Tony S.

This story has been recorded at an Addictive Eaters Anonymous meeting in New Zealand. You can email us at contact@AEAnz.org
And tonight‘s speaker is Tony.
Thanks Fran. My name is Tony and I‘m an addictive eater. So, good to be here. Yeah, I was sort of thinking today about you know about the heat. And on a hot day, I would have probably just you know sat on the side with a tub of ice cream and alcohol back in the day too and complain or moan. So it's nice not to have to live like that today that the obsession to eat has been removed. But, but that took a long time. And I was at a meeting today and I heard somebody share that they were born an addict. And I believe that, you know, the addiction was in me, right from the outset.
My earliest memories, and that was food. 
And yeah, when I was a kid growing up, I was basically all my memories were around, were around food. And so I was the kid that was always first at the table and last to leave birthday parties. The kid that was caught trying to fish a pie out of the rubbish bin at school, the one that the teachers always came to when the tuck shop got raided, and the big ticket items were taken. And you know I had a reputation for being for being an addictive eater. Although that word wasn't used so much then. But yeah, my father used to call me sort of ‘Harry Hollow Legs‘. And other people used to call me ‘Ten Tonne Tony‘. I'd like to think that was for the alliteration appeal. But in my mind, I was huge. And it wasn't ‘til years later, I look back at photos and, and I wasn't actually you know, huge growing up, because I played a lot of sport and did a lot of running around. But I ate huge amounts of food and always wanted more. And right through my life, that was always the pattern. And that got worse when I hit my mid teens. And, and I discovered alcohol as well. So I two things on the go. And that's... the only curbs on my eating really were the family budget. So we didn't have a lot of money. So I didn't have a lot of money to spend over and above the food I got at home. But I was always wanting more like I was the type of kid that would go down to get the fishing family fish and chips, but like I could never get the packet back in tack. There was always a hole in one corner. And there was always things removed. The mental obsession was there right from the start, like I was always plotting ways of getting more food and later on getting more alcohol. And so you know, things changed a little bit when I when I left school and went away to study for my job. And that in those days they actually paid you to be a student which was the first time I had a regular income. And that just all went on I was always behind in my bills like my rent and things like that, because it always went on my addiction, it always went on food on on alcohol. And if I didn't have any money for food, I I'd went round looking for soft drink bottles to cash in. And I think I've shared before about the the chicken shop where you could get ten roast potatoes for $1. And I can't remember anyone else I went to college with doing that. So my eating was always different. And in that year, I put on a lot of weight. For the first time in my life I put on ... I was genuinely overweight, four to five stone it's 25 kilos or something plus and so I started to feel kind of that self loathing that was was always there, that restlessness, irritable, irritability discontent that talks about in the big book was always there. And and I also started to get high blood pressure, which I‘s at 19 years old 19 stone and in my first job I had to pay a premium for my company insurance because I was deemed to be a heart attack risk. So I went, that's where I went through the rounds of weight loss organizations, joggers clubs, gyms, you know, trying to control it myself trying to control that. To me it was weight. But what I always had was that obsession. I was always thinking about food or thinking about not having food and... could not stop. Could never could never stay stopped. And uh moving around alot. I was somebody who took a lot of geographicals, went from one city to another, to one job to another, always justifying it in my mind as a promotion. But I was looking, I was looking to make a fresh start. But I was taking the problem with me, which you know is the disease of addiction, I mean, so. And to cut a long story shorter, I came back to Christchurch, and I was working on a local newspaper, and I saw a ad in our newspaper for a 12 Step organization dealing with food addiction. And in my mind, when I replied to that, I was going there for work reasons. And I was going to do an article on this organization and help them sort of thing, but what I believe really was my higher power, sent me there, because I'd seen that ad there for quite some time, before I had... at that stage, I was sort of in trouble, my my addiction led me into trouble at work trouble at home. I was sort of one step from chaos in every area in my life. And so I wrote away, we had to write away to a post office box in those days and and I got a message back. ‘Why don't you come to a meeting and find out what it's all about?‘ So I did, but I went from the pub. So things were a wee bit foggy. But what I do remember from that first meeting was that there people there talking about their eating openly without any without any real shame, very candid, honestly. A lot of them were still eating like I was. But there were a few people there who talked about being free of the obsession to eat. And I couldn't believe that I just thought I‘ve been battling that all my life. So I'd like to say that I was so impressed that I stayed. But I didn't. Because I was young, I was brash, arrogant, and I thought I could beat it. So my way of beating it was lose weight. I basically wanted the problem to disappear. But I didn't want to give up what I was doing. Because to me, I was dependent on food and other substances just to keep me just to keep me level just to keep me going. And not long after that first meeting two people who were getting well, came around to my house and told me that if I wanted to get well I'd have to give up eating addictively, drinking, drugging and I was about 24-25 years old, I couldn't imagine the rest of my life without those things. So I said ‘Thanks, but no thanks.