Her 44-Year Search for Sanity

She was a “Circuit Speaker” in OA and AA. But at 34 years sober she weighted 353 lbs. How sober was she, really?

I remember always being hungry. We were poor and my mother always gave me really small portions and I could never have seconds. I used to eat the green fruit from the fruit trees in our yard (still love green fruit). I began stealing money from my mothers change jar and buying candy. I ate it and shared it with the kids at school hoping they would like me better (but it didn’t change anything). I began compulsively overeating when I was about nine years old and became a little chubby. When I was about eleven my mother took me to our family doctor and he gave me diet pills for the first time. I think that I got addicted right away. Oh did I love those pills! I had so much energy and I felt so good. If one was good, two was even better. Dexedrine was my favorite and I was on diet pills off and on until I was 29 yrs old. I would take (at the end) 50-75 pills a day. I was going to 3 doctors for the prescriptions. I overdosed when I was 18 when I had taken some heavy-duty tranquilizer samples by mistake from one of the doctor’s desks when he walked out of the room. (I thought they were another kind of diet pill.)

I went to my first OA meeting in 1961 at age 19, but didn’t stay. I tried TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig. I went to doctors where I got shots daily, took a handful of many different color pills a day, and then went to a different doctor where I would just drink a shake every two-three hours. One day I was stopped for reckless driving on the freeway when I had dropped some French fries and bent down to pick them up and gone across three lanes. I had my kids in the back seat and I didn’t even think of their safety, getting those French fries was the important thing! When I came back to OA in 1971 I was 29 yrs old. I went to nine meetings a week, one every night and two on Saturday and two on Sunday for over three years. After the meetings we (my husband and I) would go to my sponsor’s house and talk and share (it was the first time in my life that I felt like I was a part of and not on the outside looking in). I did everything my sponsor told me to do. I called him every day, went to a meeting every day, and followed the Grey Sheet (3 weighed and measured meals a day with nothing in between—no flour, no sugar, no starch) for over three years, lost all my weight (over 100 lbs.) and kept it off for over ten years.

I never said no to any OA or AA request and I became a “Circuit Speaker” speaking all over the United States. My husband and I were OA and AA’s “Golden Couple.” But I felt like a fraud because for most of that time the obsession was never lifted for much more than a day, once in a while. I was thin, I looked good, I looked great in fact, but I felt sad inside. I always thought that when I would be thin I would be happy. But I rarely felt happy and never, ever felt free of the disease of compulsive overeating and food addiction. Even though I was weighing and measuring my food at this time I would still take the biggest piece of chicken and shove the food into the measuring cup with my thumbs and pile it on top just to get as much as I could. I was still obsessed with food. I would always go back to compulsive overeating even though for a long time I kept my weight off.

For three years I was a Substance Abuse Therapist specializing in Eating Disorders. I spoke well and certainly knew about the disease. Then in 1983, I quit smoking and in one month I gained 30 lbs. From then on I was at the mercy of my food addiction. I don’t really remember when I became bulimic but I found that I could eat as much as I wanted and vomit and wouldn’t gain the weight. I really thought I had found the perfect answer. I would eat as much as I wanted and then had to pull over in gas stations or had to find a bathroom so I could throw up. The vomiting was kind of gross and would burn my throat coming up so no matter what or how much I would eat I would always finish up with ice cream or ice water and it helped the burning when the food would come up.

Around 1987 I went into an Eating Disorders hospital as a patient for 30 days (that was hard because I kept wanting to be the therapist) and that helped for a while. Everything worked for a while. But nothing ever lasted. Shopping always made me feel better and soon we were $76,000 in debt on credit cards. I was so depressed & whenever I would go to Doctors and they didn’t know how to help they would give me yet another prescription for anti-depressants. Nothing was working and for the next 20 years I was in and out of relapse. Still going to AA and OA meetings, I gained weight until at 63 ½ years old I weighed 353 lbs.

Carrying 200 extra lbs. meant I could barely walk, and had to walk with a cane. I could no longer go to the movies because I couldn’t fit in the seats. I could no longer sit in a booth in restaurants—I had to make sure the restaurant had a table with chairs. I had no energy to go or do anything. Denied by all the normal insurance companies, I had to get high-risk insurance (because of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, all due to my obesity) that costs $745 per month. I felt like a freak in society. I stood out in a crowd. Children pointed at me and adults stared. I had to push myself just to walk out of my house. I never wanted to go anywhere or do anything. My feet were so swollen from water retention (they looked deformed) that I could barely walk, even with a cane. For some years I have had trouble with incontinency and have had numerous embarrassing incidents. Physically I hurt all the time. It was difficult to go to see my grandchildren as I needed help just to walk from the car to their house.

My husband told me about Be Totally Free! and I figured I had nothing to lose. I met with Roy and saw immediately that he has such clarity about this disease. He has such patience and is so spiritual. I always talked about God, but didn’t truly trust Him. I put all my dependence on outside, material things and substances, as well as people, like my husband. This false dependence made me feel even more fearful and unstable. Roy has guided me to an understanding and closeness with God that I never thought was possible. Be Totally Free! has filled that empty hole inside of me, and has totally changed my life. I have “effortless abstinence” for the first time in my life and I am losing weight like crazy. We are completely debt free and for the first time ever in my life I am obsession free. Be Totally Free! has saved my life and it’s a miracle.