Always to extend the hand and heart of Overeaters Anonymous to all who share my compulsion—for this I am responsible.

Carrying the message to others simply means to unselfishly share our experience, our strength and our hope with them.

With the miraculous gift of recovery that is ours in OA comes the privilege and the responsibility of carrying the Twelve-Step message to other suffering compulsive overeaters. With a firm commitment to our own recovery, we stand ready to put our utmost efforts into serving others who still suffer from our common disease.

Carrying the message to others simply means to unselfishly share our experience, our strength and our hope with them. We look for opportunities in our daily lives to be of service, personally revealing to others how the OA  program has liberated us, how we’ve worked the Steps, how we’ve faced long-standing problems and how we’ve gained a new understanding about ourselves. Sometimes when we reach out, our motives may be misunderstood or our efforts unappreciated. When this happens we accept it and look for other opportunities to carry the message.

Understanding, love and hope for a new life are the gifts we have received in OA.

One of the greatest rewards of OA membership comes with passing on the hope of recovery to another compulsive overeater. Understanding, love and hope for a new life are the gifts we have received in OA. As part of our program, we freely give of ourselves, and by so doing, we discover a fundamental Twelve-Step principle—that our personal recovery depends on our willingness to share it with others.

With an understanding heart, we open ourselves to the needs of others regardless of sex, race, creed or depth of disease.

We aren’t authorities or advice-givers. We are but “trusted servants,” choosing to share how we’ve moved from the deep pain of our disease into the light of recovery on our Twelve-Step path. As compulsive overeaters we know all too well the pain and humiliation each of us has suffered at the hands of our disease. With an understanding heart, we open ourselves to the needs of others regardless of sex, race, creed or depth of disease. We ell others what happened to us as a result of working the Steps—that as we came to admit and accept our powerlessness and became willing to turn our lives over to a power greater than ourselves, we experienced relief from our compulsion. In this way we demonstrate to those who still suffer that there is hope for recovery in Overeaters Anonymous.

No matter how long we’ve been in OA—days, weeks or years—we can extend a helpful hand to someone in need just as others on the Twelve-Step path have done for us. When we share our experience, strength and hope, we affirm that our recovery is the result of the help we receive from a power greater than ourselves which keeps us sane and free from the disease one day at a time. A Higher Power is there for all of us as we accept the invitation to carry the message of our spiritual awakening and to practice the principles of the Twelve Steps in all our affairs.

No matter how long we’ve been in OA—days, weeks or years—we can extend a helpful hand to someone in need.

The Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.

How to find OA

Visit the OA Web site at oa.org, or contact the World Service Office at 505-891-2664. Many local telephone directories also include listings for Overeaters Anonymous.

© 1990, 1994 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. All rights reserved.

Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. World Service Office
Location: 6075 Zenith Court NE, Rio Rancho, NM 87144, USA
Mailing address: PO Box 44727, Rio Rancho, NM 87174-4727, USA
Telephone: +1 505-891-2664