Abstinence

[MajestyJo]

Abstinence Is a Way of Life

Each morning when we wake up, we give thanks for another day of abstinence. Our bodies feel good, function well, and look better. To go back to our old ways of eating compulsively would be to give up the new health and peace of mind, which we have acquired through OA.

We do not want to go back. We are learning a new way of life, one that is infinitely preferable to our old ways. In order to maintain our abstinence and continue to make progress, we need a program. For most of us, this involves working the Twelve Steps each day.

Program sponsors can help us with this new way of life. Other OA members share their experience and tell us what has worked for them. Most of us find that we need the spiritual part of the program if we are to maintain our abstinence. Abstaining purely for weight control is usually not enough.

If we are to keep what OA has given us, we have to share it with others. We find that the more we give it away, the more progress we make with our own program.

To abstain is no sacrifice; it is growth and life.

I am grateful for this new life.

Heard once the word 'sacrifice' meant to make sacred. When I let go of things that are harmful to me, I am respecting myself. I am a child of God who cares for me. Why should I continue to hurt myself, when His Love is all consuming.

As I have said many times, I not only need to surrender my drug of choice, my drug of the moment, but the thinking behind it. As it says in the Big Book, spirituality is a change of attitude sufficient to bring and aid recovery. p. 569.