself and how “deficient” I must be. Sure, only one person got in my face and loud about it, but it’s not like it didn’t feel strongly to me like he wasn’t saying what most the other folks at meetings thought about where I was going with my recovery. Meh.
Lastly, I know there is a lot of resistance in our culture to thinking critically about the 12-steps and I know from experience how much pain this can cause. Screw sacred cows. I’ve learned that when something is seen as a sacred cow (like how thinness is the only way to be healthy – EVAR!) that this is a red flag to start figuring out what the hidden catches are and what motivations could be behind promoting an idea of “sacred cowness.”
I will end this post with something really beautiful that I heard in an OA meeting years ago. A woman in her (prolly) mid-twenties stood up and said that it is none of her business what her body looks like. It was her business to live well and eat well and get active and stuff… but if she had a lot of back-fat, it was none of her business. It was her body’s business… not her business to control and try to diet into perfection. I wonder if that women stuck with OA for any long period… she sounded way too intuitive to me to want to stick with their diety nonsense…
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Thanks for writing this. you expressed some things that echo my own experience with being pushed toward 12-step (AA and CoDA) by my abusive ex. It was horrible, and I felt even worse for even thinking that. So, thanks again.
Thanks for this post! The best thing I ever did was finally walk away from my ex and “the program.” Turns out, *I* wasn’t the problem, and I am perfectly capable of having a happy, (reasonably) drama-less life and healthy relationships now that I’m not caught in that net anymore. Maybe it works for some people, but it was sucking the life out of me. I am a totally different person now that I’ve put that all behind me.
Hi baby!!, I’m commenting for the first time! (I’m AGR’s husband).
Yes, as AGR knows, 12 step programs and their like are a particular pet peeve of mine.
I love that AA claims that “everyone who sticks with their program quits drinking” of course, they admit themselves that this is a pathetically low number (around 5-7%?). And of course, “sticks with” for them is *defined* as anyone who stops drinking – look up the word “tautology” people.
Oh, that percentage also happens to be pretty much the same rate as spontaneous remission in alcoholism (i.e. people who would have quit anyway).
Bottom line, there is no credible evidence-based case for 12 step programs.
Yay! You posted!!! 😀
(I’ve been trying to get him to comment since I started the blog…)
I love that last paragraph, reminds me of this video:
Aaah, OA. At the behest of my therapist (who has also since been kicked to the curb) I went to OA for 2 years. I experienced many of the same things that you did. It never set well with me to hear people talk about how they “Can’t trust their body” and how their “body lies to them, its diseased” or “its your disease talking”. **headdesk**
I left OA because I didn’t want what they have! I couldn’t stand the thought of living my life always 1 bite away from DEATH DEATH FATTY MC FAT FAT DEATH! I couldn’t live my life at war with my body, constantly on guard against the festering disease that was every impulse of my body.
I remember being on the no flour/no sugar/no wheat diet for almost a month. I lost over 30 lbs in that month and boy was EVERYONE sooooo proud of me. One day for fun I typed all my daily food into a calorie counter and found out that I was eating about 1,011 calories per day while exercising for 60 minutes 5 times a week also. Yeah no wonder I lost 30 fricking pounds! Of course I couldn’t keep that pace up and now a year later I’ve gained 70 lbs back.
What’s funny is when I was on the DIE-T I wasn’t craving junk food, I wasn’t sitting around day dreaming about ice cream or baby flavored doughnuts, I wanted peanut butter. So very very very very very very badly I wanted a spoon of peanut butter. Rather than realize my body was starving and crying out for mercy – I pulled out my big book and read about how my body lies and its disgusting and diseased and needs to be overcome.
And oh! Going thru the 4th step. Yeah – thats a fucking catastrophe!! Dragging out all of your deepest most inner most secrets and shame to tell another person – who has no psychological or therapeutic training what so ever and is likely just as messed up as you. Oh yeah that’s healthy! Stick someone on a torture diet, bombard them with how sick they are, and then tell them that for their “health” they must divulge every, tiny, miserable thing they have done or been thru and “take responsibility” for their part and go make amends. Seriously? I’m suppose to go make amends to my Mother who I haven’t talked to in 3 yeas because she is still married to my rapist, and who she herself was abusive and horrible? Yes, because I’m not suppose to judge her and God will shine his merciful magical ray of thinness down on me for my endless self flagellation.
