I “resigned” from Overeaters Anonymous.
I put resigned in quotation marks because OA isn’t an organization from which one formally resigns. You simply stop attending. But for me, today represented something more definite: I acknowledged that I no longer accept one of the fundamental premises upon which my participation in OA had been based.
I no longer believe that I am powerless over food.
That realization has been developing for some time.
OA has helped me. I don’t want to deny or minimize that. It introduced me to the Twelve Steps, encouraged me to examine my behavior honestly, and helped me recognize patterns in my relationship with food that needed attention.
But as I continued looking beneath those behaviors, something became increasingly clear to me:
Food wasn’t the root of my problem. My emotions were.
I wasn’t powerless before a cookie, a piece of cake, or a plate of food. What overwhelmed me were my reactions to people, places, things, and situations that didn’t conform to my expectations.
I ate when I was bored.
I ate when I was irritated.
I ate when I was frustrated, lonely, disappointed, or uncomfortable.
Food became one of the ways I attempted to change how I felt. When I began focusing less on controlling food and more on understanding the emotions behind my eating, my recovery began to make more sense.
That eventually put me at odds with the way I had understood Step One in OA.
The breaking point came when my sponsor told me that continuing to attend OA meetings while no longer believing I was powerless over food would be “fraudulent” and “hypocritical.”
Those are strong words.
And strangely enough, they helped clarify my decision.
If participation requires me to profess something about myself that I no longer believe to be true, then leaving seems more honest than staying.
But the exchange also troubled me for another reason.
I have heard people criticize Twelve-Step fellowships—and OA in particular—as sometimes developing a controlling or “cultish” atmosphere. I have generally been reluctant to use that language. There are many people in OA whom I respect, and I would never presume that my experience represents everyone’s experience.
Still, I understand the criticism better now.
When questioning a program’s interpretation of one’s own experience is treated not simply as disagreement but as evidence that continued participation would be hypocritical or fraudulent, something feels wrong to me.
Recovery should encourage honesty.
And honesty sometimes means saying:
This explanation no longer describes my experience.
I am grateful for what OA gave me. Leaving does not require me to declare the program bad or the people in it misguided. OA may be exactly the fellowship another person needs.
It simply no longer describes the recovery path I believe I need to follow.
My understanding today is different from when I entered OA. I am increasingly convinced that my problematic eating was a symptom—a strategy I used to cope with emotional discomfort—rather than the fundamental disorder itself.
So my work now moves deeper.
Instead of asking only:
What am I eating?
I need to ask:
What am I feeling?
Why am I reacting this way?
What am I trying to escape, soothe, control, or change?
And what would a healthy response look like instead?
Perhaps leaving OA isn't abandoning recovery at all.
Perhaps it is simply another step in recovery: becoming willing to follow the truth about myself wherever it leads.
Today, the next right thing was to leave.
And then keep walking.
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