Overeaters Anonymous

And for about 20 years while I was struggling, I went to the best therapist, and I cried and I screamed, and I confess, confessed everything a good Jewish boy from Long Island should, should confess.

[laughs] And, um, you know, and I went to Overeaters Anonymous, and I had a spiritual awakening, and I talked to psychiatrists, but everything just made me a little thinner and a lot fatter, a little thinner and a lot fatter.

Yeah.

And it made me love myself more.

I have learned an attitude of gratitude in this program that is not how I met you.

When I met you in Overeaters Anonymous, I've been in OA and abstaining now for over 40 years.

And please, that sounds really, ooh, really kind of awesome, right? I'm not a girl that if I'm walking down the street, any of you are going to go, ooh, see her? I want what she has.

Probably not.

I can choose.

Wow, if one road goes one way and one goes the other way, I can choose that.

Nobody told me, and I think if anybody had handed me gray sheet, and I know people who have done very well on gray sheet, the very early on dietary thing that Overeaters Anonymous had by the time I got here, They didn't, but so many people were still talking about it.

I would have not been able to do it.

Until they blow up a building.

I would be embarrassed to go to Overeaters Anonymous and sit with all the other fat slobs while everyone told the story about what they ate that week.

I can't imagine.

going all right you know somebody's going and you know she just had these pigtails and it does something to me you know what i mean like it's the first week of school you know so it's like fashion week for them you guys get it yeah we're gearing up for one of my favorite david tell jokes the halloween's coming up or as pedophiles pedophiles call it the super bowl um and yeah if you're in that group Shouldn't we be saving your shit? And just we know?

Just like Candace Lightner, try to do what you can with your sufferings to alleviate the sufferings of somebody else, and that's the genius of the 12-step program, by the way.

Uh, I live at a retreat center in Houston, Texas, and at this very moment, we have about 80 women here on retreat who are involved in the 12-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Overeaters Anonymous, Sex Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous.

And what they're doing is their suffering has driven them to sobriety, and what they do is they gather with each other, and they help each other by telling their own stories.

It's such a beaut- that's the beauty of the 12-step program is that you get together in community and help each other.

Okay.

Overeaters Anonymous.

I went to a few

of them.