When I left OA, in favor of HAES and IE (sorry I don’t know what OO is?) I lost 2 people I thought I had been close to and had met in program. One said she couldn’t be friends with me anymore, I was too dangerous to her, and the other told me how concerned she was that I was as good as dead. And how I obviously just wasn’t willing to “do what it took” to get healthier.
I had screwed up my whole life trying to get to OA meetings because there are none in my town. I drove 90 miles every week for a 1 hour meeting even in the winter. (a 1 hour meeting that SUCKED!) I even ended up moving 2 hours away from my husband so I could live in a town with meetings and when I felt scared and triggered by the people there I was shamed for not having the courage to “show up”. No matter how hard I worked for it – it was never “enough” because obviously I wasn’t skinny yet.
I’m sorry this is so long, I just feel so angry over my OA experience even though its been 3 months since I’ve been out.
LOL… I didn’t want what they had either from very, very early on. However, I was treated as if there was something wrong with me for not wanting what they havet… so I tried (with the help of a sponsor and others) to want what they have. It was a no-go… thank goodness! I am much happier with the HAES and IE stuff as well.
BTW… I have a friend who was in a similar program who was recently told that she also wasn’t willing to do what it took to get “sober” from food addiction because she wanted to explore (just try out… not even 100% commit to!) IE. Sheesh. Closed minds anyone?
Great, insightful post. I’ve never participated in these kinds of programs (the emphasis on acknowledging a higher power turns me off immediately), so it’s interesting to hear an insider’s perspective. Penn & Teller did a show on this, and they also cite the five percent “success” rate, although from what I remember, they mostly focused on AA, not OA.
Thank you for such an honest post. It’s such a relief not to be in AA any more, and you’re the first person who has articulated my anxieties and experience.
Following a marriage to an alcoholic man and much binge drinking in my 20’s, I spent 7 years until 2007 in ‘recovery’ within AA. I did the self-criticism, prayed to a god I didn’t (and don’t believe in) and did ‘service’ because I was ‘deficient’.
I left in 2007 after 2 years of agonising. I’d been told pretty much that, should I leave, I’d be on the booze in no time. All downhill, unless I accept the AA way.
In therapy (REAL therapy, not cod-therapy by AA members) I came to realise that I’m not an alcoholic. And I now drink moderately with no problems whatsoever. I don’t beat myself up for my imperfections and don’t pray. I am a happy atheist and that suits me just fine. And I think I’m a whole lot saner and less self-obsessed than I was in ‘recovery’.
I also tried OA briefly to help me with my eating disorder, and was freaked out that they were seemingly food obsessives and food avoiders. I was counselled to give up wheat and sugar, only eat 3 meals a day (no listening to my body then) and eat organic foods only. WTF?
I bumped into my ex-sponsor the other day. She’s also ‘out’. And she’s fine too.
Thanks again! 🙂
Good for you!
Let me say this as an addictions treatment professional with eating disorder expertise as well: There is a huge difference btwn trying to be abstinent from a substance (like alcohol) that changes your brain structure when abused, and trying to be abstinent from food – which is something our brains are hard-wired to want, and is necessary for life.
This is the bottom-line reason (IMHO) why OA does not work in the long run, and typically makes things much worse for most people who attempt it. I’ve heard of a few severely-disordered anorexics who found the structure and rigidity helpful when first out of inpt tx, but that’s about it. OA is the LAST thing your typical BED or COE female needs to recover from her ED.
And yeah – I am constantly re-educating people about AA. It is NOT the be-all-and-end-all of “recovery” and many, many people become sober, healthy people without ever using AA.
Oh, and P. S. on the “Only 5% of people in recovery used AA” idea.
That is based on a study that showed that only 5% of people in recovery used AA *alone* to become sober. Another much larger chunk of people used AA in conjunction with professional therapy and psychopharmacology to become sober, another good-sized chunk didn’t use AA at all, and another smaller group *became sober without using AA or professional help*.
So yeah – if it’s not helping, don’t use it! There is no one-way to recovery.
So much to write, so little time. In sum – yes, I agree. Since you left AA shouldn’t you be dead, in jail or crazy?
