WTF?!? This is Actually Working?

This has been as good a month as last month was bad. Well, December wasn't all bad, mostly just Christmas. Too much time in Crazytown, except Crazytown was me. "We have seen the enemy and they are us", isn't that the ancient quote from Pogo (don't bother trying to remember it if you're not a boomer)? But it did force me to actually go back to square one with my OA work.

Got myself a new sponsor, a young woman in another city hundreds of miles from me whom I have never met but found through --- get this, if this isn't going to some good lengths for sobriety --- the sister of a really strong sponsor of some people in the program I really respect. I had heard the inspiring sponsor speak at a celebration and met the sister at a retreat and they both had this look in their eyes. Really wide eyed, maybe enough to scare someone else, I dunno, maybe they were born with it, but their eyes looked so damn... clear. I wanted that. I didn't want to go back to Crazytown no more. I told Sister I needed a real Big Book thumper, I was desperate. Sister couldn't sponsor me, too many sponsorees already, but she found this other woman for me.

So, new sponsor (she just sounds so young and perky, tells me "no worries", I'll call her "Sponsorette") has got me starting the steps over with her. Yup, after 6 years of being in OA ---actually, it will be 6 years this week,yoiks --- she e-mails me step 1 questions. After a month, I'm not finished step 2 yet. But I don't feel like I'm really back at square one. I've received so many damn gifts in OA, that I don't regret... any of it? Is that true? Poking myself... hmmm... seems so. Sure, maybe I would like to take back some lunkheaded claims I've made in the rooms, but not much. It was just part of my process. And although I'm back on Step 2, I feel so great to be here, because I've got 37 days of the cleanest abstinence I've ever had. What's the big difference?

Oh shit, I don't know... desperation? I didn't hit a new bottom, but I possibly hit a better bottom, which forced me to really look at the spiritual foundation of my programme. I was tired of all the games I was playing with food. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had been doing much more "white knuckling" over the last few years than I wanted to admit: agonizing, obsessing about food, playing little games, tweaking the food this that and the other way. To copy from someone in the rooms (all my best lines are plagarized from there...I plagarized that from someone there!), it is not possible to deal with the problem of food by playing with the food. The recovery has to come from another area of my psyche, or in other words, I really have to work on my emotional and spiritual recovery. Particularly the latter.

Here's what Sponsorette has me doing:

• Getting down on my knees and praying (serenity prayer and 3rd step prayer) EVERY FREAKING MORNING FOR TWO WEEKS!!!! Go figure, I'm still doing it after 5 weeks, don't plan to stop anytime soon, but it's one day at a time so I won't predict..
• e-mailling or calling her (leaving message etc) EVERY DAY! With the goal of actually talking once a weekActually that bit was my idea. My last sponsor was a wonderful woman but our relationship was too loosey goosey and I need more help.
• working on those step questions
• sent her a detailled plan of eating
• going to 2 meetings minimum a week. That was my idea, I've got 2 I really like, plus I tried a phone meeting for the first time this month. Not as good as F2F meeting but a reinforcement. It's in the early morning so I can listen via speakerphone as I try to wake up.

Anyway, it seems to be working. In spades. OH YEAH, I DID TWEAK MY FOOD PLAN ONE MORE TIME: no snacks. 3 meals a day. That's it except for beverages in between meals. That was a tough one to consider, but I tried it for a day, then another, then another... it has made my days so incredibly, stupidly simple. Have lunch. Then the kitchen is closed until dinner. Dinner happens, good dinner, maybe some dessert, and then, kitchen closed. I did not WANT to do this, I was forced to; Because I have had, particularly over the last year, such maddening trouble with shutting the refrigerator after supper. One little snack. A little nibble more. Oh just a taste, what the heck. Yes, all the hackneyed, cobwebby excuses came out of the closet. For the longest time i felt eliminating snacks was too draconian. But I simply got too desperate to hold out any longer. The late night snacks were getting bigger, leading to WTF binges. So. I had to. I was given no choice.

And the most amazing thing has been happening (well, you can easily guess, it's not that amazing): I have had the most peaceful month. Life has turned on a dime. I think it's the daily work, the reaching out to my sponsor, reading the daily readings from For Today and Voices of Recovery and considering that in order to have consistent recovery, I have to work on my spirituality, and look at placing my trust in a power greater than myself. This week it's called my higher power. Next week, who knows. Some days I call it God, but only in the vaguest terms. And I'm diving into the Big Book again, trying to glean new gold from those old pages.

So be skeptical. I would be. Damn, there is still half of my brain that is still skeptical, but maybe that's the sick half. For today, it seems to be working.

Oh yeah, just one more scary/spooky thing... I got back into the studio this month. Hadn't been there for months, I had been working on home reno, and it just wasn't coming. Now I've been there 4 & 5 days a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Suddenly it's flowing, and the fear is most times lifted, it seems easier, there's a new confidence, the old scary mean voices are much quieter. I think it's all related, oh who knows, I'm just going to ride this wave as long as I can.

Cheers.