Today is the First Day of TROML. We all mess up at times. There is hope no matter how I feel or what other people say or do. (Photo Credit: Bob Thaves)

I am a sugar addict and compulsive overeater in  recovery.

That has been the case since October 2012, when on my 53rd birthday I sought relief from this disease of compulsive overeating, a disease that is as deeply rooted and challenging to overcome as alcoholism.

Whether you are my friend, family or client, I need and ask for your help supporting my recovery, something which is 100% my responsibility.

While I am on a spiritual path for the rest of my life and beyond, I respect the sovereign right of others to believe or not believe in any specific religion. As Pope Francis so eloquently shared on his visit to the United States, “I ask you all please to pray for me. And if there are among you any who do not believe or cannot pray, I ask you to please send good wishes my way.”

Like wise. I do the same for you whether I meet you in person or electronically at first. We are all one, connected in someway, somehow, to a greater good universe of endless peace, joy and freedom.

Although I mark my abstinence from sugar and compulsive eating behaviors since August 2013 when I completed my first pass on making Step Nine amends, there have been slips along the way. As I seek complete spiritual, emotional and physical recovery to extend my time here on Earth, the reality is that I am a human being just like you with character defects and shortcomings. As I work towards and occasionally reach my healthy body weight, I make mistakes, relying only on myself and fall back.

Last night was one of those nights where I failed to seek help and succumbed to the at times incessant call of sugar saying to me “consume me and it will be all right.” It has lied to me once again, i believed it in a moment of weakness and I lied to myself as I believed the unfaithful promise that I could control my own destiny and did not need anyone else’s help to make it through life, good times and bad times.

The feeling of excitement in good times is as challenging to my abstinence as the feeling of sadness, loneliness and depression in bad times.

That’s the insanity of it all. Times are good for me. I am healthy and down over 100 pounds in weight an not far from my healthy body weight which I achieved recently for one month. I love and feel gratitude for the people in my life and in what I have the opportunity to do in life. I know I am blessed to do what I love to do for a living—seeking inspiration and helping others find and tell their story in life. People come to me for help yet I cannot at times seek the help I need at pivotal moments in my life.

I have yet to figure out the riddle of Andy.

I have yet to become completely free of this disease of sugar addiction and compulsive overeating that has me by the throat at times. I need to get out of myself and trust more in my better self, God and other people. I need to share more, to come out of this lonely isolation of a disease that few normal eaters recognize as such. I need to feel my feelings instead of escaping from them in a sugar high and stomach overload. Instead of anesthetizing and placating myself, I need to deal with reality in a more honest and forthright manner.

I have to stop abandoning my God and emotionally abandoning myself. I need to release and let go of he shame within me that came from a childhood impacted by alcoholism. All those traits I developed and utilized to survive as a child must be transformed to a useful purpose in my adult life or eliminated from my portfolio of tools so that I can love and live spiritually free as an adult.

I am not a normal adult or a normal eater as I will always be a sugar addict and a compulsive overeater.

The question is whether or not I will be in recovery with an abstinence and program in place.

For me that is TROML, which includes the Twelve Steps and other sources of inspiration. More importantly,I need to apply and learn from any and all sources of inspiration to be aware of and overcome any challenges in my life. There is a difference between discovery—identifying with a disease and other people who have it and recovery—taking ownership and seeking help and utilizing that help to overcome disease to the best of our ability with the help of a power greater than ourselves.

Today, this morning is another day. The sun has risen again whether I can see it directly or it is hidden behind clouds and precipitation. There is light, I know it is there, the same as I know there are better choices to be made in my life today and all the tomorrows to come.

I am hopeful. I am done with just surviving. I want to thrive and be all I can be in life. I want peace, joy and freedom, complete freedom in life which includes recovery from this disease of sugar addiction and compulsive overeating which conflicts with all that God wants and has planned for me in life.

I need you and I know, if you are addicted to anything—sugar, alcohol, sex, work, religion, gambling or what have you—that you need me, TROML and the Twelve Steps too.

Let’s connect and if we can’t than lets pray for each other or at least send good wishes to each other.

Have a TROML Day Today!

Anonymous Andy

Your Personal Revivalist

I slipped last night and chose to eat sugar not for pleasure like normal people but to self-medicate, anesthetize myself and escape into yet another night of a self-imposed, self- constructed prison.

Why do I do that? Why can’t I simply accept life on life’s terms, say my prayers, be thankful for all that I have, take my contacts out and go to bed?