I found AA to be a very masculine program. It has its place I suppose, maybe, in breaking down the male ego and sense of denial. My mom’s treatment center told her addicts were addicts and she needed AA. She didn’t go after treatment as I recall. I did find a group called (I think) Women for Sobriety. It really was a beautiful program meant to raise self esteem. Their first step was “I have a problem that once had me.”
The only good thing about OA was that I saw that I was not the only crazy one around food. That’s all the good it did. I have much more to say and will do so as soon as I formulate a non-rambling response.
Whenever you’re ready… our ears are open for ya! 🙂 Or… ya know… feel free to ramble. I do.
Erm. You kinda rock. You know that, right?
I’ve been loving your blog for awhile now, but this post really hit home. Too often in our society psychology and physiology are treated as interchangeable parts, and they’re bloody well not.
If your underlying issue is emotional, no amount of diet or exercise is going to get you through that problem. Only dealing with it, dealing with the emotion, the trauma, is going to do you any good.
Likewise, someone with a physical ailment is not likely to get better just by thinking happy thoughts.
Most of my “problems” over the years regarding my weight, my eating habits, etc . . . have turned out to be “other people’s problems” . . . not mine.
But for awhile I tried to make their problems with my habits my own and I’ll tell you it was a bloody disaster.
I’m really glad you decided to “tip” this sacred cow.
Only kinda? 😛
I totally rock!
I’m teasing. Thanks for the kind words.
Wow. Very interesting to hear about OA from an insider’s perspective. I never was a big fan of the concept.
I am an OA “survivor”– I was in that program for 17 years, religiously followed a food plan for 13 of those years, sponsored 7 people, went to 3 meetings a week, you name it. And I never, ever shook the feeling that you articulate so well, about it somehow making depression worse and cutting off internal wisdom.
So, two years ago, I made a clean break with OA and joined an online intuitive eating group. (Or, in OA lingo, I “went back out there” to be at the mercy of my “disease.”) Two years later, I’ve discovered that trusting myself is not only possible, it is the only way to go. With all the rigidity and dogma and meal planning out of the way, I have actually solved some of the underlying issues OA was supposed to help me with all along. My life is as full as… life itself. I am free.
Bravo!!! I like your use of the word “survivor”… I feel like that fits me as well, especially as I have seen so many in my family stay in for decades and become weirder and more aggressive as they got in deeper.
AGR, thank you for taking on this sacred cow.
I think that 12-step programs are lifesavers for some, and merely a helpful tool for some, and downright harmful for others.
I was recently prostelytized by someone in OA merely on the basis of my fatness — she asked if she could contact me, and she did, and left me a message. I haven’t called her back.
OTOH, I have a friend for whom OA is working well — she has strong sense of herself and is feeling relief and peace.
I think that for me, something that tells me I’m inherently diseased, and that I will find love, support and acceptance by submitting over my power to anything (a supreme being or a group) is a bad idea.
You are strong, brave, amazing.
Also, ZeroBugBounce — welcome! Nice to hear from you! You are so…. rational! Also great to hear from everyone else here.
I haven’t done 12-step programs, but I always wonder about teens and folks in their early 20s being assigned to go to a 12-step “treatment” program for DWI. DWI results from many things is many things, but it does NOT require that you be an “alcoholic” – and I really don’t see how telling kids that they’re “powerless over alcohol” is going to help them drink moderately…
What’s needed it to quit making alcohol such forbidden fruit and teach moderation. There’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with dinner, and I think if more teenagers started drinking in that context they might realize just how f’d up things like doing shots or drinking contests really are.
But then, this is the same culture that encourages people to restrict their eating – and when they can’t stand it anymore and start eating normally, they’re almost EXPECTED to binge because “you might as well”. That same “do it while you can” mentality is why underage drinking tends to result in binges too….
I agree… I’ve often felt that it could be very harmful to make alcohol forbidden. Regarding food, I don’t agree with EVER making it forbidden. But, I never drank so much (after a year in my early twenties of booze-sploration) as when I was in AA. There was so much talk about booze… and they made it sound so great.
I know a lot of old-timers would tell us that some people SIMPLY CANNOT DRINK PERIOD… not even eat a tiramisu, cuz it has some kinda booze in it. That if they take one taste (even from tiramisu) that their brains will go wild and the next thing you know they will be on some wild bender. I am willing to consider that perhaps some folks do have this bizarre reaction… however, what bugs the heck out of me is how eagerly AA folks (not 100% of them, of course… but many of those I have seen) are to pin that label on newbies that “you are a ‘real alcoholic’… that means you can never touch booze (even in desert form) or you will go insane or perhaps die…” What are non-professionals doing labelling people this way??
