7th Tradition

OA Steps and
Traditions

Recovery in OA is a physical, emotional and spiritual journey achieved through abstinence and living the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions recovery program one day at a time.

OA 12 Steps

The 12 Steps are the vital difference between OA and all the other ways we have tried to deal with our compulsive food behaviors.

  • 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.

OA 12 Traditions

The 12 Traditions do for an OA group what the 12 Steps do for the individual. Just as freedom for the individual comes from the 12 Steps, so freedom for individual OA groups depends on the knowledge and practice of our Traditions.

  • 1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon OA unity.
  • 2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
  • 3. The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
  • 4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole.
  • 5. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.
  • 6. 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.
  • 7. Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
  • 8. Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
  • 9. OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
  • 10. Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
  • 11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television, and other public media of communication.
  • 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

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

 
7th Tradition

OA