From the 2020 Spring Issue of Freedom From Bondage Print/PDF Newsletter
Old timers say that in the early days, “We only had the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book.” It seems hard to imagine that OA had nothing of its own to explain the program or guide members onto recovery. It turns out that in the beginning, OA had literature that did not use AA’s steps and traditions. That change came later. Compared to Alcoholic Anonymous, OA had to struggle with a different problem. Members still had to eat while they tried define what it meant to be abstinent from compulsive overeating.
In her book BEYOND OUR WILDEST DREAMS, Rozanne S. told a rocky, but encouraging, story of how OA really got started. Rozanne recalls in 1960
she was a rebellious newcomer with no knowledge of what the AA Twelve Steps were about. She wrote her own Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous and The Twelve Unifying Rules because she thought she could do a better job than AA. These first steps and rules reflected the diet mentality, common in most compulsive eaters. The first piece of literature, a four-page booklet explaining OA, included Rozanne’s revised OA Step and Rules (not Traditions). Also included in the booklet was an introduction and a history of the OA organization, which was less than a year old.
Rozanne later worked with a sponsor more familiar with AA, who explained to Rozanne the value of surrender and dependence on a Higher Power. Other members who had experience with AA also felt that stronger spiritual language needed to be used. In February, 1962 a meeting of nine women, representing six Los Angeles meetings, voted to change the OA Steps to read exactly like the AA Steps substituting food and COE for alcohol and alcoholic.
The literature handed to newcomers to evolved from that first pamphlet. Individual meetings developed their own newcomer pamphlets. The desire to give people guidance continued to center around the “diet” people should use. Some favored very structured programs of eating, while others allowed members to develop a plan based upon advice of a health care professional. Over the years factions developed in the fellowship, mostly centered around the the use of low-carbohydrate diets. The meetings in favor of carbohydrate limitations published specific food and meal guides that members were required to follow if they wished to attend and share at those meetings.
Theses diets were printed on colored paper. Different forms of the low-carbohydrate diets were printed on lots of different colored paper, whatever was available. Later one low-carbohydrate food plan was published on gray paper and was known as the “Gray Sheet”.
Many “regular” OA members objected that excluding members was against OA principles and Traditions. If a member who had been following a different plan came to one of the carbohydrate abstainers’ meetings, they were told they are not abstinent and could not share.
In 1966 the OA National Conference approved the pamphlet “To the Newcomer”. The pamphlet said that in OA abstinence was abstaining from compulsive eating. An eating plan was a method by which one learned to abstain. It also stated that OA does not endorse any particular eating plan. Meetings still remained autonomous, but no one could prevent anyone from attending a meeting based on food plans.
The issue of OA approved food plans continues today. We now have the OA approved pamphlet “Dignity of Choice” which helps compulsive eaters find a way of developing a plan of eating.
World Service Organization today has a robust process to develop and revise the OA literature. Publications are carefully reviewed and reflect all the OA traditions, polices and principles. All members can rely on Overeater Anonymous approved literature to support their recovery.
— B. E.