Oh… and I had a sponsor once who thought I shouldn’t be on anti-depressants, because they made me too calm. In the first week or two of my first anti-deps, I was a little off… a lil stoned perhaps… but my doc told me this was expected and that it would pass and that the anti-deps I was prescribed was addictive like crack or booze is and not to think of them the same way. Agh. The stupid just burns.
I have been a recovering alcoholic for 8 years. AA did not work for me, not even a little. As Jenny Rose mentioned, it seemed very masculine to me, and the god talk was a gigantic roadblock for me. I am not capable of handing my addiction over to a “higher power” — I am not wired that way.
What worked to help me was Women for Sobriety. They are much less well-known, but their tenets rang true for me, and I suspect that for many women (of course not all, because we are all different) WfS would be a better fit than AA, since WfS does not emphasize powerlessness and confessional behavior and the need to trust a ‘sponsor’ who might be grossly unqualified to help, but hey, if they are “working the steps” then they must be on the right path, right? Ugh.
Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree that 12-Step programs are not some panacea that will fix a person’s problems if they only try harder. We have this idea in our culture that all of our issues come down to laziness or lack of willpower or the idea that we’re just not trying hard enough, and the 12-Step programs work hard to reinforce those ideas. Even if they’re not true.
OA has always been highly problematic. I don’t think I ever went to an OA meeting where weight loss wasn’t paramount on people’s minds, and where OMG I WAS TEMPTED TO EAT A COOKIE I WAS SO SCARED didn’t dominate the “sharing.” I’m sure some must exist that aren’t like that, but I went in a couple of different cities and never saw one. It seemed like the idea of not bingeing, which made sense, got conflated with never eating anything pleasurable to eat because that’s a ZOMG DRUG, which didn’t. It also seemed to me that it was people with bulimia who had the most success with it; that also makes sense, because recovery from bulimia isn’t something people feel compelled to jump on the scale to make sure they’re doing “right.”
I’ve never been in AA, but I’ve had boyfriends and other friends who were and the “evangie contingent” is very different from meeting to meeting (and maybe even city to city). Some of the larger cities even have meetings specifically for atheists, where people are encouraged to make the group itself their “higher power.” But you know, even the AA Big Book says the 12 Steps don’t have all the answers; unfortunately, a lot of people in those meetings forget that part.
I don’t think I ever went to an OA meeting where weight loss wasn’t paramount on people’s minds, and where OMG I WAS TEMPTED TO EAT A COOKIE I WAS SO SCARED didn’t dominate the “sharing.”
Indeed. I’ve seen my share of this as well.
I’ve always felt a bit leary about 12 step programs, probably because I’ve been agnostic since I was twelve and an atheist since eighteen. It was very interesting to hear an insider’s perspective, and I was very interested to hear about Women for Sobriety. I’ll put that in my facts file and if anyone needs an alternative, I can have a suggestion.
Thanks Anna. That video was so uplifting. What would my life be like if I didn’t hate my body? Not sure yet but I am working toward that and I know that things are a whole lot better.
I went to OA for a few months in high school (in the early 90’s), and finally quit because of two things. One was (even way back then!) that the only person I felt comfortable asking to be my sponsor said she would do it if I would agree to give up sugar and white flour; otherwise, I’d be a trigger for her. At fifteen, I couldn’t imagine making a decision to give up those things FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
Similarly, I just couldn’t stomach the idea that I had to be dependent on these meetings–once a week at minimum, three times a week to be really “good”–FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
It felt off to me, even then, to insist that in order to get better, a fifteen year old girl absolutely WILL need to make those commitments.
And, also, I hit a confident patch, and enjoyed some sports, and stayed heavy, but no longer needed so desperately to get thin. I forgot all about OA, once I had some confidence.
Glad to read your post.
I’m currently trying to balance both OA (because I DO compulsively eat sweets to the exclusion of healthy foods) and Fat Acceptance (because I am beautiful and important as a fat woman and won’t be ashamed of who I am). It’s hard.