‘ And then I went out and tried to solve the problem myself, which never worked. And so I thought, tonight, I'd talk a bit more about surrender. Because for me, surrender had to be giving up my old ideas, but that just took such a long time. And as I said, I was moving from place to place, job to job. And I moved to Nelson and my drinking got so bad very quickly there that I was always you know drinking alcoholically, but the consequences got bad really quickly then. And I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I sat in AA for a long time for the 13 years, trying to use AA as a one stop shop for all addiction, I knew that I had a problem with... that I knew my problem with food was as big as my problem with alcohol. But I wasn't willing to do what was suggested by those people who were, who were after that first meeting. And well, although partly I was a little bit because I remember writing to one of them and saying that I was in AA, and that I wasn't drinking and life was better, but I just found myself eating more and more you know, without without alcohol and without drugs. And then but anyway, I um, so I got a letter back from her. And she said basically that I should come to that fellowship as well. And come down to Christchurch, come to some meetings and, and work the principles of that fellowship. And so I was trying to be a good little AA boy at the time. So I ran it by my sponsor, AA sponsor and he said, ‘‘No, I never got drunk on food‘‘, which wasn't true in my experience. Looking back, but, but I went to him looking for that answer and I kind of know that now. So I wrote back to this person in Christchurch. And it was quite uncanny actually, because I told her what my sponsor had said, but I didn't actually name my sponsor. She wrote back to me and told me my sponsors name,
it‘s quite... she could only really have met at a Northern Area Assembly or something like that. And suggested that, you know, that if I wanted to get well, I would have to give up food and all mind altering substances. And why I know about addiction having the power to swap, when I joined AA, I knew I knew I was beaten with alcohol, I just knew I could not drink. But my mind went straightaway turned to smoking marijuana again. Which I'd given up because a friend got busted and ended up in court. And it's a bit embarrassing, because we‘re both court reporters. And so I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of that, but as soon as I couldn't have alcohol, my mind turned to pot. And my sponsor said, ‘‘You can't do that, that‘s just swapping one addiction for another.‘‘ So all I had left was the food. And I just wasn't willing to give up, wasn't willing to let go of my old ideas. It just, it just had to get bad enough, really. And it's amazing kind of how long it took because I could not have wished for a better example of recovery than I got at that first meeting and with that subsequent contact with
people from meeting. And so but, you know, the disease of denial in me was such that I kind of convinced myself that I knew I was powerless over alcohol. There had to be a power greater than me that took that desire away. But food
I had I to sought that out myself. And that it just never worked. I mean, like I had all these sort of kind of crazy ideas that I can just go to AA. I kind of convinced myself that because there weren't many men in this fellowship that it was, it was definitely a woman's disease. I mean, I remember that book ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue‘. I thought, well, yeah, it must be. I just don't believe that today. For a long time I did. I was hanging on to those sort of things, just because I was, the only reason was that I did not want to give up the food. I wanted to give up the consequences of the food, but not the actual food itself. Until it got bad enough. And really, you know, I've talked too about in the past about how I had the worst sponsor I‘ve everhad. And for eight years, I sponsored myself in AA and that was a disaster. My life got more and more unmanageable in that time. It kind of looked okay, from the outside, I had the same job and a house, material things but inside I knew that I wasn't anywhere near being rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence, like I read in the big book. And like I saw in the lives of people who you know, who were coming here as well as the other fellowship. And so I ended up living on my own, well not...  living apart from my kids, separated, having them a couple of days a week. And just eating when... just eating got worse and worse, that driving to work kind of hungover with the food with the late for work, stop at a cafe, get some food, one hand in a bag of food driving down the motorway, the other hand on the greasy steering wheel. My life was, my home life was so unmanageable that if I needed a towel for a shower, I often had to go up to the department store in Kaiapoi and buy a new one. Because I wasn't doing the washing and keeping on.... And I was traveling a lot with work, and I ended up overseas and something happened to me there that was entirely related to my addiction. And it cost me a lot of money to extricate myself from quite a difficult situation. And I was full of shame and remorse. And I remember sitting in my hotel room in Paris, you know, the sort of glamorous city just feeling absolutely lost... and thinking and I just got this real strong feeling that you are as powerless over food as you are over alcohol. And when you get home, you need to go back to those meetings with those people that have found the freedom from the obsession. And because I've come in and out of that fellowship over the years, and but I hadn't stayed. As soon as I heard something I didn‘t like, which was usually something as simple as ‘you've got to give up the food‘, I was off. 
