Meirion T.

This speaker has been recorded at an online meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous, you can email us at contact@AEAinfo.org
My name is Meirion. I'm an addictive eater. Thanks for asking me to share. I was just thinking about that, I had a period of about, I think six months after I'd arrived in AEA, where I left. I was still in a food fellowship. And I and I maintained contact with members of AEA. But I wasn't, I wasn't being sponsored, like I am now. Or I was before. And yeah, I wasn't in AEA. And I thought maybe I'd just talk a bit about what that was like.
Because, ultimately, I came, I came back. And I came back because I could feel myself just going nuts. And it wasn't that I was going mad with food. You know, I'm still following a program. But yeah, I was, like, by degrees, just losing the plot, really. And I remember calling yeah, and I'd been given some mad advice as well. You know, I'd so I ended up this is, this is, I think this is where I ended up in a doctor's surgery, with the doctor offering me antidepressants, and off, like signed off work, sick. And, you know, it just, it just wasn't working. It just wasn't working. I remember in telling the doctor, like, I really didn't want antidepressants. What, because I knew I knew it wasn't, you know, that wasn't going to be a solution. You know, with everything that I had learned about recovery, and everything I'd I'd sort of put down, the absolute last thing I wanted to do was to like, pick up something else. And I remember picking up the phone to my sort of old AEA sponsor one night. And just, you know, saying ’’I'm going crazy. You know, I'm going crazy.’’ And I remember the feeling of like relief. Because I knew that there was some, you know, I knew where I could go, when I was going mad, I knew where I could come for some sanity. And, and thank God it was, you know, he was still in AEA, he was doing the do, you know, so I had somewhere to come. And I need somewhere to come. I could just... I need a lot of help with just living, you know, living, having a job and I wasn't married then but I'm married now. And maintaining a relationship and, you know, a close relationship and living together and making joint decisions and sharing things sharing income, you know, sharing decisions about like the house and what we would do with, what we do with our money and yeah, and I need it, I just need tonnes of help. And, and I need this connection with God. Like I need, I need something that I that I know, that I can like trust in no matter what. You know, you know, because no matter how difficult things might appear to be, you know, I need I need something that is bigger than all of that. Just that and sponsorship just saved me from making really bad decisions. Because, you know, eating or not eating I'm still perfectly capable of making really bad decisions. My life is still not manageable by me. And and I'd still make decisions based on fear, like I've got this I've got this new job. And since I moved to Scotland, I quite soon found out that my teaching qualification in England is not is not immediately recognized in Scotland, they want to check you out, first. And and they do that by checking your quali- you know that degree, your degree and your qualification. And they did all that and then said, ’’Right, we're gonna let you teach high school biology. That's what, that's what we're gonna let you teach.’’ And, and because that's that was like the main part of the degree and, and it was a secondary qualification. ’’So that's your thing, high school biology.’’ I hadn't taught high school biology in 20 years, and I had no plans to go and teach high school ever again. And I just fought tooth and nail like I wrote emails, ’’Do I really have to do this? I've been working in primary schools and blah, blah’’, and, and there was absolutely no give at all. It was like ’Meirion it is high school or nothing!’ And it took maybe I don't know, I've been here, a year and a half, give or take, it took best part of a year to come around to accepting that alright, well, okay, I'll, I'll teach high school biology, if that's what I have to do. You know, let you know, as soon as I made that decision, things started to pop up, and then I got, you know, I got a job. And I've been doing that job for about three weeks. And it's alright. You know, it's alright. What I love is that I can just, you know, accept that, that's, that's the way that's the next thing. You know, that's the thing in front of me. And I also know that, again, it says it in in the literature, that the things that came to us, when we put ourselves in God's hands were far better than anything we could have planned ourselves. Like, I cannot plan and carry out a happy life plan, for Meirion. Can't do it. You know, it just, it just goes horribly wrong. And so I have to just put myself in God's hands. And, and take direction from a sponsor and, and I do yeah, I just think that, you know, all the, you know, all the things that I'm afraid of, and all the things that I don't want to do, those are the things that enabled me to grow. And you know particularly things I'm frightened of. And I think, ’Geez, you know, how many, how much more things do I have that I’m frightened of that I'm gonna have to do’, but it's just, you know, just for today. And, and it's, it's fine. And, you know, I've even enjoyed some of it. You know, I'm good, I'm good at it often. I also think that because, you know, 20 years ago, the reason I left job was because it was too hard. And I got a better idea, which turned out ...it just went pear shaped, really. And so this, I kind of see this as a bit of making a you know, like a living amends for having bolted kind of years ago. So I can come in and sort of see it through this time. Being here and being sober. Kind of just keeps my yeah, like, I can't go too far off. You know, no one's telling me to go off sick, or go to the doctors and get antidepressants. And and it's remarkable how well a day can go on the days that I wake up thinking ’Awgh God, not another one.’’ You know, so you know, just know that my thinking just is, you know, it's just a liar in my head. So, yeah, good to be here and sober and working.