Acomplia (Rimonabant)
Other names: Zimulti
.gif)
OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS: KEEP COMING BACK ROZANNE’S STORY
Honey, if you have a twenty-three inch waist, everything else will be all right.”
My mother’s words were to haunt me all my growing-up years. The promise that a slender figure would bring instant and permanent happiness was an illusion in which I believed with all my heart and soul. The few times I was thin, nothing else changed. I figured that the fault was mine, and if I tried harder, the world would be different. The persistence of my illusion was astonishing. Trying harder was a family tradition. I come from a family of superachievers, almost all of them compulsive overeaters. My mother grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin where my grandfather owned the first movie theater and had the first car in that small town. My grandmother was very daring: she worked with Margaret Sanger in the early days of Planned Parenthood. Both my parents were extremely education-oriented. Thus, only a grade of “A” was welcome. “B” was tolerable, but a “C” was just not acceptable. So my brother and I learned early that the way to be worth anything was to work very hard and to achieve beyond the scope of most other people. Just being a loving human being wasn’t enough; we had to be able to produce to be worthwhile.
I decided early that if I was going to produce, I would be noticed for my efforts. I discovered that I loved being in the forefront the first time I led the kindergarten band. I have never forgotten turning around after the performance, hearing the applause and bowing to the audience. After that, I was hooked. I wanted desperately to be an actress, because that way I would be noticed. I studied drama for many years; I was on the school debating team and editor of the school newspaper. I lived in Chicago, where the opportunities were excellent, and I took advantage of all of them.
Still, I kept on trying. I was a good student, my grades were high, and I became such a good girl that I became “teacher’s pet.” That last destroyed my relationships with the other children, but it was all I had. It was the only assurance that I might be worth something to another human being. I was eighteen and in my third year at the University of Chicago when I made a decision to give up overeating. The motivation was boys. I wanted to date, and it was obvious that being fat was never going to get me any phone calls. So I went on a diet, and for the first time in my life I was thin. I was 5’2″ and weighed 118 pounds. Suddenly, the boys began to notice me. I had so many dates, I began to neglect my studies and flunked every subject, disgracing my family. I was sent to a business school where I not only learned my lesson but some useful vocational skills as well. The following year I returned to put myself through the University and earn a degree.
When I was twenty-one, I moved to New York City to find fame and fortune in the theater. It was not long before I realized that actors, having to make frequent rounds to audition for roles, were subject to constant rejections. I saw that this was no life for me. My fear of rejection was so strong that it overrode any ambitions I had. I settled for working behind the scenes as a producer’s secretary, where it was safe. It was an exciting life. Unfortunately, I had long since regained my weight. And I still hated myself. In addition, I had developed a fierce resentment toward my mother. I now blamed her for my unhappiness. After returning home to Chicago where I worked as a fashion copywriter for a period, I decided to make another change. “I’m going to California,” I told my parents, “to find a job and a husband.” In Los Angeles, I again went to great lengths to find a man: I gave up food and became thin once more. After another copy writing stint, I became assistant ad manager of a small chain of department stores. I loved it. I met a marvelous man, and life really seemed to be going my way.
But I was still plagued by self-hate. I was hanging onto the diet by the skin of my teeth. The motivation (finding a man) enabled me to diet for a time. When Marvin proposed to me, I weighed 118 pounds, and at our wedding four months later, I weighed 129. All it took was that little ring on my finger for me to take back the food. Within three years of our marriage, we had two little girls. By this time, life was too much for me. I was up to 148 pounds, I couldn’t stop eating and most of the time I wished I were dead. My self-worth was completely gone, my soul was empty, I had no place to go and I didn’t believe in God. What was left for me? The answer came one quiet November night in 1958.1 was watching Paul Coates, a syndicated television columnist, interview a member from a new organization called Gamblers Anonymous. My husband had a friend who was a compulsive gambler, and I thought this might be just the thing for him. So Marvin and I took his friend to a GA meeting just before Thanksgiving. As long as I live, I will never forget that night. We were in a meeting hall with about twenty-five men and a sprinkling of wives. Each man in turn got up and talked about his life of lying and cheating and stealing. I sat there transfixed. “My God,” I thought, “I’m not alone, after all.” The room became brighter and brighter, and I wanted to cry with relief. I was not the only one; there were others who felt as I felt and who had done what I had done! Of course, our compulsions were not the same. They were obsessed with gambling and money, and I thought of nothing but overeating and food. Still, inside we were the same. When I walked out of the meeting room that night, my life changed forever. I managed to stay on a diet for three weeks, but as usual, I couldn’t hang on by myself and went back to my old ways. I ate and cried the whole next year, until Christmas found me at a new high of 161 pounds. I was terrified. What was I to do? Where could I go? I had tried suicide in my late teens, and I’d had several years of conventional therapy. It had not helped my eating problem.