Luckily, I have a very non-judgmental sponsor whose own personal abstinence DOES include sugar. I live in a large metro area and have found quite a few people in OA who have many years of abstinence from compulsive eating, without having restrictive, diet-like eating habits. But there are a large number of the “everyone has to have an eating plan” type, too. Um, tell me again how the eating plan is not a diet? My only eating plan is that I will not binge eat and will eat healthy foods throughout the day so I’m not just filling up all day on cookies and french fries. But of course I’ll sometimes have cookies and french fries.
I’ve been struggling to find a meeting where the emphasis is on health, not weight-loss. I can’t control other people’s “shares”, but I can “work the program” with people who have some kind of an understanding of HAES and I can choose my meetings judiciously. I’ve been thinking of starting a meeting with a Body Acceptance focus (not just Fat Acceptance since bulimics and anorexics come too).
For me, too, OA is no substitute for therapy and in my case, spiritual direction. I can pretty much recognize why I’m compulsively eating; it’s just difficult to find other ways to deal with life. But I’m learning. Thank goodness I’ve had other help learning to be comfortable in my own body and brain, because OA doesn’t always do a good job of that. There are some things in the literature that I find downright offensive, especially the way fat bodies are seen as objects of disgust. I actually like the AA literature a lot better.
The Higher Power thing, though, for me is the total crux of OA. I definitely think that if I didn’t have some belief in God “of my understanding,” the rest of it would be crap. If I didn’t believe in the ultimate triumph of Love in all things, and that I was infinitely loved by an all powerful being, then the list of personal defects, making amends, and all the rest would just be an experience in beating myself up.
So I don’t think people in OA should be telling agnostics/atheists that the program will definitely work for them and that their Higher Power can be something they just arbitrarily choose. One person told me their sponsor’s higher power was a pinecone. Why on earth would someone give up all control of their life to a freaking pinecone?
Still, at the meetings I met a lot of people who I just assumed were Christian from the way they talked about God, and I was surprised later to find out that they weren’t – they had just come to believe in a loving universe or nature-force or creator. A lot of them even talked about praying. So I learned not to assume that the God people mentioned was the Jewish/Christian/Islamic one. Hopefully this is helpful for those who feel uncomfortable by the Christian-seeming talk. Maybe it’s not as Christian as it seems!
For me, OA seems to work as long as I DON’T make it my higher power. There’s no way I’m going to make abstinence “the most important thing in my life,” like so many people say. That’s fucked up. I should have higher priorities. I DO take to heart another thing they say – “take what you like and leave the rest.” I find that the way people become weirdly cult-like and absolutist about the program is its worst liability, at least in OA where we’re talking about food, not heroin, for God’s sake. Aren’t the monotheists in the program worried about making the 12-steps into an idol, a sacred cow, like you said? I think that’s definitely the worst part of OA. But the basics of the program itself are pretty good for me.
One more thing – I was talking to my sponsor and some other OA folks about how I think I’m pretty damn honest with myself, but still I compulsively overeat. So the program must not be working for me like it says it will. They asked me what I was getting out of the program and I told them. So, they said, the program IS working for me in some way. Some people take 40 years to get abstinent from compulsive eating and some never completely do, but the program still can give us self-knowledge, or fewer compulsive episodes, or whatever. That was somewhat helpful to me as a way to think about it.
Well done for taking this on, I have always felt that alcholics and drug addicts have been cheated by the whole abstinence process and even when I was almost deranged with a runaway appetite, I wouldn’t touch OA with a ten foot pole.
The pernicious influence of 12 step programs has been foisted on fat people, in order to perpetuate fatphobia, we have been labelled addicts, precisely as Lisa said, by making no distinction made between the chemical state of addiction and the in-built necessity of eating for survival.
Absurd.
I think people are also right to state that it is masculine, created by men for them. That’s one of the reasons why fatness threatens to upset the whole applecart by exposing it for the sham element.
By the way, I’ve nothing against group therapy itself, it makes sense, and probably can be hugely effective to the good, unfortunately, when ill conceived, it can be powerfully bad too.