Why can’t I accept people, places, things and situations and just sing along with The Parlotones that “I’m Only a Human?” (lyrics below).

And the reality is that I know that you and everyone else can understand and simply accept, love and be compassionate to me. Yet there are times I can’t let it go and be accepting, loving and compassionate to myself.

Aren’t we all perfect except when we are not?

I am grateful that this slips are now typically for only seconds, minutes and hours, not days, weeks, months and even years long.

By the grace of God (my God, not necessarily your God) and the love and support of friends and relatives and especially that of Overeaters Anonymous (OA) I have maintained a weight loss of over 100 pounds for the last eight years and counting. I am about 20 pounds from my healthy body weight and am trending in the right direction. In OA we all can have our own God or no God at all and there are no rules or fees just suggestions and freewill to grow and be more healthy.

So why do I do what I do which is basically run out to a local convenience store and buy sugar and other binge foods when I am anxious and feeling emotions that I don’t understand and obviously can’t readily accept as a normal part of life. Why do I expect myself to be perfect and in control? Why do I think in terms of all-or-nothing and why am I so harshly judgemental and critical of myself?  Why can’t I just love myself as I do others and be an accepting and comforting friend to myself too?

I know growing up with alcoholism did affect me. I chose to develop certain personality traits (called The Laundry List in Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA)) in order to survive a situation no child should survive. Did I really have a choice back then as a child? No. Do I have a choice right now as an adult. Absolutely Yes! My childhood experience will always be a part of me. My Mom was a Saint and my father was a Hero to me. Dad never had a drop of alcohol for the last 25 years of his life. After extracting all the inspiration from my childhood and incorporating it into my own TROML Program I am simply left knowing in my heart that my parents loved me the best way they could and treated me far better than they were treated as children. What more can you ask of someone to give more than they received?

So it’s not them in the past or you in the present, it is definitely me. I am trying to control something called sugar which I am powerless over.

Thanks for letting me share this this morning. The shame, guilt and resentment of compulsively overeating sugar last night has left me. I do feel the lingering effects in my brain and body which I know will dissipate and leave me over the next few days and bring me back into a beautiful state of mind like I was just before I made that bad decision to take that first compulsive bite.

I am in the right frame of mind to thoroughly live this day today. In a way I am simply overwhelmed with blessings in my life. With the exception of the sugar addiction, I have a beautiful, meaningful and quite spectacular life. Maybe this last binge will be my last because I know realize I don’t have to be perfect after all. I only need to be human after all and I am honestly human with you this morning after.

I am grateful that I am a sugar addict in recovery.

I am grateful for OA and ACA.

I don’t have to be perfect and  in control all the time or think in an all-or-nothing and judgemental way.

I choose to accept, love and be compassionate to myself first today and everyone else that I meet.

I am grateful for this day that awaits me.

TROML Baby am I.

Have a TROML Day Today!

Your Perfectly Imperfect Personal Revivalist,

Anonymous Andy

ps: Gotta love The Parlotones!

I was taking control, with God’s guidance, of my health—namely in the areas of nutrition, exercise and sleep. I was making good progress emerging from the sugar fog, feeling tired at the end of the day and rejuvenated somewhat in the morning. I wanted to get my seven to eight hours of sleep and wake up at sunrise each day to maximize the hours of daylight and sunshine in my life. All good things in my life, all God-directed in thoughts, words and behavior I thought. But there was a resentment and it was directed towards one of his nonhuman creatures— that chirping little bird in the tree outside my bedroom window.  He was so chirping so loud that he or she woke me up each morning an hour before the sun rose and I resented it as something contrary to what I thought was God’s plan for me.

How could this be and what could I do about it? For a few weeks I just endured it and suffered waking up to resentment. I have lived in this environment for a while and don’t recall this natural alarm from the sugar days. I was probably too tired and exhausted from my nightly compulsive eating. In this new era of honesty and thoroughness and fearlessness to find the answers in my life, I decided to get out of bed, go outside and investigate the scene of the crime a little bit. After a couple more weeks of deciding and resenting I actually got out of bed and went outside. I did not bring a gun though I am sure that would be the recommendation of some of my friends.

Today was the day to do so and I learned a lot. The first thing, as I went outside into what I thought would be pitch black, all black-out environment, I learned was that it was not. There was a ring of brightness around the horizon. Immediately I realized the birds had it right. An hour before sunrise is time to get excited about the upcoming sunrise and let everybody else know about it. I could see their perspective, especially when I put myself in their place of sleeping outside with little protection in the dark for what would seem like an eternity. I remember one rainy, dark night as a child awake, cold and wet in a tent on a campout. I was joyous too when the first light came signaling an end to my misery, I mean fun. The birds had it right and I had it wrong.

