Hi, this speaker has been recorded at a meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous. For more information, visit our website www.aeainfo.org Hi, everyone, my name is Melanie and I am an addictive eater. And it is just so great to be here. And, and so great to be asked. And I got to get to the meeting a little bit early, just to make sure the sound would work. And
it was just nice. You know, just seeing all the kind of the technical back end work for the want of a better phrase that's involved in having an online meeting. Yes, I'm just grateful for all the service work that goes into that. So that I get to just get to come to this meeting every, every Friday night. So yeah, I'll share my experience, strength and hope. And I wouldn't say I have a lotta experience but well just thats because of age, I don't know
sure where to start. I mean, I was a, I believe now I was born, an addictive eater. And this, you know, the symptom symptoms of it were just kind of, I guess, just increased, or when I was a teenager, I started noticing or thinking, 'Oh aw, this isn't right.' What I'm doing with my eating, I always, you know, when I was a teenager, I knew this wasn't right, talk in the big book about the remorse that the addict alcoholic feels as they, you know, they always feel remorse. And I felt that from the
beginning. But remorse didn't stop me and I just I suppose with binge eating as well, I did put it as a progressive or change. It's sneaky, this disease, you know, I think I don't binge eat anymore, but I'd be doing different things like marathon running, and that might sound 'oh, there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong with running marathons. But I ran on' and it's just been my, the only reason I was doing that is because I could, I could eat
more and keep the weight off. Or I'd be undereating or just just crazy stuff. I went to New Zealand once and cycled around it and managed to gain a lot of weight while cycling 50 kilometers 60 kilometers per day. And I just got crazier crazy. Like I came into 12 Step fellowship meetings in my early 20s. So yeah, so 20 years ago, I first came across them when my mom was in treatment for alcoholism, and I started going
to Al Anon meetings. And I remember my first one goes, they said, 'Are you an alcoholic?' I'm so offended. And, you know, but I am, you know, like they, they but anyway. And the other thing they said was, 'well, you know, you can't change the alcoholic in your life, like what is it going to come to meeting? Why are you...? What are we doing here? So we're not, you know, I was there to change
the other person. So that so, and then I found out, I was living in a town actually in rural Ireland and was looking at the newspaper, there was another print advertisement for a 12 Step fellowship for food. And I went along to that, and thus began a long journey really, of, sort of, I don't like admitting it but it was a half baked kind of attendance at meetings, and maybe periods of time, where I will wouldn't be binging but I'd always end up going back to it,
in one form or another. Yeah. Like, I just remember the shares about... was it being on the fence, you know, somebody suggested to her to get off the fence, and close the back door.
And I so related to that, because I was so long on the fence when the door opened, you know, one foot in a 12 step fellowship meeting, and then another foot, whatever I could think of counseling into a treatment center and wanted to go into another one and was trying out different counselors just going around the circle.
And I was just lucky enough, just so lucky, I feel so blessed that the 12 step meetings I went to, I met a group of people, some of them, they're all in AEA now, alot of them are at this meeting, and I just they just a really clear message. You know, they shared how bad they were. And they were bad. Because my ego was telling me there was nobody in the world as bad as I was, and but these guys were had
been bad. But I could see now that they were better, and not just and consistent, consistently better for a long time, and actually, in their lives just continue to get better and better. And it must have been a part of me that just that wanted what they had. Eventually, I was willing to do what they did. I just just, yeah, I saw I kept coming back and I kept, started to come into this fellowship. Yeah. And life has just gotten better, and
better and better. And it's not like a journey of just ever increasing, everything's going great. I mean, there's a lot of challenges or upheavals happen in sobriety here at AEA, but I've I'm so blessed. I've just been you know given support or shown sort of a more than just a sane spiritual way of living.
Because of myself, I'm just mad, mental just, you know, without this program without this, you know, the framework and the discipline of members do here, prayer and meditation and service and talking to members and sponsorship, you know without that I'm cast adrift. I'm not saying that... I'm just wondering if you're new, and you're hearing that, I just, that's just, just, to me, I just, that's just the nature of
the disease I have. That's just so it's not that I'm a bad person, I just have a garden variety alcoholic, and, and without doing these things that's my, that's my default position. Yeah. And there's a chapter in the AA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions are on
step one. And there's the last paragraph and, you know, it's says 'oh what's oh all this insistence that we hit rock bottom?' And says that no alcoholic, you know, self centered in the extreme and no alcoholic is going to do these things, you know, inventory and restitution and self sacrifice, unless, unless they're doing it just to save themselves. Yeah. So yeah, I know, it sounds like I didn't come to I came to AEA because I was, you know, I was
broken, beaten. And, yeah, and I suppose that's in a way, a kind of a spur, as well to keep on to keep on going. So, yeah, it's
great. And I just love the, it just keeps getting better and better, deeper and deeper in that no, I suppose what you'd call a relationship with my higher power, you know, that, as I grow, as I stick around, and it has a willingness to do the suggested things or make changes in my life, I just, you know, that the fear is less, you know, that my dependence on, you know, people or money or that kind of
security is lessened. And my dependence is more and more on hard to describe, all knowing, all loving, all powerful God. And, yeah, because I see, I see that in other members, and then, you know, I can really feel it. In my own life, that's such such a gift. No, it really is such a
gift. And, yeah, just to be able to know, we're told that to pass that on is, you know, it's funny I, I read, I get a little notification, I'm in a group in a Whatsapp, I get it kind of, I think it took me a while to figure it out, but they give little quotes from the big book every day. So it's literally going, like reading a tiny bit from the big book just goes right through the big book. So you're only getting like a couple of sentences at a time.
And one of it was, you know, a member saying, 'oh they told me I had to, I had to constantly think of others. And that didn't interest me much.' And I laughed! I laughed at his honesty!! Because it didn't interest me much in the beginning, I was like what's he even talking about?! But now, now I get it, and you know, through the day, when I get to help others. Oh then. And then you know, all about the joy of living, you know, what's all all
about. And I don't, I'm not sure what the time is now, but I'll finish finished up I have a little daughter, I was just dropping her off this evening. And she was just pointing up at the sky and because it was full of stars or planets as well. She said the stars did I know that they're planets? Like 'Whoa, she's three.' Where does she how did she, who told her? That there the planets?! So yeah, I'm just on just this little human on a planet spinning around in in a universe and it's just
great to be alive. And that's all. That's all thanks to coming to AEA, so I'll leave it there. Thank you