Tony S.

This story has been recorded at an Addictive Eaters Anonymous meeting in New Zealand. You can email us at contact@AEAnz.org. 

0:13  
My name is Tony, I'm an addictive eater. It's good to be here. I  um... it‘s also good that I hadn't really given much thought to tonight. Earlier today and I went for a walk and thought it was better to listen to a guy called Michael S rather than Tony S. So I did that for the duration and yeah, but basically, you know, when I think back I mean, I just believe I was born an addictive eater that definitely born an addict. That there right from the outset, my eating seemed a lot different to you know, certainly my friends and most members of my family and basically, but also I really relate to the, to the kind of basic the bedevilments in the Big Book of AA where it talks about, you know, feeling, a sense of uselessness, self pity, all those sort of character defects, which I think are a big part of addiction for me, and food took the edge off that right, right from the outset. And so I ate addictively right from the start, and you know, for 42 years, yeah, it was like that. And so over the years I ate sort of stolen food, frozen food, burnt food, food, food that had been in rubbish bins. I just couldn't, couldn't stop eating and... And yeah, with that went kind of, you know, those feelings of sort of uselessness and self pity just sort of intensified really. And I remember being sort of 12 years old and I um... in a wood work class at school, which I absolutely dreaded it... y‘know like wood work but in this class, one of my classmates fainted and hit the ground and it turned out he was he was rushed off to the hospital turned out he had ruptured his spleen, which was quite serious back then. And honestly, within about an hour there were people in our class writing ‘Get Well, Brian‘ cards to him in hospital. I was queuing up to get the sausages and chips at the school canteen. As soon as he hit the ground, that's all I could think about was you know, that guy buys his lunch every day, I hated him that. And

2:45  
today is my lucky day! Yay! Selfishness self centeredness, y‘know kind off (sniff). And a friend of mine came with me to the canteen and...

3:00  
where I gave sort of mine, his name and our class number. And when people must have known, I was sort of twice his size. And my friend used to laugh about because he said that I'd begrudgingly gave him a few chips from the bag. But there were two sausages in the bag. There was no way he was getting those! And yeah, I mean, that's just the obsession. Yeah, like that's how I relate to the obsession, you know that a normal normal eater doesn't have that obsession about someone's sausages and chips when they've ruptured their spleen in hospital. And so, yeah, right through school, I was the person that would, I mean, we'd all raid the tuck shop, but, you know, people would take sort of jet plane lollies and I'd take, you know, sort of pies and buns and the staff always knew who to come to. It was it was always humiliating, but I couldn't stop doing it. I just just that experience. I just could not stop doing it. And, you know, for years, I like what I've come to believe, I think for me is that, you know, perception is a big part of this disease. So I had a perception that I was a fat overweight kid. But looking back at sepia toned black and white photographs, that wasn't necessarily the case, you know, so but in my mind it was and but when I started drinking regularly at 14 and drank alcoholicly from the start, that's when I did start to actually live up to that image I was starting to put on weight. And so when I left high school, I was still nominally kind of a serious sports person. Within 12 months of being a tertiary student, I put on between 25 and 30 kg and was anything but a serious sports person, I just could not stop eating and drinking that year... it was the first time I‘d had, I'd have I had my own sort of stash of money. And there were times that year where I was cashing in soft drink bottles to get food, like it was a chicken and chips place in Wellington, where they had ten roast potatoes for $1. And ten for a dollar. So I would go around cashing coke and fanta bottles to get the dollar or the $2 to get the ten or the 20 roast potatoes. My eating was always like that, and a big part of that too, was the addiction for me was, you know, the geographical cure moving from one place to another, hoping it would be a fresh start. And it was always the same. Yeah, alcohol and food were always the drugs when I can get it. And the depression would get worse. So pills were involved. So when I was 19, I started a job where I got sort of basically hoodwinked into taking out an insurance policy. But they wouldn't actually insure me. Because I was 19 years old about 19 stone and I had a high blood pressure, and was deemed to be a heart attack risk at 19. I was still playing kind of senior level sport at that time. So I thought I‘ve got to do something about this. And I went to the first I went to Weight Watchers for the first time. And I just couldn't stick to the food plan. But in my mind, you know, where the problem is centered, I thought, a weel at Weight Watchers was Monday to knock off time Friday at work. And then the weekend was mine! So I was always living for Friday, four o'clock. And I‘d go on an almighty eating and drinking binge. Go to Weight Watchers on the Monday night and still lose weight. I thought I'd beaten it. Yeah, because I was always looking to beat it and control it. And a few years later, when I when I first came to a meeting here, I spoke to a woman who said that she used to go to Weight Watchers on Mondays and get her hair cut every day before she went. And I thought it was never an option for me! But, um, so yeah, that was the start of being in and out of organizations like weight Weight Watchers looking to grab the latest fad diet, you know, the F plan, if anyone remembers that, you know, I always thought it stood for failure. Yeah. I just couldn't do it. So as a result of my addictive eating, I suffered a bad knee injury playing football, which meant I could never play football again, which was a big part of my life. And I

