Saturday, July 7, 2012

OA Conflicting It's Self

The are competing philosophy in OA, and some portions include conflicting views. Consider the AA concept of "praying only for knowledge of his will for me" verses the OA concept of an action plan. OA action plan, to me sound like self will run riot.  Are these two concepts compatible or is there some cognitive dissonance here? Your onions would be appreciated, as this has been a issue in my mind.  



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is just my opinion, but here goes:

I'm one of those people who believes that recovery is action-based and addiction is reaction-based. Recovery is a life of free-willed choice, whereas addiction is slavery to a terrifying mindset which drives one (okay, me) to a drug like excess fat and sugar just to numb out and relieve myself of that constant agitation for a while.

The nine tools are part of that "These can help you" stuff. And, as a group representative in my local intergroup when the Action Plan was being proposed? I argued it should NOT be made a tool. We are not a diet and calories club. Yes, exercise helps with physical and mental recovery. But it can also become an obsession, too. We're in it to find a solution to the addiction of food, not go to a National Diet Program Slimming Camp and suffer starvation and obsessive exercise so they can sell seats at meeting.

Working the steps up to Step Seven (though I'm struggling between One and Two), that step-based recovery led to physical weight loss. And when it became about the weight loss? Anorexia was waiting.

The program isn't about losing weight to me. It's about the 12 Promises that we can live a sane life outside of addiction to our substance of choice. That's it, and if taking walks makes one work the steps better? Then that action plan worked.