I walked over and stood stalking the feathery creatures nearby my bedroom window. Of course the criminal had fled. Well no longer that harsh I was hoping to see the bird for further enlightenment. I had envisioned one about the size of Big Bird with a bully speakerphone on the branch of the small tree closest to my resting place. I hung out for a few minutes hearing the distinctive calling in the distance. Then one small bird flew over and perched high in another tree above me. Remarkably she or he was the one as he auditioned vociferously for the part in my crime drama now turned life-improving mystery. It was still too dark straight above so I have yet to get a full visual on the Mine Bird that likes to wake me up and greet me in the morning.

The upshot of this experience for me is that I can change to meet conditions. Like the bird I can rise with excitement an hour before sunrise and go to bed an hour earlier each night. I, with God’s direction and my improved understanding, can transform and move an hour in my life from a sometimes difficult to maintain abstinence in the evening to the more productive for me morning hour.

Recognizing my feeling and emotion of resentment was the key clue that led me to this self-discovery that I can choose to change to meet conditions, whatever they are. What’s the most important thing in my life? Abstinence and the serenity, peace and joy that it brings for sure.

Where I feel resentment I will go seeking and surely find other opportunities to improve the God-given quality of my life. I am excited to do so.

The room is lighting up and so is my life. The sun has risen for today and I am ready to go an hour earlier than usual. This will be my new normal. Thank you my little bird friend!

Have a TROML Day Today!

Anonymous Andy

Your Personal Revivalist

Reference Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc, first published in April 1953, Step 4—“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” Page 47.

First Day of TROML by Frank & Ernest (Credit: Bob Thaves), we all mess up sometimes!

Here I am starting all over again but not from the same starting point.

I have to laugh at myself when I read the Frank and Ernest (by Bob Thaves) comic posted here next to my desk.

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life. But so was yesterday, and look how you messed that up.”

It’s true I did mess yesterday up. I slipped and eat sugar. I don’t have it in my home so I used the excuse of being out of eggs and needed to stop at the convenience store for them. Who buys eggs at a convenience store? And sugar? I do because I am a compulsive eater and have a disease that will slowly and surely kill me sooner than I want to leave this earth.

That’s the first step and I think I am truly accepting it for the very first time.

My only goal today is to be abstinent and eat only three good meals with nothing in between.

The rest I am turning over to God who is my Higher Power (HP). In TROML as in any Twelve Step program, your HP can be anything you choose it to be or have none at all.

Remember we are all alike, we are all human beings.

I hope to be the best me today and be abstinent.

If you would like to journey through life with me, please join me.

Have a TROML Day Today!

Anonymous Andy

Your Personal Revivalist

Don’t react unless you have to… a child in danger, the house is on fire or there is an accident with injury. Most times we don’t have to react especially to the words and the behavior of other people. After all can we really read their minds or know their intentions? Why not take some time to think and decide what our reaction, if any, should be? Isn’t a reaction an action in response whether it is delivered immediately or later at a more opportune time? Whose actions are we trying to mimic anyways? Our own true self or something we witnessed early in life or something we thought was real on television (remember those are paid actors and someone created the script… they might seem like real events but they are not!)

Being a writer can be a curse at times since if you write the words you have to think about each one. I am always seem to be thinking about storylines- the opening, the middle and the ending. People say things to me that come to them. Sometimes I take them as well orchestrated and definitive thoughts and I am trying to write the ending with a deadline. When I take other people’s thoughts literally and react to them it is a mistake on my part. People come to the realization it is not good for them to share their thoughts with me. When they don’t share with me I feel isolated instead of connected. So let’s let ideas and thoughts pop into our heads, not being sure where they come from, enjoy talking about them, and not draw any big conclusions. Okay?

There will always be time later to think and react, if needed. How many times do emergencies really happen in our lives after all? We like to make emergencies don’t we?

A thought is a thought. An idea simply an idea. Once we share a thought or idea, think about it and decide that it should be a plan, then we have something to work on, something to do. Otherwise let’s enjoy thoughts and ideas in a happy and fulfilled manner in the very moment they are shared!

Uh oh was that the smoke detector going off… got to go!

Have a TROML Day Today!

Anonymous Andy

Your Personal Revivalist