This New York Times article from 2006 reports that a big study found that 12-step programs are no more helpful than other approaches:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25drin.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=12%20step%20programs&st=cse
This video is kind of long and the speaker’s not especially dynamic, but it’s worth a look. Some of the accepted thinking on alcohol misuse isn’t accurate when the problem is looked at carefully. http://www.medpagetoday.com/14228
I’ve always disliked 12-step programs. I have the same problem that several people have mentioned with the “higher power” aspect, and everyone I’ve known that’s been involved in them seems to get more, not less, fucked up. Some people seem to get addicted to the programs themselves; there must be a powerful sense of fellowship in shared public self-flagellation.
I really don’t see how talking on and on about how flawed and powerless you are – how it’s bad to “keep your own council” – can be helpful. Successfully solving problems and making changes requires initiative and confidence, not the opposite. I find the whole idea of these programs distasteful, and I think that they’re probably harmful to a lot of people.
SChunk said:
“Why on earth would someone give up all control of their life to a freaking pinecone?”
I don’t have much to add and do agree with what most said. However, I am certain that this is probably the only time in the history of the English language that this sentence has ever been uttered. And for this, I thank you.
I have always avoided “group” like programs such as AA or OA. I know people who swear by them, but I’ve never felt comfortable with surrendering myself up to a higher power. What higher power? If there’s a higher power I always felt that I’d be able to get in touch with it on my own and didn’t need to be berated into doing so.
I love that you mentioned that food in itself is not addictive! So many people forget that (including myself at times) because of the “Obesity Epidemic” that so many people are going on about. They think that people are addicted to certain foods, and my guess is if it is addictive behavior it’s not about the food at all.
It’s about the emotional state.
In saying that though most people who are fat that I know don’t go around bingeing on white bread and flower, in fact they don’t binge at all.
I love intuitive eating it’s been the most helpful thing to me, as well as more positive talk. 12 step programs are way too rigid and don’t flow very well.
Thanks for this informative post. 🙂
“Why on earth would someone give up all control of their life to a freaking pinecone?”
In the group that I went to I often heard about a persons higher power being a door knob. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how this could possibly work in any way shape or form. . . mind. . . boggling. . . .but entertaining!
Nicely done, Angrygrayrainbows. I just followed a tweet from Rachel at The F Word. I don’t have any experience whatsoever with AA, OA, or Al-Anon, etc… I’ve always felt that they were a little fishy… Especially the godma bit of it.
Whew! It feels so good to hear that I’m not the only one who doesn’t jive with 12-steps! I used to be very active on this eating disorder board… and it seemed like every time I said something not positive about 12-steps that there were a million people crawling up my ass trying to re-educate me.
I think it’s really interesting that so many folks mentioned that 12-steps is a more masculine program. I’ve felt that myself and not just because most of the meetings seemed to have a majority of men.
I love the bit about not understanding how someone would make their higher power a pine cone. 😀 I hear similar weird things in my years in meetings. I heard one guy say that his higher power was this little guy named “Fred” who lived on his shoulder.
The irony about the higher power for me was that my higher power seemed to disagree with all my sponsors and any of the other old timers who took an interest in me. After some years, I made my higher power my intuitive wisdom and trusting myself… when it seemed like the whole program was trying to get me to NOT trust myself and NOT listen to myself and not even take myself seriously…
Thank you everyone for the validation and support! Even the pro-12-steps folks were respectful, understanding and all that… and THAT is so much appreciated!
I am so glad that I finally wrote this post…. I really needed to… I feel like there’s a gorilla off my back or something just because I got to vent a bit.
Oh… and one more small thing… I believe it was Rachel who mentioned Penn and Teller talk about the 5% stat of people that actually get sober using AA.
I got the 5% number from my AA sponsor. I can’t remember if she got it from the big book or some other literature (it definitely came from AA literature – that I know for sure), but one of our big talks was about how low the success rate was… and it didn’t strike me as funny at the time that this was the same person who said that it “works if you work it.” I was way too messed up at the time (not to mentioned triggered by being apart of this toxic for me program) to notice the disconnect at the time…
Thank you so much for stopping by, Rachel… your blog is da bomb!
My problem with AA and other 12 step sobriety programs was the “making amends” part. I started binge drinking to escape a horrifically abusive home life, and only afterward realized I was chemically dependent on alcohol. Most assuredly in my young life I probably hurt my family members, but I was damned if I was going to ask them to forgive me for not being a more pliable punching bag. The only person I cared about getting sober for was myself. I wasn’t doing any steps, and I’d been burned by therapists before, so I’ve been the only person I could rely on to keep myself sober.
