It’s been a service weekend. Friday the high school health fair. Saturday, an addictions conference in a downtown hotel. Overeaters Anonymous, AA, AlAnon, and NA were all there, in a row. I had met some of the members staffing the other fellowship tables last year.

We got to speak to a number of professionals who have clients with eating disorders. Probably about as many working with undereaters as overeaters. I feel we need more material for this community.

One of the things that maybe only a CE (Compulsive Eater) notices is the lack of selection of breakfast foods set out at the conference. In addition to coffee and tea, they had bagels. And, bagels. And, if my memory serves, bagels. Not mini bagels, Truck tire bagels. Made me think of The Lord of the Rings: And One Bagel Shall Rule Them All.

I grew up on bagels. Every Sunday we had fresh hot bagels from just around the corner. Fabulous. Good traditional bagels. Plain, onion, sesame, poppy and salt, but I digress.

I had a chance to speak with members of the other fellowships at the conference. I particularly enjoyed speaking with the NA folks. Very interesting. I had no idea that their steps and traditions don’t speak of narcotics. Go figure. In their first step, they admit powerlessness over their addiction and their third tradition opens their fellowship to anyone who wishes to stop “using”. We didn’t talk about this but I gathered from the nature of their first step, that NA is open to addressing all the substance abuse issues faced by their members, but I don’t know. The guys I spoke to both smoked for a long time after getting clean from other substances and one was just working on stopping. One mentioned the weight he’d put on after giving up cigarettes but I can’t say he’s ready to do anything about that.

NA don’t use AA literature. Their basic text is the book Narcotics Anonymous. I haven’t, but I might pick up a copy. I did pick up a copy of NAs little white book. About 40 pages long, it’s sort of a saddle stitched newcomer packets. It explains the program, includes the steps and traditions and some stories. Very nice. Cheap to print too. I did a little research and for as few as 250 copies the cost is about a buck each. In bulk, I’ll bet the cost would drop to about half that. Because, once I have an idea I like, it just won’t go away until I act on it, I think I’ll create this thing, electronically, and see what others think. Won’t take that long. It’s self will if I force others to accept it. It’s service if I float an idea and accept the result.

Service is a better obsession than food.