I felt my world was coming to an end. There was just one weight-control organization available at the time, and it wasn’t listed in the phone book. I was frantic. Then I remembered Gamblers Anonymous. I told my husband I was going back to see if they could help me form an organization like theirs for compulsive overeaters like me. By the winter of 1959, GA was two and a half years old and doing very well. The meeting I attended was still comprised only of men, but they welcomed me warmly. After the meeting, I approached Jim W, the founder of GA. My heart was pounding; I felt my whole life was at stake. “Jim,” I asked, “do you think an organization like yours could work for compulsive overeaters like me?” He smiled at me and replied, “Why, I don’t see why not. I was in Alcoholics Anonymous before I ever started GA. What can I do to help?” There it was ? a hand outstretched to steady me as I stumbled along! It was my first experience with the twelfth step, the first time anyone had offered to help me with no thought of return. I went home and told Marvin, “I think I finally have a chance!” That evening, we found a name for the yet-unborn organization: Overeaters Anonymous. With my usual self-willed zeal, I sailed into saving the world. Unfortunately, all the twenty-five or thirty women I approached had one excuse or another for not joining me in this marvelous enterprise. I did not realize that I was preaching at them, telling them what a great idea this was for solving their very evident problem. One crisp January day I was walking down the street with my very overweight neighbor, chatting as we both pushed our babies in strollers. I remember telling her about my problem and my solution, never once intimating that she had the same problem. Finally, she was so intrigued, she coaxed me into telling her the name of the organization. I told her, then said, “But I know you won’t be interested.”
“Oh yes, I am,” she said. “I think I need it, too.” At that moment, the Fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous was born.
On January 19, 1960 we held the first OA meeting. Jo and I were there, along with Bernice K., the wife of a GA member. Bernice left at the third meeting, explaining, “My doctor says dieting makes me nervous.” With that, she walked out the door. Jo and I looked at each other. I said, “Dieting makes me nervous, too.” Jo wanted to leave, but I started to cry and said that I couldn’t do it alone and she had to stay. She did. We struggled along. I had been to two GA meetings; Jo had never been to any Anonymous meeting. We both lost a lot of weight. She went from 197 pounds to 109 by August, and I went from 161 to 110 in the same time. Physically, we were great programs of attraction. My feelings of worthlessness, however, were in full swing. The less I ate, the more all my anxieties rose to the surface. I managed to cover them with a good deal of self-will. The first thing I decided was that those AA steps were very poorly written. I felt that Bill W, who with Dr. Bob had founded AA, was only a stockbroker, and, after all, I was a professional writer. Besides, I believed that I was not so weak that I had to turn my life and my will over to the care of any God, whether he existed or not. Thus, I removed step three. In its place I wrote a step advocating consultation with “a physician of our own choosing.” I was so adamant (and frightened) that I proceeded to remove the word “God” and all mention of spiritual concepts from the rest of the steps. Then I took a good look at what I had done and realized that the steps didn’t look at all like AA’s. “After all,” I thought, “I do want people to say we are like AA.” So I sparingly sprinkled God back into some of the steps. None of us knew any better. After a couple of months, there were Jo and myself and five of Jo’s friends. Nobody in the group had ever been to AA, and I was the only one who had gone to GA. So we sat around and talked about our feelings in a very psychological manner. We knew nothing of the meaning of inventories or amends, and I bristled at the very thought of surrender and spiritual awakening.
Finally, Jim suggested that we visit an AA meeting. “Oh, I couldn’t,” I shot back. “They might be drunk and accost us.” Oh, the patience of Jim!
“No,” he replied, “the drunks are many other places, but the sober ones are in the AA meetings.” So, with fear and trembling, the seven of us went to Alcoholics Anonymous open meetings. What an eye-opening experience that was! I listened to concepts I had never heard before, and I experienced a tangible love in the room. Later on, AA members were to be a great source of sharing and support for us. But that night, my fears were in the way; I was still unable to accept many of the basic precepts of the AA program. I had very little understanding of what it was like to have my compulsive nature removed, so I turned to compulsive spending. I rationalized by saying that now I had a new figure so I simply had to have a lot of new clothes. I later learned this was just a coverup for my real feelings. That emptiness in my soul that I had tried to fill with men (before my marriage), food and possessions was a spiritual emptiness. But I didn’t understand it then; I didn’t believe in God. The thinner I became, the more I achieved, the worse I felt. I couldn’t let people know this, though. They might find out how rotten I was.
