The Entertainer

One of my favourite parts of our intergroup retreat was the "review", "entertainment", "variety show" or whatever else you call it, that we had on the Saturday night. I helped out with the writing and performance of several skits. Everyone loved them and thought they were hilarious. I want to put the scripts here:

I got a lot of inspiration from the television show "Starved" which was on late at nights in Australia at the same time as I started the program (odd or God?...A pretty big coincidence whatever the case). Apparently it only ran for a few episodes, but it was an absolutely awesome show. If you can get your hands on a DVD or an online version let me know. If you're offended by sexual references and things then don't watch it because it is quite risque, but otherwise it is amazing.

Script 1: Romance Gone Wrong:

Characters: Compulsive Eater, Fruitarian, Narrator

Compulsive Eater approaches Fruitarian infatuated and shy, like a lovesick puppy

Hi....um...I really really like you. I've never met anyone like you. Please...please, please, will you go out to dinner with me?

Fruitarian: in a snobby voice

Well you know I only date fruitarians....are you a fruitarian?

Compulsive Eater's face falls and they look horrified.

Errr...do fruitarinas still eat chocolate, pizza, KFC, ice cream and cheeseburgers? Because I haver to eat those.

Fruitarian: Er...in a word, No! ...But I do make a delicious, fruititious, nutritious, 110% fat free, zero-calorie vegan burger!

Compulsive Eater: Falls to their knees and shouts Oh my! I love you so much! Will you marry me? Your lifestyle totally enables my eating disorder!!!

Compulsive Eater and Fruitarian turn away from audience. Compulsive Eater stuffs padding in his/her clothes. Fruitarian puts on a wedding viel.

Narrator: 6 months later

Compulsive Eater: Angrily rips the veil off Fruitarian's head. What have you done to me, you liar!!! I've been eating a gazillion of your burgers every day. You said they were zero calorie 110% fat free so I should have been able to eat as many as I wanted. Now look what's happened to me! The wedding's off!! I never want to see you again!

Skit 2: Dietrette Patches
This one was inspired by the Nicorette ads I posted about previously and also by a Chindogu I saw once.

Characters: Compulsive Eater (name can be anything), Dietrette Salesperson, Cheerleader, Devil, OA Angel

Compulsive eater: Slumps down on the stage.
You know, I really am addicted to food. Beats the air with her fist I need to do something about it, now!

Dietrette Salesperson: Oh I have a wonderful solution for you. These new dietrette suhgar patches and this nose cover. Put your favourite foods in the nose cover and put on this patch, and you'll smell your favourite foods all the time- whilst also keeping your blood sugar up in that hyperactive range you've come to love. You can eat a salad and feel like you're eating five mudcakes. And it only costs $5 millioon! Imagine it...it will be like having your own personal cheerleader to help with weight loss....Hands a huge children's band-aid and a ridiculous loking fake nose to COE, who puts them on enthusiastically, then exits

Cheerleader: Enters stage in costume doing elaborate moves and chanting "No [COE's name], No!" "No [COE's name], no!"

Devil: Enters from other side of stage and places a bowl in front of COE's face, whispering Eat it! Eat it! Eat it

Cheerleader and Devil continue on either side of Compulsive Eater, who becomes increasingly distressed, clutching her nose and arm. Compulsive Eater then covers their ears and shouts desperately "NO! No! NO!!!"

OA Angel: Enters from the back of the audience, wearing an angel costume. Reaches out hand to COE and addresses them by name. It's alright Sally. I put my hand in yours and together we'll find freedom. Just say "Yes God Yes."

Skit 3: Apocalyptic Eating:
This one is all me. This is my mentality to a T

Characters: Compulsive Eater, Friend

Compulsive Eater: Stands in front of a backdrop picturing a massive pile of canned food of all types. Holds a pot and is frantically tipping cans into the pot, stirring and cooking

Friend: Walks in and surveys the scene. What on earth are you doing with all this canned desert....baked beans,, spam....and dog food!???