8:00  
I got more and more depressed. So I just ate and drank and drank more. That was my, that was my kind of solution. And by the stage, I was married for the first time. We‘d just bought a house we're about to have a family and and my wife said to me that I had to do something or she was gone. And I don't I don't remember seriously looking for something. But I was working at the at a daily newspaper. And I saw an advert in the paper for a 12 Step fellowship for food. And I thought that'll make a great story. But what I believe was it was my Higher Power saying ‘you need this‘ because I'd seen that ad it used to just stand out in a sea of black ink would sort of almost have a neon sign. And so in those days, I had to write to the organization. And so I did that said that I was a journalist, and wanted to write a story about about the fellowship and I got a letter back saying well, my the best way would be to come to a meeting. So I did that I came to my first meeting. I can't remember exactly what I heard because I‘d come from the from the pub, where I'd been for a few hours. But I do remember beng really impressed at people saying that they'd lived all their lives with the obsession to eat. But and most people still had it at that meeting. They were exactly like me, but you know, there were two or three people who said that they no longer you know, that obsession had been removed through through the 12 Steps of that fellowship and a power greater than themselves. And I remember being really impressed with that because I just imagined I'll be battling that all my life. But I wasn't impressed enough to want to stop and a little while later a couple of people from from that group came around and saw me on a 12 Step call. And by that stage, everything was hanging by a thread, my job, marriage, sanity it was all sort of starting to look pretty wobbly. And, you know, they said to me, if I wanted to get well, I'd have to give up drinking, drugging, eating, and come to come to the 12 Step program and work the steps. And I just remember thinking about the age of 25-26. What an order I, I just can't do that. I mean, to me, those things were the things that were keeping me going. So I went on my not so merry way for another few years!! And I ended up - another geographical - ended up up in Nelson at the top of the South Island, and thinking there'll be a fresh start here. Yeah, great climates, the I know a lot of people hear that sort of thing. And it all got a lot, it all got a lot worse. And yeah, one day I was, I was in the newsroom in the newspaper, and we got word of this boat that was burning, out in the harbor caught fire, sort of Tasman Bay. And so a photographer and I were dispatched, to go down to the port, hire a boat, and go out and get a photograph of the story of this burning boat. So we hired this boat, and we, we set off. And we weren't making great progress! And the skipper of the boat turns around, said, ‘Look, I don't want to be rude.‘ But he said, ‘We‘d get out there a hell of a lot faster if you got off.‘ And so he put me ashore on on a on the boulder bank, Nelson, where I sat watching this boat burning up and the photographer went out, got photographs. And they came back and picked me up. And the photographer could not wait to get back to work to tell everybody. And so I thought I'd better do it. There were people in that newsroom, just in tears laughing. And there was somebody who worked in that newsroom who had said to me a couple of times over the years, you know, one day someone said, like, they come into the office with eating an ice cream on a hot summer's day. And someone said, ‘Oh, if you eat too many of those, you'll be as big as a house.‘ And she piped up and said ‘You mean as big as Tony!‘ And on another occasion, she saw me, I was working at my desk, eating my sandwiches, which were probably my second lunch of the day, because that was normally the pattern. And I looked up and I saw something I won't go into here, which horrified me enough to screw up my sandwiches and throw them in the rubbish bin. It was a very rare event! And she feigned a heart attack, saying she‘d just seen me throw away food!

