Media Category: Tools

Imagine this: You are still suffering from compulsive eating or compulsive food behaviors and you’re desperately searching online for a solution. How great would it be if an OA story of recovery popped up as your first search result?

This is the inspiration behind Lifeline: Stories of Recovery at lifeline.oa.org, where we can broadcast our experience, strength, and hope—both to attract newcomers to the Fellowship and inspire OA members as they work their programs of recovery. By giving service to Lifeline, you will not only provide your share to OA members but also improve OA’s ability to attract newcomers online.

Our Requirements

1. Are you an OA member who is abstinent and working your program?
2. Are you willing to give service by creating an original work focused on your personal recovery through the Twelve Steps of OA?
3. Are you willing to release the rights of your original work to OA so that we may edit your story, make it anonymous, and share it on the internet?

If you said yes, then we’d love for you to send us your story!

What We Publish

Put simply, we accept any work that demonstrates personal recovery and abstinence from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors as the result of working the Twelve Steps of OA. Your work can be:

• Writing, including poetry
• Recorded audio or video
• Photography, illustration, or animation

For written works that are not poetry, we prefer at least three hundred words. Works that are 1,500 to 2,000 words is ideal, and even longer pieces are welcome. For audio and video, three to seven minutes is a good rule of thumb, but your piece is welcome regardless of length.

If you submit a photograph or illustration, we recommend you include some written or recorded commentary to better relate the image to your OA recovery.

To submit your work, go to lifeline.oa.org and use the online form.

Non-English Submission

Our primary purpose is to carry the message, no matter the language, but just as we do with English-language submissions, we must ensure the OA message is clear and correct in every language. Therefore, all non-English submissions must first be reviewed and approved by a registered OA service body, such as a national or language service board, that can support a Traditions review and edit your submission for grammar and style in your language. If your Lifeline work is not in English, we encourage you to contact the primary service body for your language and ask for a Lifeline review. If no review committee exists, maybe you can help get one started!

Suggestions for Creating Your Share

If you like, include your first name at the beginning of your piece. “My name is ____.” Don’t include any other personally identifying information or identifiable pictures of yourself or other members (especially considering facial recognition technology). Share how long you’ve been abstinent and whether you are maintaining or working toward a healthy body weight.

As you create your share for Lifeline, think about someone who is still suffering and, today, is just like you were before you found OA. What parts of your story are important for them to hear? If that person were searching online for a solution to their problem, what words or phrases might they use that are also a part of your story? There will be plenty of space to focus on the solution, so be sure to include enough of the problem in your share so that this newcomer might find your story online and identify. Include descriptions of your physical, emotional, and spiritual states before you found OA.

Describe what happened after you found OA. What important or memorable things do you want to say about your journey of working the Twelve Steps of OA to find abstinence and recovery? What was it like to change physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

How has OA changed your life? What is it like now to be abstinent and living in recovery? Share your joys!

Sharing as Service

Lifeline also welcomes shares that give service to the Fellowship—for example, by examining or celebrating aspects of your personal journey through the Twelve Steps and how you have experienced your gifts of abstinence and recovery. You can give service to OA members in any of these suggested ways:

• Observations about how these aspects of program have related to your recovery:
  • Twelve Steps
  • Twelve Traditions
  • Nine Tools of Recovery
  • Forty-two Spiritual Principles
  • Twelve Concepts of OA Service
• Shares that give your Twelfth Step Within, providing hope to those in our Fellowship who are still suffering
• Relating your positive OA experiences in a lively, colorful, or humorous way
• Addressing your difficult OA experiences in a constructive, nonjudgmental, and nonpreaching manner
• Describing how your OA program has helped you resolve a conflict, improved your self-esteem, or made your life manageable
• Sharing your experience and questions as a newcomer
• Giving a positive history or account of OA in your service area

There are many ways to give service through sharing. For more ideas, see the More Suggested Topics list below.

Maintaining Our Traditions

Lifeline: Stories of Recovery is committed to upholding the Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous. Before you submit your share, we suggest you, your sponsor, and/or OA friend review your work for Tradition issues. OA world service will also edit your work if possible or may reject your work if Tradition issues are found.