In the summer of 1960 a television interview brought in five hundred letters, and Overeaters Anonymous was on its way! My own troubles, however, were just beginning. I was not overeating, I was thin, I was spending compulsively ? and I was a mass of self-will run riot. I felt because I had been one of OA’s founders that every word I uttered was a pearl of wisdom. I believed that everyone had to listen to me. That was the only way I could make myself important. I couldn’t achieve that feeling from inside, and I simply didn’t know what to do. In trying to get me to reinstate step three, Jim W. explained that I needed to admit that I could not stop eating by myself, that I was “willpowerless” over food and that I needed help. His gentle suggestion opened the door to spiritual belief for me. I didn’t step over the threshold then, however. My Higher Power was the group and the individuals in OA. The resentment toward my mother, which I carried for twenty-five years, was corroding my very core. At a sponsor’s prodding, I made amends to my parents. They lived in another city, so I had to write to them. I took the letter to the mailbox and dropped it in. As I turned to walk away, I heard the clank of the mailbox door. With that sound, twenty-five years of resentment disappeared. In one brief moment, everything was gone! I could hardly believe it; that was one of the most miraculous things I had ever experienced. In July 1964, after several inventories, I took one specifically on compulsive spending. On July 30, when I brought the inventory to my sponsor’s house, I weighed 109V^ pounds. I walked out of there knowing that I would never spend like that again. And I walked right into a family party, took that first bite and continued to overeat. By March 1973, I weighed 185 pounds.
I was still swinging from one compulsion to another. Somehow, the essence of the program was eluding me. I resigned from the OA office, though I continued to attend meetings. I took inventories, cried on the phone, went to meetings ? and continued to overeat. What was wrong? I kept coming back to meetings, sitting in the back of the room with my big, black coat wrapped around me. I felt hopeless and desolate, unable to make a phone call when I wanted to eat. Compulsive overeating is a disease of isolation, and my paralyzing inability to call was part of my illness. At one meeting, I managed to ask for help, and a wonderful woman called me for four months before I was able to call back. The next three years were a great learning experience for me. I found that the reactions of others to me were caused in part by their fear of having the same thing happen to them. Of course, my flailing about and striking out didn’t help my relationships at all. Slowly, I lost 30 pounds. Incomprehensible demoralization was still a part of my daily life. But I kept coming back, and I certainly learned a lot about patience.
Praying for guidance, I did expect a miracle. In December 1976, that miracle happened. I was sitting in a Big Book study group. The leader began paraphrasing the first sentence of Chapter Three: “Most of us were unwilling to admit that we were real compulsive overeaters.” I felt as though someone had hit me right in the pit of the stomach. Suddenly, I knew what was wrong with me. I had not fully conceded to my innermost self that I was a compulsive overeater. I had not taken that vital first step toward recovery. The leader continued, “No real overeater ever recovers control.” All those years during which I had read that book, I never saw the word “control.” For some reason, I believed that none of us could recover. Yet Chapter Five in the same book suggests the steps as “a program of recovery.” The promise of recovery, a daily reprieve from my illness, gave me hope. The certain knowledge that I could never control my overeating gave me a chance at recovery at last.
But I still had no self-worth. One day, I heard a woman say, “I tried to tell myself, ‘Mary, you’re OK,’ and I couldn’t say it in front of a mirror. It took me six months to do it.” I took this as a challenge and decided that what took her six months to do I could do immediately. I tried to tell myself I was OK, and I started to cry. And I couldn’t stop crying. So I remembered my sponsors’ lessons. They had taught me to “act as if.” They told me that I didn’t have to want to, or like it or believe it. They emphasized that I must take the action, and the feelings would follow. Acting as if it were true, I practiced telling myself, “Rozanne, you’re OK.” Unable to look at myself in the mirror, I said this all day, every day for six months. Then, one wondrous December evening, I was all dressed up to go out. I was in a hurry and paused briefly to check myself in the hall mirror as I prepared to rush out the door. And then I really stopped. I looked at myself, smiled and said, “Rozanne, you’re OK. You are one fantastic lady, and I love you.”
Today, my body is once more a normal size. I can care about others because I care about myself. Because I kept coming back, I learned the validity of an elementary spiritual principle given to me by the Reverend Rollo M. Boas, one of OA’s earliest friends whose comments grace this book: “If you remove your body from the truth, when you are ready the truth is nowhere to be found. But if you continue to bring your body to the truth, then when you are ready the truth is waiting there for you.” And that truth ? our promise of recovery ? is in every OA meeting when we join hands, pray together and joyously, lovingly encourage one another: Keep Coming Back!
*1/245/2*
.gif)