13:01  
But anyway, a few a little while after that, that person came into into Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober and I watched her life change. And she was the person that I approached when I realized that my, my drinking was killing me. And while I was on my walk today, I actually got a message from from from her. She took me to my first ever meeting and she was on a walk. And had heard a song that reminded her of my what they called a passing out parade at Queen Mary hospital. It wasn't when you fainted it was when you left the place! And

13:44  
and you know just um reflecting on the fact that you know that that was kind of like the start of

13:55  
my first very tentative steps into recovery but but so but what I believe really and what I believe totally is that I wasn't I wasn't in recovery at that time when I left that treatment center, because I was still absolutely mired in the food. And you know, that was to be my pattern for 30 more years after that was I was in AA not drinking not drugging by by a miracle. And you know, I believe in a power greater than me, but I I believe that that channel between God and I was totally blocked with food. And so my life my life was actually getting kind of progressively worse. I was sitting back waiting to be rocketed into a fourth dimension but it's pretty hard to be rocketed, when you're eating the way I was, you know where I was just basically eating to live. It looked okay on the outside for a while because I had a job and material possessions but somewhere along the line, which is why I believe today that the main problem centers in the mind, I decided it was a good idea to sponsor myself, which was a total disaster. And my life really started to unravel at the time that I that I took over the sponsorship. And it was just the progression of the disease, you know, the eating and the, and the, yeah, just insanity. So, eventually, my marriage broke up, I was living apart from my kids seeing them, having them a couple of days a week, I'd fill the, the fridge with fruit and vegetables, which would actually would actually start to rot, because I was just eating takeaways the whole time, I was just, you know, my daughter had a standing joke that she'd come around and see all these pizza boxes, you know, sort of looking around the place. So I always made sure that they weren't there when she was coming around. But most of the time, they were, you know, that was just the way I live, you know, like, my life was unmanageable that I couldn't do the washing. I needed a towel, I'd run down, I wouldn't run I‘d drive down to the department store in Kaiapoi and buy a new one, you know. And, yeah, I was, I was getting sicker and sicker. And I knew I could never shake the I could never shake the thought that, like, I knew I was an addictive eater. I knew I was exactly like those people from that first meeting. And so while I was thinking of why I was mentioning that friend of mine who sent me a message today is that I was thinking after that, about surrender, and how surrender for me has always come from asking for help. It hasn't come from, and this might work for other people, I don't know. But it hasn't come from sitting on on the beach in the lotus position at sunrise. Instantly accepting that this is a power greater than me, it's always come through the experience of other people and the asking the asking for help. Because in doing that, I was admitting I couldn't do it. So why why I say that is that I believe my recovery here started when I asked for help here. And I got to the point where the eating was, was killing me, like physically, but mentally, emotionally, whatever, and spiritually certainly. And I was away overseas working. And I ended up in a really embarrassing situation of my own making. And um back in the hotel, it was expensive too it was a $1,200 mistake that I made. And I remember, in this hotel room, in Paris, sitting there, just knowing that I was as powerless over food as I was over alcohol. And that I needed to come back here when I got home. And I needed to do what was suggested here, because I'd come in and out over the years. But I was never willing to do what people here were doing. And it didn't stop me eating for the rest of that trip. But I knew that something was changing. I still ate myself, ate my way around Europe for a couple more weeks. But so when I did get home, and repaid the money I owed my company. And I did start coming back to meetings. But I still tried to keep that I still had that quote on what it talks in the 12 and 12 is anxious apartness, I still felt different. And