I suppose I’m one of those “spontaneous remission” people, but it doesn’t feel like remission. It feels like every day I wake up is the first day I decided not to drink, and it’s felt like that for…gosh, it’ll be 16 years soon. The time spent sober was time I could think clearly about my issues, get away from my family, and work on my sense of self. I can’t imagine surrendering that work to a group dynamic or a set of steps and rules thought up by a complete stranger. I can’t guarantee that I won’t fall off the wagon somewhere down the road, but it’s my wagon, I built it myself.
(A side note on the powerlessness thing, geez is it ever not a good idea for female abuse victims. “Oh hey, here’s another area where you’re not in control of your own destiny!” That’s a surefire way to cure depression and anxiety. *eyeroll*)
My parents are both all about the 12 step programs – my dad in Narcotics Anonymous, and my mom in Al-anon to deal with my dad being an addict. The “powerless” rhetoric really rubs me the wrong way. REALLY REALLY rubs me the wrong way. My mom uses it as a reason to allow my dad to continue to financially leach her dry with his debts, and my dad goes back and forth about it – from parroting the “powerless” stuff from NA and acting REALLY pathetic (while simultaneously resentful towards us) to getting angry at us and saying “I’ve got this under control” the day after a crack binge. He’s been in these programs for at least 6 years and he is still spending most of his money on crack. I’m here to say that this 12 step program is not working. I don’t think it’s because my dad isn’t taking it to heart – I think that, sometimes, he totally does, which he kind of needed because he REALLY had the big male ego thing going on – but living in a state of perpetual self-flagellation doesn’t appear to work for him. I doubt that it works for many people, and I’m not surprised that only 5% of people in 12-step programs are successful.
It may be he needs something ELSE, something other than 12-step programs. Crack can be a way to self-medicate ADD or depression.
I’d like to think that if I were your mother I’d dump him, but I’m not in that position. My parents’ relationship had some parallels (dad drank a LOT, mom got passive-aggressive and codependent) and as a result I’ve avoided relationships with people who drink a lot or who do any kind of illegal drugs. (Not that I think the illegal drugs are necessarily worse, but why get tight with someone courting legal trouble?)
Good catch Living400! I did not see this comment and I am so glad that an experienced blogger did respond to it!!
I agree with Living400… maybe he needs something more than the program. Maybe meds would help. Has he tried meds? Do you think he may have some untreated issue?
I have had the experience where I was where I needed to be… but still not getting better, because I also needed the right meds. Not just meds… THE RIGHT MEDS. Sometimes you have to try some different things to find the right ones for you. Getting on the right meds seemed to have allowed for all the great therapy and Buddhism things I’ve learned to sink in and to ya know… actually live some of them.
The irony about self-flaggellation is that it is an act of a very large ego. How can I say this? Cuz, if a main focus of a person is self-flaggellation… then their main focus is still themselves – hence, still a big ego. I wish that little tidbit was taught more in 12 step programs….
I have thought about this a lot. Addiction is a very hard thing to cure. I have several alcoholics in my family and they simply cannot drink in moderation.
SChunk – I am glad you found a supportive OA group. It sounds like it works for you.
I went to both OA and ALANON. I quit OA for all the reasons mentioned above. ALANON was very helpful, most homes are dysfunctional to a certain degree and mine was one of those. ALANON helped me to stand up for myself and deal with people. We always said it was a gentle program and it was up to the individual to decide what is best. No one can decide for you. There are some heavy-handed groups but they are not common. I am grateful for ALANON but I also don’t think I need to go forever. I went for many years and it is nice to know it wall be there for me again if a crisis should occur. I did benefit from herring others talk about prayer and meditation. and belief in a higher power. I don’t have the God thing figured out but I am probably a mono-theist. I don’t think God is personal but more a spirit of the universe. I would probably been an atheist if not for these experiences.
I would get furious at meetings and did not like the concept of belief in God curing COE. I would think, “Sure God stopped you from eating a cookie but let Ann Frank die in a concentration camp.” Talk about special snowflake syndrome. Those kinds of beliefs are not OA but reflect the religious beliefs of the attendees.
Food and sugar can certainly feel addictive when you cannot stop. Every morning I promised myself I would eat properly and not binge and every afternoon I would eat enormous amounts of food and throw up. I wasn’t actively bulimic by the time I was in OA but this is just to illustrate the addictive feeling.
