Velvet Verbosity

Hi, my name’s The Mad Sister, aka The Bear, and I’m a chocoholic. The need for chocolate has overtaken my life and affected those I love. Before I found Chocoholics Anonymous, my life had become a blur of chocolate. Late nights with Ben and Jerry, bars of melted chocolate ruining the pockets of my best blue jeans, the adrenaline rushes of stealing chocolate from my mother’s purse to get my fix…there was no end to what I would do to get my chocolate fix every day. I’ve come to rely on the Twelve Steps of Chocoholics Anonymous to restore me to sanity and to Vanilla. I no longer want to live in this chocolate prison!

I share these twelve steps with you today so that you might come back to sanity, come back to the Vanilla. Now that I am 30 SECONDS sober from chocolate, it is time for me to help others. With Valentine’s Day, that most unholy of chocolate consumption days, just around the corner, the matter of chocolate addiction is urgent!

The Twelve Steps of Chocoholics Anonymous

Step 1: We admitted that we were powerless over chocolate in all its forms, but most especially when embedded in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and that our lives had become unmanageable due to obsessive thoughts about chocolate and the coercion necessary to obtain it.
Step 2: We came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to Vanilla.
Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the Vanilla as we understood Vanilla. (boooooring….er, ah, ahem.)
Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and then a fearless chocolate inventory of all our cupboards, pockets, and drawers.
Step 5: We admitted to our higher Vanilla, to ourselves and to another human being the exact daily weight of our chocolate consumption.
Step 6: We became entirely ready to have a Higher Vanilla remove all our defective chocolate seeking taste buds.
Step 7: We humbly asked our Higher Vanilla to remove our shortcomings and all the chocolate at the grocery counter.
Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed in our pursuit of chocolate (and there were many), and became willing to make amends over a hot fudge sundae vanilla shake.
Step 9: We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except if they were eating a chocolate bar at the time.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and promptly donated all hidden chocolate stashes to my Mom to the needy.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with Vanilla as we understood it.
Step 12: Having had a Vanilla awakening as the result of these steps, we work to try to carry this message to chocoholics everywhere, and to practice Vanilla in all our affairs.

** A message from Velvet Verbosity, mother to The Mad Sister: “Please pray for The Mad Sister as she battles this insidious addiction. Her constant need for chocolate has brought our family to the brink of financial ruin and torn us asunder. May the Vanilla be with her.”

Image from www.buychocolatecandy.com