Compulsive Eater: Looks terrified. I'm preparing for the apocalypse! I told you before- tomorrow there's going to be a terrible disaster! The end of the worldas I know it. Slim chances of survival. I have to get ready!

Friend: Oooookay.....welkl for starters you never mentioned an apocalypse. Um...and you do realise that the advantage of canned food is sort of lost if you cook and eat it before the apocalypse actually happens?

Compulsive Eater: Not this apocalypse! This is the diet apocalypse. I have to eat as much as I can before the dreaded calorie count falls.

Skit 4:

This one was inspired directly by a Garfield cartoon.

Characters: Compulsive Eater, Scales

Scales: Stand in the centre of the stage. The person can be made to look like scales in any way you like. The person in our skit just used mime. Compulsive Eater Walks over to scales. They tip to one side

Compulsive Eater: You're fat

Scales: Look very distressed Am not.

Compulsive Eater: Are too!

Scales: Angrily Am not!

Compulsive Eater: Are too!

Scales: Scream Am NOT am NOT am NOT!!

Compulsive Eater: You can dish it out but you can't take it, can you?

Intergroup Retreat- Morning After

Lots of things happened on the Monday morning before breakfast at the intergroup retreat....
I wouldn’t know about them. I got out of bed, got dressed and rushed down to the main hall just in time for breakfast (who isn’t surprised I missed that? It’s amazing how effective a motivator food is to the compulsive eater). I was pretty ticked off that they put raisins in the porridge, since that was the item that was on my food plan for breakfast that morning. I don’t like raisins.

I had a good chat over breakfast to some people who were interested in Asperger’s/autism. As usual I did most of the talking. Learning to listen is going to be an important part of my recovery, I think. I also had a good chat to a lady who had a similar history of “never having been slim” before OA. There are so many OAers who weren’t that overweight to begin with, or who were yo-yo dieters. She was on a very restricted food plan because as she became abstinent she discovered heaps of food allergies. She pointed out the link that some people believe exists between food intolerances and autism.I know about that. I’m not supposed to eat Gluten and Casein. That means no wheat, oats, rye or dairy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that dairy and carbs tend to be big triggers for me,. But I’m trying to give up one food at a time. My first total eliminations were weetbix and ice cream. Besides, my psychiatrist is very scepitical of the food intolerance theories of autism. He is much less sceptical of the idea that I have a physical reaction to refined sugar and simple carbohydrates. Apparently that's fairly common in people with ADHD.

Now I have been committing to my sponsor daily that I will abstain from ice cream, chocolate, bread, sugar and white flour. The weetbix is also off the table, but it comes under the sugar thing I think. Anyways, I don’t eat weetbix. But at the meeting after breakfast I discovered that merely refraining from binge foods does not constitute abstinence. One of the veteran members said that “you mustn’t eat an abstinent meal compulsively” I can completely relate to that idea. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but it isn’t. For example, on my birthday this year, I thought that I was abstinent because I didn’t have any sugar or white flour. Now i know that was a huge achievement to get through the day like that. But it wasn’t abstinence. I was eating non-stop even if I wasn’t eating my so-called trigger foods. In fact, if I’m honest, I was bingeing. It was only a matter of time after that before I did break my sugar and white flour rules.

The fact is that abstinence is defined as “refraining from eating compulsively”. This means, whenever I eat for my own self-will and not God’s will, whenever i’m not submitting to the guidance of God and the program, whenever hte food is eaten selfishly not to nourish my body so I might better do God’s will, and whenever I’m failing to have “life in between meals”, constanntly thinking about the next meal instead of being present in the moment,-whenever I’m doing all these things I am not abstinent. That’s a hard definition to have, but it’s true. Lots of OA members shared that they still struggled with the freedom from the obsession. I don’t want to have that obsession for the rest of my life, to be a “dry drunk.” And yet that’s what I do. I do feel powerless against this obsession, but I find it hard to trust thqt God can relieve it.