NEW ARTICLE!
“Tradition 5: Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.”
Since February of 2020, tradition five seems like a message that has been hard to carry. Many of us have survived and were grateful for the strength we found in our HP and working the steps. However, we have witnessed many losses in our fellowship. Our local meeting list have been slashed in ½ and very few have made the transition back to F2F. If we did not go permanently virtual, our meeting attendance has dropped however if we did go permanently virtual, we welcomed people from all over the world and if we were lucky, they returned for more than just that one meeting. I have sponsored people who have shown me the miracle of recovery and I’ve never met them!
Before I physically entered my first OA meeting, I tried to join by logging into a virtual chat OA meeting – no video, no phone just a chat room! I believe I was eating ice cream at the time. I didn’t chat, just kept watching. I would return to the website again and again to stare at the 12 steps hoping that by reading them I would be able to stop eating. Trying to avoid connection with other humans, I kept at this insanity for a few more years until 2007. In April of that year, I was so desperate I went to a local meeting here in Cincinnati. People saw me for the first time. I witnessed other real compulsive overeaters. I could not hide behind my computer screen. They even tried to hug me – which I tried very hard to avoid for many weeks.
I am selfishly grateful for the zoom OA meetings…I’ve gone all over the world to attend meetings. I also met people in person for walks and after being vaccinated, I began to visit with fellows I hadn’t seen in a year. Tradition 5 asks us to carry the message, and sometimes the message doesn’t get thru our virtual path. Most of you know that many of our fellows are hiding behind that “photo” of themselves…they don’t want to be seen. Virtual meetings provide a way to connect to OA but also a way to stay more in denial and placate ourselves with feel good meetings with other people who share our disease.
I, as a newcomer, would be eating behind that screen or barely awake from a food coma. For those of us abstinent and recovered, don’t forget that F2F meetings is where we got recovery. We were finally able to be seen and had nowhere to hide. It’s our duty to help get some of our meetings back to in-person. Perhaps we keep virtual meetings, but we need more options for those still suffering. Yes, after 18 months, it does seem inconvenient to drive across town to attend a meeting. Yes, it seems like a lot of work to find a new location for our meeting, so why not take the easy route and stay virtual?
This is why not – according to Dr. Bob:
1. Sense of duty.
2. It is a pleasure.
3. Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.
4. Because every time I do it, I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.
Responsibility pledge: Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this I am responsible.
Yes, this is a go team- go blog post. When you feel it’s safe, grab another member and say, “let’s start a meeting”.
— Rachael W.