The Start

I didn’t so much choose to return to OA as much as I was given a good hard (mental) shove in the right direction. I had slept for 24 hours after a 48 hour absence of sleep, plus a night shift at work. I’d finally dragged myself from bed, exhausted still and justified ordering out (again) because I had worked last night and I was tired and hungry and I bloody COULD. Except really, I was just lazy. So incredibly lazy. Of course, as usual for me, I followed up my unhealthy meal with chocolate and crisps. It wasn’t until later that night, as I lay in bed with a bellyache from over-eating (again) and started the new audiobook by Russell Brand that I realised something was going to change. I knew on a daily basis that something needed to change but I had, over time, perfected the art of dunking my head into the sand and lying to myself. I was perfectly fine after all. Sure, I couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without my knees aching and having the breath of an 80 year old asthmatic. I couldn’t fit a seatbelt in a car and I worried constantly that the wooden chair I used in work would someday collapse under me. I was a diabetic in denial, had an underactive thyroid, suffered from depression and avoided my doctor like the plague because I hated being scolded. I was 31 years old, living the life of an elderly lady. But I was fine.

The Russell Brand book was an accident. I had assumed it was a biographical book on his own recovery and I had bought it thinking it could provide some insight into addiction – a problem I face regularly in work. I had read some articles written by Brand in the past and I know he tends to be a controversial figure but I rather like the man. So I grabbed the audiobook when it popped up on my recommended reading list. Now, I had recognised my own addiction a year earlier but recognition isn’t always followed by action. I had read books on food addiction, attended my local OA meeting and I think I even achieved 3 weeks abstinence. But then something happened and I was back to being just ‘fine’ again. Really, I hadn’t even thought about OA in months. But I lay in bed nauseous and uncomfortable and realised that the book wasn’t a biography. No, it was a guide through the 12 step program. And I realised I was going to follow this program into recovery. Because I was not fine. I was ill, tired, I hated my body and I was desperate. I wasn’t ready. I was desperate.

Ironically, as I listened to Brand set out his own version of the twelve step program and I was certain that it was time and I was going to recover, I also panicked and ate 5 bars of chocolate, a packet of crisps and drank a litre of diet coke. Because that’s how I roll (heh-heh). I had the voice in my head telling me I couldn’t really make OA tonight and I should wait for next week and I can already feel the cravings for sugar and fat starting up. But I made the meeting. And I just gotta through the next moment, right?

So here I am, at the start of this pretty freaking terrifying journey. I weight 27 stone or 378lbs. I am 31 years old (at least for another month). Let’s see how this thing goes.