This speaker has been recorded at a meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous. For more information, visit our website, www.aeainfo.org.

My name's Lynnette and I'm an addictive eater. It's really good to be here. This afternoon I've been thinking about speaking and it's made me think about my old life that I had before I came here and, that's quite an experience, an incredible thing to be able to think back to, a life that I lived for 40 years, in this way.

Since then to have a very different life today. And I was thinking about just painting a picture of what my life was like. And I thought about when I was in my mid twenties and I had my own home, I'd recently separated from my addict boyfriend who I'd been with for a long time, six years.

And, I lived in my home, had inherited his two children as well, who lived with me for the next five years. But at that time, life had been difficult up until then. I had hoped that I could love him . And in the end it was a difficult life for me.

It wasn't how I hoped things would be or thought things should be. And it wasn't okay by me. But I couldn't do anything to fix it other than leave. And I did have a very strong kind of drive for things to be okay. But I battled a lot because I couldn't change things. So mid twenties a couple of years on I started to socialise and friends and I went out to a nightclub. I was going to say that, I had stopped weighing myself o ver a hundred kilo then. And I had lost weight, after making the changes that I was trying to do, I had lost some weight.

I was out, socialising at a nightclub and a group of women were very pleased to see me, and they came up to me and asked me to join their rugby league club.

Not as a halfback, I don't think it was, a strange thing except that, I had possibly a look that looked like I might be useful in this team. And part of it was I was fighting to survive. And I was thinking back about this time in my life, I was trying to do things that would, help me.

I used to go for massages. I used to go to acupuncture. I remember this day having acupuncture, I didn't know much about it, but I put these needles in and he put this needle in somewhere in my ankle. And this bolt of lightning came out of my toe and it hurt, and I thought he'd done something wrong, but it was just that incredible level of stuff inside me, there was no peace. And I was trying to think that I somehow feared, I want to say it's getting sick, but I didn't worry about disease or whatever, but I knew that I wasn't well and that I was dying inside. I was somehow killing myself with this life that I couldn't control, and I couldn't stop, and I couldn't, change. And basically I had the next 15 years still trying to change things.

I went to counseling. I did 10 years of personal growth courses, just trying to, find peace and nothing changed. Like I had a long list of what was wrong, what was unjust, and who I blamed and it had been, for many years my mother, other people along the way. And of course then I had a new relationship and new levels of problems and focus of what I thought was going to help me, changing jobs or living situations or stress levels. And I was married by then and it turned out I couldn't make him how I wanted him to be either.

And all the while I couldn't stop eating, but I knew that I couldn't change that. And probably a couple of years before I came here, I had given up, you know what? That I was going to be able to fix myself, but I had nothing in front of me saying, here, this is what you do. This is what I've done. I thought coming here was weak and pathetic and I didn't want to come here. But you know, here I was w ith nothing better to do and desperate.

So I came here and suddenly in front of me were people who spoke about being just as I was. And, but not only that, they were saying they weren't like it anymore and that they hadn't done it. That very clearly, t hey'd come here in the similar kind of states, and they, kept pointing to the steps.

It was always that, this was the way out and they were talking about not just a little bit better at the moment. They were talking about the problem being removed and that it was a gift and that it was available to me and one of the steps being that they needed to pass on what they'd been given to get well themselves.

And for that reason, I felt I could come here and I could stay and I could ask for help. I didn't have to know how to do this thing. And I really wanted that. Somehow it was all okay for that to happen, and I was guided with what I needed to do with the background faith or knowing that it was going to happen.

I could have what people here had. I was remembering today that, honestly, like two or three days after getting a sponsor and starting with a food plan and for the first time in my life, not eating within two or three days, I wrote in my book, oh my God has it always been the food that's driving me because I had never been off the food in my life. And it was just such a big relief and change inside me that I felt it i nstantly. And I had no concept of , if somebody had said me to me before, if I do this, and this you'll be sober. That word would've meant nothing to me. But it suddenly did. And it was this relief and this peace that I had always wanted but had never known. And so here I was with this chance to live sober, but I still had this life of, people, places and things, and all my ideas of how things should be, and they still weren't how I thought they shouldn't be. And that's what I've needed a lot help with. But the thing is that now, I'm not tackling that on my own. I have an understanding and an experience of having a Higher Power, not being on my own, of being able, to not do things but do things and that's what I still have because I have tried everything within my power. I've mothered my little heart out.

I've tried and being the wife that I can be. But not everything is how I think it should be. You know, I struggle and I battle with things on a daily basis. Thankfully, also coming in here there was a big relief for both my husband and I because I was able to stop focusing on him as being my problem or what was going to, make things better.

Here I have just absolutely been encouraged every step of the way, every time I've talked about it, my daily struggles always about what I need to do to be, cleaning house, what I need to do about my behavior, my thinking, my actions. And thank goodness because, it's taken a long time for me to let go of t hinking that I need to change other people to be okay.

Next month my husband and I have been together 30 years and last month we've run a business together for 20 years. I was thinking this afternoon, if I say some of the people I work with are sometimes unreasonable and sometimes unhelpful, I've had to deal with that on a daily basis at times. And, I can't do anything about anybody else. And there's some people that, the old job contract and employment laws, some people that don't listen to any of that, you know. So I've had to learn how to live and I used to go hammer and nails about what I thought was wrong or how things should be done. And somehow not because I'm out there living this life on my own. I am out there, living with my Higher Power, with my sponsor, with my meetings, with everybody, in this program who shares with me how they are living. And it's changed for me. It just started with often my outrage about a situation. And, the reaction I would get back from my sponsor would be oh he reacts like that. Or, that passes or, that happens and then this happens and it's just actually to this point, these days where these things that happen just the same that I don't even have to do anything about because I know myself that it passes or this will probably happen or if I'm thinking about trying this, I know that absolutely doesn't get me anywhere and doesn't feel good and doesn't work. So it's different because it's focused on me and not on other people. And yeah, that's a relief. I was thinking about in the big book here about very early on I just heard this bit in 'Working with others' on 98. " Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth, job or no job, wife or no wife. We simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God. And at my hardest times, that's where I've had to go, is to God.

And so burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone, the only condition is that he trust in God and clean house. I always knew that he can get well, he can get sober. He can get happy regardless of anyone.

And so actually today I do just have this feeling inside of me that no matter what I get to face in this life because I don't know what circumstances I'm going to face that I'm going to be okay.

That I have what I need to get through. I also thought about it'll be okay in the end and if it's not okay, it's not the end, it doesn't have to be how I think it ought to be. And I look forward to every day. And I do trust that I'll be given what I need, and I'm very grateful because it's very different to how I used to live.