With Overcoming Overeating I have begun to accept myself and normalize my eating. Many, many factors contributed to my ED and no single approach alone has helped me. Although I still struggle, I am learning that my stomach is not really a bottomless pit.
Ooooo oooooooooo!! You just gave me an idea for a post!!
I’ve noticed it is so common among ED’d people to have that belief that your stomach is a bottomless pit… I think I will write something about that.
Now… to organize my thoughts and actually write it. How it’s not uncommon to feel that way and how thinking about appetite can change….
Thank you!!
“I’m currently trying to balance both OA (because I DO compulsively eat sweets to the exclusion of healthy foods) and Fat Acceptance (because I am beautiful and important as a fat woman and won’t be ashamed of who I am). It’s hard. ”
This is where I find myself as well. I want to feel as though I have worth as I am now. But the compulsive overeating was making me miserable and consuming (pun intended) a big part of my life. I don’t want to live like that anymore.
“Luckily, I have a very non-judgmental sponsor whose own personal abstinence DOES include sugar. I live in a large metro area and have found quite a few people in OA who have many years of abstinence from compulsive eating, without having restrictive, diet-like eating habits.”
This was what surprised me about what others here have said about OA. The meetings I’ve been to don’t seem to be as doctrinaire as the ones some commenters have been to. Some people do have very restrictive, diet-like habits but no one has ever suggested that I should.
“Um, tell me again how the eating plan is not a diet? My only eating plan is that I will not binge eat and will eat healthy foods throughout the day so I’m not just filling up all day on cookies and french fries. ”
That’s my eating plan as well. I don’t see that as a diet.
” I DO take to heart another thing they say – “take what you like and leave the rest.”
Exactly. I keep that in mind always. And I do it. Yes, some people give up all flour and sugar, because they have a hard time eating it in moderation. I don’t, so I haven’t given those up. That’s what I like about the program–abstinence is self defined. For some people “abstinence” means not having any flour or sugar. For me, it’s having a healthy, balanced diet, and not eating so much that I vomit, which is how it was before.
“They asked me what I was getting out of the program and I told them. So, they said, the program IS working for me in some way. Some people take 40 years to get abstinent from compulsive eating and some never completely do, but the program still can give us self-knowledge, or fewer compulsive episodes, or whatever. That was somewhat helpful to me as a way to think about it.”
Yes! Since I started going to OA, I stopped having episodes where I ate huge amounts of food in one sitting, feeling miserable as result. Many days were planned entirely around eating. For some reason I couldn’t stop doing that on my own. That alone has made it worthwhile. I don’t think I’ve lost any weight (I don’t weigh myself) but that wasn’t the point.
Thank you for this post! I am so frustrated today. I have been in and out of OA for 3 years now. I decided last week to get back to meetings after being in a year long relapse and gaining back all 75 pounds I’ve lost. So lets be honest I was binge eating and I’ve been depressed. It’s been a very hard emotional year for me including the death of my two year old niece.
So I go to three meetings last week, get healthier food, I didn’t have any horrific binges and I went to the gym. Pretty good week in my eyes. Not to put the focus on weightloss but I did lose 4 pounds.
Fast foward to yesterday. I have a therapist who is 12 stepper and struggles with her own food issues. I go into therapy hoping to talk to her about some issues I’m having surrounding my friendships. I have a hard time with being “abstinent” and on program when I have friends who constantly drink, smoke pot and overeat. So I was really looking to vent about that and talk about constructive ways to deal with my feelings associated with this.
I get told I need MORE recovery and that maybe I should start going to AA meetings as well. I am currently an occasional drinker and do not crave alcohol. I could never drink again and be fine. So basically I should go to MORE meetings and as a fat overeater sit in an AA meeting. That makes a ton of sense. I am starting to think that maybe this is not the way for me. I relate to everything said here.
What I don’t understand is that we are supposed to go to meetings to share our experience strength and hope. Like everyone has mentioned here it has made me judge myself, feel less then, and all I think about is all the food that I can’t eat and how for the rest of my life I will be going to meetings.
Thank you for this blog and letting me vent. I was so frustrated this morning and it’s great to see that there are people that are living happy lives without flogging themselves daily for natural human behaviors.