These personal stories come from members living with physical, sensory, or cognitive differences. Their journeys show that recovery is possible—no matter the challenges. With support, structure, and willingness, healing happens.
I Was Drowning
I had lost my eyesight five years previously. I was not at my worst physically, but I was emotionally. It took a teacher at school to share CEA-HOW with me for me to find out about our program. I was desperate. Inside, I was not doing well, even though outwardly I was not at my highest weight.
I felt like I was treading water in the middle of the ocean, and I was tired. I just wanted to stop treading. I knew I needed help. I knew that food for me was poison and addictive and deadly. There was no one there for me in my life, but I knew there had to be a group that would help.
I prayed to my Higher Power and I got an answer! So when my teacher told me about program, I had what we call the “gift of desperation.” I was willing to take good orderly direction.
I went to this very large meeting and no one stood up as a sponsor. The person who took me to the meeting said, “We are not leaving until you get a sponsor.” Meanwhile, a couple of well-meaning people came up to me and said, “We don’t know if you will be able to do this program.” “You have to be able to read and write.”
Then the friend came back and said, “Don’t listen to them, I got you a sponsor.” This sponsor helped me a great deal. She read to me from the Big Book and 12 and 12 and put it on cassette.
Also, at that time I was caring for my mother. She had major health issues immediately after I lost my eyesight. Between my mother and my sponsor, I was able to do my questions. I was part of. I performed. I was in the middle of the herd, protected.
As time went on, my sponsor changed. My current sponsor has been with me for the past twenty years. My mother’s health declined. She was no longer able to read to me. Then, other people stepped up to assist me with the program.
At this point, it was suggested that a Special Needs Committee was needed in CEA-HOW. I was terrified of being of service beyond the meeting level. Yet once again, I did not do service alone. There was always someone to guide me.
This is how I have been in this program for 21 years! There has always been someone to be there and guide me. I am no longer alone and you don’t have to be either!
This program has given me a fully rich life. I have been able to get through my mom’s last illness and death and began to live on my own for the first time for four years. I got married for the first time. I had an abstinent, glorious wedding and honeymoon. I am able to travel.
I have been able to give back to the program that was so freely given to me. So, please come join us and stay. If I can do it, you can too!
—A CEA-HOW Member in Los Angeles
Paula’s Story
CEA-HOW has helped me immensely. This program has helped me maintain my weight loss of 80 pounds in mostly a sane way. I lost my weight in another 12-step program, but I do not feel that I would have been able to maintain my weight for these last 9 years.
CEA-HOW is a very strong recovery program for which I am extremely grateful. I have become closer to my Higher Power and believe that God loves me unconditionally.
I am bipolar and I have Parkinson’s disease. CEA-HOW has such a wealth of love, nurturing, and support. I have been loved through so many issues related to my bipolar disorder. I cannot say how fortunate I am to have so many friends all over the country. This is a result of our outreach calls that we make to one another.
The Parkinson’s society says that one of the best ways to treat a chronic illness is to be part of a loving, supportive community. CEA-HOW has done that for me, for which I am eternally grateful.
Thank God for Fred S. and Rae Z, our co-founders. CEA-HOW’s structure and accountability make recovery from compulsive eating very possible for someone like me, despite my bipolar and Parkinson’s disease.
—Paula N.
Loretta’s Story
I have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome and fibromyalgia, which is also called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. I have been sick since Christmas time 1986.
At that time, I was a member of a different 12-step food program that did not have the structure of CEA-HOW. I respond well to healthy structure, which I find in our CEA-HOW program of recovery.
I was abstinent at the time of my illness and had been for 2 1/2 years, weighing and measuring 80% of my food, refraining from sugar, and eating only three meals a day. Through various circumstances, I lost that abstinence and with it any semblance of sanity and health that I had come to know.
My world slowly started to crumble, both from the physical illnesses and the loss of abstinence. I was like a ship without a rudder. Not only did my body weaken, tire, and contract infections easily, I was in severe pain much of the time. Days and nights often blended into each other. I became very depressed and anxious as well.
Without going into further details of the illness, I regained abstinence from compulsive eating and from the inability to eat for five years.
I attended my first HOW meeting in the summer of 1993. Eventually, CEA-HOW was born, and I entered it in 1995 or 1996. I again lost my abstinence to the physical illnesses in 1997.
God has blessed me with a recommitted CEA-HOW abstinence of 8 years and 8 months today.
Slowly, my life has gained a semblance of healthy abstinence, sanity, and purpose. On a daily basis, I wake up and look forward to the day. I start my day with gratitudes, the eleventh step guide on pages 86–88 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and then an early morning meeting.
My day is structured around working the seven tools and the twelve steps of CEA-HOW, and much of the time I am a fairly happy and free human being. Sometimes I am even joyful.
As I have increased my involvement with CEA-HOW service, I have come to feel part of the human race again. I have been given the grace to deal with people, including the medical profession, with a semblance of dignity and self-respect.
It’s taken time, however it is definitely happening. I structure my day around my three abstinent meals and insert life in between.
I have been blessed with a very powerful and available Higher Power upon whom I depend for decisions great and small and the ability to get through the most challenging weakness and ongoing pain that I have ever known.
I also treasure some invaluable friendships with other CEA-HOW members. I have also been blessed with the release of food compulsion and obsession for the last 8 years and 8 months.
The more involved with CEA-HOW I am, the greater the feeling that the food problem has been lifted, though I have been able to remember that it is only for this day, one day at a time.
Thank you, Higher Power, who has given me CEA-HOW, a way of life worth living and the wonderful people of the fellowship. It just keeps getting better, one day at a time.
—Loretta R., Ohio