18:46  
I remember having all these sort of I had all these barriers to coming back here. And and one was gender, which is sounds crazy now but it was sort of the I kidded myself that this was a woman's problem. I dont‘t believe that today. And it was never true. But and another one was that it was the same program as AA. So I just need to go there. That never worked for me neither. I'm definitely somebody that needs to be around recovering addictive eaters. And the yeah, so. So I came to meetings, but I still wasn't kind of fully in the hub for a while. I was still trying to do it myself. And I used to go to this lunchtime meeting, which was basically sort of I think it'd been a big meeting once, but it was sort of petering out, but it was on Thursdays and at one particular meeting, there was only one other person there and and she was new like me, but she‘d got a sponsor and was on a food plan and she was sharing about how how great this was. And so after the meeting I badgered her for a food plan, she, she very reluctantly told me what she was having. I went back to the office and I wrote it down. And so I had her breakfast and her lunch, and then Tony's dinner. And so when I woke up in the morning, all I could think about was Tony's dinner. Yeah. What I'd be having that night. And it was it was like a loop track in my mind. Yeah. ‘Well, you did, you didn't have much last night. So maybe a bit more tonight‘, or ‘It was Indian last night. So maybe Chinese‘ were, it was because I was going to the food court, and basically just having free choice. Still totally obsessed with the food. And a little while after that, I just remembered, I can still see the particular. But in the old room at St. John's er upstairs, where I, I asked somebody who had been around my house all those years before, I think it was 17 years earlier. How she thought it would work if I got a food sponsor and this fellowship, and keep my main sponsor in AA, and my main sponsor in AA at that time was basically just a mate that I had a cup of coffee with, occasionally after a meeting. And she looked at me and said, ‘Well, knowing you, Tony, that wouldn't work at all.‘ And then turned away and walked away. And so I must have brooded about that for a week. But I can't remember ever making a decision that I was going to ask for help. But I remember that the following Monday night, being back at that meeting, and sort of just wishing that the meeting would end. So I could go up and, and, and talk to this person again. And, and I did when the meeting was over, I went up and I and I asked her if she would help me? And I was I was asked ‘Was I entirely ready to give up the food?‘  And I remember, I remember saying, I'm not 100% sure, but I think I am y‘know, I I can't do it. And the next day I was told to ring at a certain time, and I you know, I couldn't wait to to make that call. And I found myself saying ‘Yes, yes, yes, that'll be fine.‘ All the things that in the past, I thought ‘No, I could never do that. No, not for me.‘ And within an hour or so, I got my then, and he was 11 my son with me at Farmers in Rangiora... buying all these kitchen utensils and things. And starting a food plan. But for a little while I thought the answer was in the food plan. And I‘d hear people saying the answers not in the food plan and I‘d think ‘Well, what do they mean?‘ And what I think what I think they mean was the answer‘s in the 12 Steps it‘s the 12 Steps. That's God that expels the obsession. But for me, the food plan was the equivalent of putting the plug in the jug with alcohol. But and I remember I was I was a bit embarrassed at first to say that I was coming here. People knew that I was in AA, and so my boss. I told my boss that I would have to be away from work on Monday and Friday nights I had to be I couldn't work Monday, Friday night. And he said, ‘So you're off to AA?‘ And I wouldn't say yes. But I wouldn't say no, I wouldn't .... just for a little while. And then

23:37  
I realized that things had changed. One night when I was in the cafeteria at work we had the TV on and I was having to prepare something for my meal because I was I was pretty disorganized in those days. And I was standing you know I had my scales measuring cups out and I was preparing this thing quite oblivious and just talking to people workmates about what was on the news. And I couldn't believe it, you know, because I was always I was always ashamed, you know, kind of. So yeah, my thinking changed despite myself. And I believe that, that my recovery started from when I asked for help here. That prior to that I was 13 years dry of alcohol and drugs. But I wasn't in recovery then. I hear people here say that they've had two lives. And I hesitate to say this because I don't like sort of... to me it sounds like I'm trumping mad, but I feel like I've had three lives I've had the life life of full on addiction. The life of half baked addiction recovery is what I was told when I got here that I was half baked, which is true I'm so free of alcohol and drugs andin AA and then I've had you know sobriety as we know it in AEA... free of all you know mind altering substances. And because you know since they day I asked for help I haven't I haven't had to eat no matter what's happened in my life good or bad. And I know that's not me doing that it's definitely God has given me a power greater than me. I'd love to say that I that I'm totally free of yourself. But that's not the case. In the long run, the longer I'm here, the more I come to understand that the main problem sentence in the mind, that's my thinking. And if I can just sit back on the couch, not literally, but you know, just sit back and watch those thoughts just go through. It's fine. But the thoughts I don't have today, no matter what happens is I don't think of eating, drinking or dragging in. You know, I thought I'd be betting that all my life. So I get great hope here. Just as I did that first time I came here and I had people say that they didn't have the obsession D anymore. But I see people here getting better all the time, you know, just no matter how long they be. And so one of the great bright spots I think we've seen people come in here and get well so today, you know, like I'm I'm not bashful about being a member of addictive eaters anonymous, I'm happy to tell him because it's definitely saved my life. And

26:42  
you know, I mean, we're talking a big book about not regretting the past. For a while I didn't regret that I didn't I didn't stay here when I first came here. But that wasn't my path at that time. You know, the self will was so strong you know, there had to be snatched the ego had to be smashed a bit in that regard.

27:04  
But I do believe today what I first hear that a long time ago was that there's no limit to how far you can go here because there's no limit to God. So

27:17  
I'm grateful for addictive eaters anonymous and I I know it'll be here for many many years and it's great to see new people come in like just me just having new cameras at the meeting recently has been a real boost. I've really enjoyed that Tina and I I think I've run out of things to say and all them obviously sit down