More about Online Anonymity

Carrying the message online means upholding a higher standard for anonymity. We are sharing our recovery via public media, and the risks of breaking anonymity on the internet are different. For example, voice recognition technology could be used to expose an OA speaker’s identity if that member also has a prominent online presence outside of the rooms.

In your share, you should do your best to obscure personal details that could give away who you are, what you do outside of the rooms, and where you live or visit. This also applies to anyone you reference in your share, such as a family member. This is especially important if you record audio or video because it won’t be as easy for the World Service Office (WSO) to make editorial changes.

Anonymity and File Metadata

Be advised that the software we use for text, images, audio, and video will almost always add metadata to a file to describe who, what, where, when, and how the file was created. Your software may be configured to add your full name and GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) to the file you create. If it is not deleted, that metadata will be accessible to anyone who views the file.

To protect your anonymity, WSO staff will review your file and delete personally identifying metadata before your work is circulated internally for editing and review.

After You Submit Your Work

After you submit your work using the online form, WSO staff will file your submission. When it is selected for publication, WSO staff will edit your work, as needed, to meet our publication standards and will add the attribution (your name/initials, state/province, country or “Anonymous”) you have selected in the online form. Additionally, your work may be enhanced. For example, if you send a written share, your work may also be used to create an audio recording or a video. Enhancements will be created by WSO staff or by a WSO-led team of OA members giving service through their talents with digital arts. If you are interested in joining this team, contact the World Service Office.

You will receive notification from the WSO when your work is published.

More Suggested Topics

We invite you to write first from your heart. You may also find inspiration among these suggested topics. We recommend you write directly to the topic you have chosen and relate this topic to your personal recovery from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors through working the Twelve Steps of OA.

Other Topics You Can Relate to Your Recovery

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
© 2022 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. All rights reserved. Rev. 5/2023

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

(Committed to Action for Recovery, Encouragement, and Support)

Correspondence Program Guidelines

The OA C.A.R.E.S. correspondence program was created to establish a network of support for compulsive eaters who are incarcerated. By describing how OA has affected your life, you can help deliver OA’s Twelve Step program of recovery directly to those in need. Thank you for volunteering to share the very essence of our program—one compulsive overeater reaching out to another.

These guidelines have been developed to help facilitate your correspondence by suggesting ways to adhere to OA Principles and comply with special requirements established by the participating institutions. Please adhere to these guidelines in all your correspondence.

Your letter should share your experience, strength, and hope about the problems associated with compulsive eating. When discussing your experience, remember to focus on the solutions you found by working the OA program. The hope of our program lies in the recovery we have found through the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. The program can work no matter what our life circumstances.

Keep Your Focus on OA

You may be in other Twelve Step programs, but you have been selected as a volunteer for the OA C.A.R.E.S. program because you are a compulsive overeater. Keep it simple.

Participants will be assigned to individuals of the same sex. The inmate you are corresponding with may discuss issues seemingly unrelated to compulsive overeating, such as their convictions, legal matters, or medical problems. Keep in mind that we cannot solve these problems and should never give advice on any of these subjects. Your response should address these issues, if at all, only in the context of working our Twelve Step program.

The following are some useful suggestions for OA C.A.R.E.S. volunteers:

Remember

OA members in correctional facilities are compulsive eaters simply looking for the hope of recovery.

• Use your sense of humor. Be lighthearted.
• Be courteous. Respond to letters within two weeks.
• Write legibly.
• Be mindful of Traditions Six, Eight, and Twelve.*
• Tell your story (what you were like, what happened, and what you are like now).
• Relate your experience. Describe how you work through your problems thanks largely to the growth you have experienced in the OA Twelve Step program.

Keep the Following Cautions in Mind

You are embarking on a Twelfth Step relationship with a person whom you have not met, who may be unwell in several areas, and who may be using this relationship for motives unrelated to recovery. It is important that you be cautious and alert. We would like to hear from you about your experience so we can help others.

For your protection, all correspondence between the inmate and you will be handled by the Member Services Department at the OA World Service Office (WSO). The Member Services Department will not personally identify you to the inmate. You will write to the inmate and mail the letter to the WSO. Letters should be signed only with your initials. Do not reveal your name or any other personal information, such as where you live, your marital status, or the names of family members. Use universal identifiers, such as “my relative,” “my friend,” or other general descriptions. In sharing your experience, strength, and hope, avoid sharing details that might be too identifiable. While you are anonymous to the correctional facility, OA is not. OA received clearance to communicate with the inmate, so it is essential that you not do anything that could reveal your identity or jeopardize OA’s clearance. Member Services will forward your letter to the inmate, and any response from the inmate will be sent to you in care of the WSO. Never communicate with an inmate without going through the WSO.

