Starting an OA meeting in your area is easy.
The World Service Office is here to support you in your efforts to carry the message of hope and recovery. This form of service will add to your own program of recovery! All you need is a desire to stop eating compulsively and the willingness to start the meeting.
Order the “Starter Kit,” item #730 at US$20 (plus shipping and handling).
The kit contains materials designed to help your meeting get off to a strong and organized start. It includes Where Do I Start?, the Suggested Meeting Format, and a selection of our pamphlets. Please note that your local service body may offer these materials at a lower cost.
Purchase the OA Handbook for Members, Groups, and Service Bodies, item #120 at $13 (plus shipping and handling).
The OA Handbook is a valuable resource filled with ideas to help you share information about your meeting within your community and to guide your group as it grows. The Handbook is also available in e‑book format.
Translated Resources for Non-English Speakers
For non‑English speakers, the World Service Office provides a variety of digital resources in multiple languages. To view the available materials, please refer to the Digital Files in Translation list and the “ONLINE” format documents in the Document Library. Contact the World Service Office to request translated files.
Find a meeting space.
Be sure to explore churches, community centers, schools, libraries, and hospitals as potential meeting locations. Each group should be self‑supporting, so if the facility you select does not charge rent, your group may wish to consider making a voluntary contribution.
For virtual meetings, numerous audio and video conferencing platforms offer free or low‑cost options, making it easy to host and participate in virtual meetings.
We encourage you to complete this step as soon as your meeting begins so it can be added to our Find a Meeting database. This ensures that individuals searching for a meeting in your area are able to locate you quickly and easily.
Please remember to notify the World Service Office of any changes related to your meeting. A contact name (first name only) and phone number are essential, as they provide newcomers and traveling members with a way to obtain additional information. Every meeting must have a designated contact person and phone number.
If no one in your group is willing to serve as the contact, you may instead list the name and phone number of your intergroup or service board, should your meeting choose to affiliate with one.
We strongly suggest that your group affiliate with an intergroup or national service board.
An intergroup or national service board is composed of several groups within a geographic area or a virtual community. Its purpose is to serve and represent those groups while safeguarding the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and Twelve Concepts of OA Service. Affiliation provides your group with access to this support network.
As your meeting grows, your group will eventually need an intergroup or national service board representative who can attend board meetings and participate actively in the OA community in your area. During the early stages of your group’s development, the intergroup or national service board can be an important source of guidance and encouragement.
If you need help locating an intergroup or national service board, please contact the World Service Office for assistance.
Check out other meetings!
If there are no OA meetings in your area and you are not yet very familiar with OA, you may want to consider taking a “field trip” with other potential members to visit more established meetings outside your community. Traveling together can be enjoyable, uplifting, and beneficial to your recovery, and it offers a valuable opportunity to experience how other groups function.
These visits are also helpful to the groups you meet. Once your own meeting is established, they may choose to return the favor by attending and supporting your group as it begins to grow.
Get the word out!
A helpful next step is to review our free guide Let People Know about Your Meeting! For more detail and instruction, you can purchase the Public Information and Professional Outreach Service Manual. This resource focuses on carrying the message within your community and includes many practical suggestions and examples. It is listed as item #765 and is available for US $20.
You are welcome to contact us at any time at info@oa.org or 1-505-891-2664. Thank you for carrying the message of recovery.
Introduction
“Our way of life, based on these Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, has brought us physical, emotional and spiritual healing that we don’t hesitate to call miraculous. What works for us will work for you too.” —read the full Introduction to the Twelve Steps.
The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous
- We admitted we were powerless over food—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- 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.
- 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.
Spiritual Principles in the Twelve Steps
A spiritual principle is associated with each of the Twelve Steps.
Listen to these podcasts to learn more:
- The Importance of Working all 12 Steps
- In All Our Affairs
- How and Why does a 12-Step Program Work for Compulsive Eating
For an in-depth study of the Twelve Steps, read The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition available from our bookstore.
As we work the Overeaters Anonymous Twelve Step program of recovery from compulsive eating, we have a number of Tools to assist us. We use these Tools—a plan of eating, sponsorship, meetings, telephone, writing, literature, action plan, anonymity, and service—on a regular basis, to help us achieve and maintain abstinence and recovery from our disease.
A Plan of Eating
As a Tool, a plan of eating helps us abstain from compulsive eating, guides us in our dietary decisions, and defines what, when, how, where, and why we eat. (See the pamphlet A New Plan of Eating for more information.) This Tool helps us deal with the physical aspects of our disease and achieve physical recovery.
Sponsorship
We ask a sponsor to help us through all three levels of our program of recovery: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Find a sponsor who has what you want and ask that person how they are achieving it.
Meetings
Meetings give us an opportunity to identify our common problem, confirm our common solution, and share the gifts we receive through this Twelve Step program. In addition to face-to-face meetings, OA offers telephone and other types of virtual meetings that are useful in breaking through the deadly isolation caused by distance, illness, or physical challenges.
Telephone
Many members call, text, or email their sponsors and other OA members daily. Telephone or electronic contact also provides an immediate outlet for those hard-to-handle highs and lows we may experience.
Writing
Putting our thoughts and feelings down on paper, or describing a troubling or joyous incident, helps us better understand our actions and reactions in a way that is often not revealed by simply thinking or talking about them.
Literature
We read OA-approved literature, which includes numerous books, study guides, pamphlets, wallet cards, and selected Alcoholics Anonymous texts. All this material provides insight into our disease and the experience, strength, and hope that there is a solution for us.
Action Plan
Creating an action plan is the process of identifying and implementing attainable actions to support our individual abstinence and emotional, spiritual, and physical recovery. This Tool, like our plan of eating, may vary widely among members and may need to be adjusted as we progress in our recovery.
Anonymity
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities (Tradition Twelve). Anonymity assures us that only we, as individual OA members, have the right to make our membership known to others. Anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television, and other public media of communication means that we never allow our faces or last names to be used once we identify ourselves as OA members (Tradition Eleven). Within the Fellowship, anonymity means that whatever we share with another OA member will be respected and kept confidential. What we hear at meetings should remain there.
Service
Any form of service—no matter how small—that helps reach a fellow sufferer adds to the quality of our own recovery. Members who are new to OA can give service by attending meetings, sharing, and putting away chairs. All members can also give service by putting out literature, welcoming newcomers, hosting a virtual meeting, or doing whatever is needed to help the group. Members who meet specified requirements can give service beyond the group level by serving at the intergroup, service board, region, or world service level.
As OA’s Responsibility Pledge states: “Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this I am responsible.”
See the full Tools of Recovery pamphlet for more information.
OA Responsibility Pledge
Always to extend the hand and heart of OA
to all who share my compulsion;
for this I am responsible.
OA Board-approved
©1989 … 2011 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. All rights reserved. Rev. 6/2022.
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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