And uh... But I still, like, I still tried to do it myself, I still had that old thinking. I knew I needed to be at the meetings. And when I got home, I went to a lot of meetings. I went to every meeting in that fellowship that there was each week and plenty of AA as well. And what impressed me when I came back was that there was still two of those people from that very first meeting, who said they had found the freedom from the obsession. They were still here. And there are a lot more people that I'd seen getting well in the other fellowship. In fact, I remember being at a national convention for AA and seeing a whole lot of people from this fellowship sort of arrived sort of en masse, and you could just see the recovery. It was just, it was quite uncanny actually. But I, I was, I was eating at that time, and I just avoided them. I just didn't want to be instant model, my kind of denial to be proved, I guess. But um, so like I said, me, I'm I came back here, there were still two people from that first meeting, and there was still, there were a lot more that I'd seen, getting getting well, kind of seeing by the day, or by the meeting in the other fellowship. So. So that gave me hope to come back. But I was still sort of sitting, there's a phrase in the 12 and 12 about sort of anxious apartness. And that was me for a while, I was still sort of sitting on my own or kind of, you know, barely talking to people sort of after meetings. And still trying to figure it out, you know, how can I beat this? Even though I had that experience, where I guess it was my higher power, saying you can't beat it Tony, you're, you're done. I was still still, you know, ‘How do I do this?‘ And I was at a meeting Monday lunchtime meeting, and it was just two of us there. And the other person was quite new. And so I asked her after the meeting about what‘s your food plan? And because she was quite new I guess and didn't know how to say, ‘Bugger off!‘ she told me and I went back to work, and I wrote it down. And so I was trying to have her food plan. And, except I was only having her breakfast and her lunch. And I was having Tony's free choice dinner. And all day I was obsessing about that. ‘Okay, you had Chinese last night you‘d better have Indian tonight, you had a lot last night.‘ But maybe you know it was just, like a tape going in my head the whole day. And I couldn't stand it. I just could not stand it. So I found myself at the end of the next meeting, going up to one of those people who had been in that first meeting, I'd heard talk about how they‘d found the power greater than themselves. And they‘ve worked the 12 steps, and they never eat anymore. 
And I remember saying, ‘‘How do you think it would help, how do you think it would work, if I kept my main sponsor in AA (and it was just a friend that I had a cup of coffee with every now and again, it wasn't sponsorship) and got a food sponsor here?‘‘
And the answer I got was ‘‘Knowing you Tony, that wouldn't work at all.‘‘
 And so I brooded about that for another week. Analyzed it from every angle. And without making a decision. I can't remember ever making a decision to go and ask for help. I found myself that following meeting on Monday night in the old church where the mice came out of the couch. I found myself couldn't couldn't wait for the meeting to end. And and at the end of that meeting I was straight across the room. And I asked that same person who helped me and I heard somebody talking on Wednesday about almost being gifted, that willingness to surrender. And yeah, that's my experience, too. Is that, I went up and asked, ‘‘Will you help me?‘‘ And the first question I was asked was, ‘‘Are you entirely ready to let go of your old ideas?‘‘ And I said, ‘‘I'm not 100% sure. But I think I am because I can't do this.‘‘ And I do believe that was sort of me you know, showing the willingness for my higher power to decide to, to use a quaint Australian expression, that I was ‘fair dinkum‘ about doing something different. Because I was told during the next day, a certain time and again, the same experience, I got up early on a Saturday morning, which wasn't like me. I could not wait to make that phone call. And then I was told what I needed to do around the food around what I needed to buy, to help with my food plan. What meetings I needed to go to, and what work I‘d need to do on the steps. And basically, I have to go back to step one which, and I found myself going ‘‘Yes, yep, that's fine. I can do that.‘‘ And at the end of that conversation, I couldn't believe that I was saying that, because I was agreeing to do all the things that I once rejected as controls. And what I found when I started to do them, they actually turned out to be freedoms. So I know that wasn't, it didn't feel like it was me doing that. It definitely felt like a surrender that I've never experienced before. And since that day, I haven't had to, I haven‘t had to eat, no matter what's happened, good or bad. And absolutely, I know, that's not me doing that. I still, like today in terms of surrender, I still... anything to do with the food I check out. I like to operate. On a good day, if I have a good idea, I run that by God, if I have an absolutely great idea,
I need to run that by my sponsor. Because I still don't trust my thinking in a lot of areas. But I do believe that God has removed the problem. In terms of eating today, I don't, I don't wake up in the morning with the desire to eat or use any other substance. And I know that's not me doing that, I could not do that. You know I spent 42 years trying to do that myself and it never worked. And so, but the trick for me is remembering that surrender is a lot more than just taking direction. It's also tapping into connecting with my higher power, like during the day, because none of us can spend the whole day on the phone to sponsors or other members of the fellowship because we work or whatever, have daily commitments but there are times during the day where like it talks in the big book about I pause in moments of indecision. Sometimes I forget to pause, I just sort of blunt blunder on. I'd like to be more surrendered in that area. Whether anytime I struck that kind of indecision, I would pause, hand it over to God and if it's still troubling  me, I'll pick up the phone and talk about.
So I'm still on my guard about Tony‘s old ideas. And, you know, just just lately on my kind of commute to work, I've made sure that I have listened to a speaker an AEA speaker, and AA speaker or something because I'd rather listen to Chuck C than Tony S. That thinking!  Because that's that's the problem, the main problems centres in the mind. And that kept me away that kept me in that state of anxious apartmentness for so long. And I don't feel it today I feel when I come here that I feel connected to the to AEA, I feel connected to the people here. And I feel connected to my higher power because I love that first word of the first step, you know ‘‘We‘‘, and the first word of the first tradition, you know, ‘‘Our.‘‘ And for somebody that's been a long time, trying to avoid what was on offer here, that's a gift. It's nothing I've done except get bad enough and get serious about asking for help and trying what's on offer here rather than my old ideas. So great to be here, thanks Fran.