The nature of addiction is that will constantly tell you that you’re in control when you are – in actuality – not in control at all. For a few years before I came into A.A., I would say to myself “I can quit whenever I want to, I just don’t want to!” Right…

How many times have I had sponsees say to me, “I ate because”… and I stop them right there. I’m sure the reason they are about to expound upon is a perfectly understandable one. The truth is much simpler, I tell them: “You ate because you are a compulsive overeater! Think about it for a moment. Whatever it is you have as the excuse… did it make you want to run out and place a bet? No! Why? Because you’re not a compulsive gambler!”

Like alcoholism, compulsive eating runs in families. When you’ve had the disease of compulsive eating your whole life, and you are surrounded by other compulsive eaters, you lose sight of the fact that other people don’t react to troubling incidents, emotional anguish, or even elation with food.

Also, intelligence has little to do with it. I’m a pretty smart guy, but when it came to my disease, I might as well have been a newborn babe. That’s the strange paradox of the disease: often the smarter you are, the easier it is convince yourself that you’ll figure out the solution. As is said in program, “there’s nobody too dumb to find recovery, but there are a lot of people too smart.” Also, the more you know about the disease, the more convoluted the head games have to get. Since I knew a lot about the disease – especially after I had been around the program for a while – the reasoning for my eating became downright labyrinthine.

That… right there… that type of thinking is the disease!