Preface (Big Book xvii)

We still have normal life challenges, of course, and we experience emotions just as deeply as before—though there are differences. In full recovery, many of our most powerful emotions are positive: love, joy, delight, satisfaction, and a sense of wholeness and happiness. When we experience distressing emotions, we no longer seek escape; we know what to do and generally do it automatically. When troubled, we take stock, seek to understand where our thinking has gone awry, make amends where needed, and immediately turn our attention to how we can use our experience to serve some good purpose. Full recovery is resilient. We are able to do all sorts of things that used to “trigger” obsessive thinking and eating-disordered behavior. We can go anywhere and do anything that normal people do, without re-engaging our eating disorders: we are restored to sanity.