1. Start missing meetings for any reason, real or imaginary.
2. Become critical of the methods used by other members who may not agree with you in everything.
3. Nurse the idea that someday, somehow, you can eat like “normal people” again.
4. Let the other members do the Twelfth Step work in your group. You are too busy.
5. Become conscious of your OA “seniority” and view every member with a skeptical eye.
6. Become so pleased with your own views of the program that you consider yourself an authority.
7. Start a small clique within your group, composed of only a few members who see eye-to-eye with you.
8. Tell a new member in confidence that you yourself do not take ALL of the Twelve Steps seriously.
9. Let your mind dwell more and more on how much you are helping others, rather than on how much the OA program is helping you.
10. If an unfortunate member has a slip, drop them at once.
11. Graduate to the point of no longer needing a sponsor yourself.
12. Consider a food plan vital for new members, but not for yourself. You outgrew the need for that long ago.

— Reprinted from “Twelve Steps to a Slip,” Overeaters Anonymous. Retrieved from https://oa.org/documents/twelve-steps-to-a-slip/

In the story “The Best Defense of All,” the author describes how it took five years in OA
before he gained continuous abstinence. He attributes his relapses to his belief that he “could
willfully jump back and forth over the blurry line that was my initial abstinence.” He “had to
stop fighting the diagnosis and embrace the solution.” The diagnosis is powerlessness and the
solution is a spiritual awakening as the result of the Steps. Later in the story, he writes about
his recovery, “The Steps have fulfilled their promise of completely changing my outlook. I see
my resistance to working any of the Tools on a given day as the first sign of my next
compulsive bite.”

–(Overeaters Anonymous, 3rd edition, p. 149)

QUESTION TO DISCUSS W/FELLOWS:

What are other signs that may precede the first compulsive bite that sets the addictive cycle in motion?

Region 3 Zoom Security Training

Sat., July 19, 2025 3:30-4:30 pm CT  | RSVP and register by email [email protected]