A Story of Recovery:
Coming Clean
Pretty much from the beginning, I had difficulty surrendering to my sponsor’s suggestions. One of the reasons for this is that I had come into FA from other Twelve-Step programs and had been trained in my habits for more than 20 years.
“Doing my own thing” began with keeping small secrets, but eventually escalated to a larger scale. When I visited my daughter in another state, I would eat a snack in the movies with my grandchildren, or eat all of something in the refrigerator while my daughter was at work. I would then rush to the market to replace it before my daughter came home. I failed to tell anyone about these things.
After a while, my peace of mind and serenity were gone, and I began to feel miserable.
During this period, even though I was in severe emotional pain, I continued sponsoring, leading meetings, and even became the co-leader of two AWOLs. My guilt was enormous. After taking a sponsee call in which I had encouraged my sponsee to be rigorously honest, I would get off the phone and tell my husband I was a fraud and a hypocrite. Night after night I would get on my knees, begging God to help me tell the truth to my sponsor, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Then my husband was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and I spent my days at his side in the ICU. During the same week, my sponsor had a break, and I was left without a sponsor. It was during that week that my food really went out of control. Although I never took back flour and sugar, I started binging on other things and often ate my dinner at midnight, after coming home from the hospital.
Finally, with God’s help and the prayers of the FA fellowship, my husband pulled through and it filled me with such joy that I wanted to do something to show my gratitude to God. It was then I knew in my heart that the time had come for me to come clean with my food and start over.
With my heart fluttering, after almost six years of cheating with my food and lying about it, I picked up the phone and called 12 people with long-term abstinence, praying only for God’s will for the right sponsor for me. My prayer was answered, and the sponsor I needed became available.
A few months later my husband and I drove my 46-year-old son to the hospital for a routine angiogram, because he had complained of some heart problems. Six hours later, three cardiologists came into the waiting room and told us that they had some very bad news for us—they didn’t think he was going to make it through the night. His blood pressure had dropped to life-threatening numbers, and they couldn’t bring it back up.
In my complete shock and devastation, I once again turned to the FA fellowship, begging everyone I knew to pray as hard as they could to save my son’s life. And pray they did. They prayed, they phoned me with the most generous offers to make my abstinent meals, they gave me rides, and even cleaned my house.
For six days my son lay in a coma on life support. Each night I went home, got on my knees, and begged God to save his life, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for God’s will. For what if God’s will meant that he should die? Then I spoke to an FA member who told me about her baby, who had been on life support for nine months. Finally, she couldn’t stand his suffering any longer and begged God to let him die.
After that conversation, I went back to the hospital and looked at my son. He had multiple tubes in him, he was tied to the bed in a coma, and the doctors were talking of long, drawn out hospitalizations and many procedures. That night I envisioned months of suffering for my son. I got on my knees, and with tears flowing down my face, I prayed for God’s will, whatever it was, even death.
The next day I went back to the hospital and my son had turned the corner. He was off life support and holding his own. On the following day, he was sitting up and the nurse was feeding him ice chips. The medical staff couldn’t believe it. A miracle had occurred.
Two days after leaving the ICU, my son confessed to us that he had had a methamphetamine addiction for 23 years, which had completely weakened his heart and brought him to the brink of death. But he now believed that God had given him a second chance at life. He was coming clean by telling his family and his doctors, and was prepared to give up all drug use and start over.
My son is now an active member of another Twelve-Step program. He has had a complete personality change and has become friendly and sociable instead of secretive and isolated, as he was when using drugs. He talks of helping other people and focuses on what he can do for others. He feels that he has been reborn, and credits God and the doctors and nurses of the ICU, whom he affectionately calls his “angels of mercy.”
It is my personal belief that my son’s life was saved by the power of prayer from the members of the FA fellowship, and by a chain of events that led to my own spiritual growth. The near-death of my husband so changed my perspective on life that eating huge amounts of food was no longer as important to me as having my husband back alive. This crisis allowed me to come clean with my own addiction as a food addict.
Then hearing about my friend’s baby gave me the impetus to turn my will over to God without reservation, even if it meant the death of my son. It was the most difficult thing I ever had to do in my life, but I became willing to trust God. As a result of this experience, I will never again doubt the total goodness of God’s will nor the spiritual interconnectedness of all of us.