Step One - We admitted that we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable.

d. Have I returned to my former compulsive overeating behavior after years of recovery?

There are really two thoughts here - returned to former compulsive overeating and years of recovery. For the first part I have returned to compulsive overeating behavior but I can't say that I have had years of recovery. At best I can say is that I have been in the process of recovery many times in the past but I don't believe that I ever was able to follow any plan of eating (except for the see food diet) for an extended period, e.g. more than a few months.

I have never tried to control my eating by using appetite control pills, eg. speed because it seemed like it would only replace one compulsion with another that was probably more destructive than my addiction to food. I remember a movie with Ellyn Burston, where she got hooked on diet pills prescribed by her doctor. She lost weight but also her hair and her self-esteem and her grasp of reality. It may have been an overreach but it still showed that using pills to modify behavior was going to be a problem.