Certainly, you will want to avoid being used for purposes other than Twelve Step work. To offer to carry messages to anyone or to contact family members, a third party, or the prison administration on the inmate’s behalf might hinder rather than help the inmate’s recovery or might breach the institution’s regulations. Doing so might compromise you and the good reputation of OA. Breaches of institutional regulations may result in discipline, or even criminal penalties. Never send anything, such as food, money, gifts, or cigarettes, to the inmate. We suggest that you stick to the program of recovery. That is, after all, the only thing you can provide: the message of recovery through the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous.

• Tradition Six: An OA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the OA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
• Tradition Eight: Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
• Tradition Twelve: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

 

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
©1991, 2002, 2010, 2018, 2019 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. Rev. 5/2023. All rights reserved.
#570

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

Reprinted from Lifeline, Ask-It Basket, August 1999

Question

What is cross talk? Are all responses and comments to another person at a meeting cross talk? Is thanking someone for something he or she shared cross talk? Or is it cross talk only if the comments are negative?

Answer

OA literature does not specifically define cross talk. The Suggested Meeting Format states: “As you share your experience and strength in OA, please also share your hope. Please confine your sharing to your experience with the disease of compulsive eating, the solution offered by OA and your own recovery from the disease, rather than just the events of the day or week. If you are having difficulties, share how you use the program to deal with them. If you need to talk more about your difficulties and seek solutions, we suggest you speak to your sponsor and other members after the meeting.”

Discouraging cross talk provides the freedom in OA to say what is difficult to express elsewhere. Shares not focusing on your own experience may constitute cross talk, including comments in support of or opinions in response to another person’s share. Such responses are not sharing your experience; they are offering your view of others in the room.

However, members do frequently share situations or describe feelings common to the group. Members want to hear about others’ recovery, to see how others have dealt with similar situations and to know that they are not alone. Your intentions and tone determine whether responding to another’s situation is the best way to share your experience, strength and hope. Clearly this is a gray area, and since you never know how others will interpret your remarks, sometimes it is best not to comment.

It is especially difficult not to respond immediately to a member in pain. A loving hug, a pat on the shoulder or a talk with the person after the meeting is the best expression of support.

Interrupting is also considered cross talk. Interruptions may disrupt the meeting and deny the speaker adequate opportunity to share. To prevent this, many groups ask members to raise their hands for recognition before sharing.

If cross talk troubles your group, request a steering committee meeting to discuss the problem. Consider each member’s personal definition of cross talk. Ultimately, the group’s consensus on what constitutes cross talk in its meeting should apply.

—Members of the Board of Trustees provide answers to these questions

Statement on Approved Literature

(Business Conference Policy Manual, 2010a [Amended 2012, 2023])

“In accordance with our Traditions, we suggest that OA groups maintain unity and honor our Traditions by using, selling, and displaying only approved books and pamphlets at their meetings. This includes OA Conference- and board-approved literature; AA Conference-approved books, booklets, and all future editions thereof, with original edition copyright 2010 or earlier; and locally produced OA literature. Although groups may choose to focus on only one piece of OA-approved literature, individuals and groups are encouraged to use any and all OA-approved literature. Locally produced literature must be developed according to OA Guidelines for Locally Produced Literature, and should be used with the greatest discretion. Local literature should be considered temporary and discontinued when OA literature approved for general use is available to cover the topic.”

Statement on Literature That Is Not OA-Approved

(Business Conference Policy Manual, 1993b [amended 2010])

“It is the group conscience of the 1993 World Service Business Conference that the sale or display of literature other than OA-approved literature and AA conference-approved literature (as described in WSBC Policy 2010a) is an implied endorsement of outside enterprises, and therefore in violation with Tradition Six.”

To determine whether you have the most recent version of a piece of OA literature, see the OA-Approved Literature List by Copyright Date and compare it to the copyright date on your literature.

---

OA Board-approved
©1990… 2018 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. Rev. 08/2024. All rights reserved.
#570

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

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.
#512

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