[Walter Mitty]

It's ironic how many people (and I include myself in this) spend their lives sidestepping pain - yet the sidestepping eventually becomes more painful than facing up to the original pain.

[Tom White]

It's ironic how many people (and I include myself in this) spend their lives sidestepping pain - yet the sidestepping eventually becomes more painful than facing up to the original pain.

That's why rock bottoms are considered so important; 12 Step recovery organisations are the only lot that really understand that.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  Pain is what helps the student to be ready. 

[Walter Mitty]

It's ironic how many people (and I include myself in this) spend their lives sidestepping pain - yet the sidestepping eventually becomes more painful than facing up to the original pain.

That's why rock bottoms are considered so important; 12 Step recovery organisations are the only lot that really understand that.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  Pain is what helps the student to be ready. 

Indeed - I'm delighted to see that you got your act togther too; you were still drinking the one and only time we met.  A very friendly drinker as I recall taking the p out of Ian Giles.  In case you're wondering, it was in that pub some years ago (near Birmingham I think).  That was actually fun even though I saw it all through lemonade tinted glasses

[Gerald Ash]

Slight problem with the advice from those videos, I`m diabetic so I have to be careful.
 My sugars are out of control which is a large contributory factor.
  I`m afraid it`s the good old three meals a day and no snacks. The theory is I eat the calories that would sustain my weight that I need to be. Get familiar with that and fight the urges to binge and all should be fine.
Easy to say but I`m trying to think of ways to stop the inevitable boredom and temptation.
 Calorie counting is an absolute pain so I intend to make meals and count the calories to get an idea and carry on from that.
 The simple fact of not eating takeaways and snacking should be a head start.

[Tom White]

Easy to say but I`m trying to think of ways to stop the inevitable boredom and temptation.

And that's the real problem of addiction.  Being restless, irritable, and discontented.  I always thought that the problem with being sober was that you're sober, all of the time.  It's plain old boring - which is like British understatement.

In the early days, I did stuff like find a sponsor, go through the 12 Steps (which OA does too), go to meetings; I even went to meditation classes.  Meditation is pretty routine nowadays for relapse prevention.

The idea is to transform something negative (just not doing the addictive behaviour - it feels negative), into something positive.  If OA is like AA, it's a program of ACTION - doing stuff - not sitting on our arses feeling bored and sorry for ourselves (though I did plenty of that too).