Pickled

Work is just the best place for me to blog - at least the writing part.  I had every intention of writing a post yesterday afternoon but got carried away with going to lunch with #1 son, a trip to Marshalls and other assorted shopping emporiums, and who knows what else.  One thing for sure, the 'what else' wasn't exercising.  By skipping yesterday, in order to meet my weekly Hot 100 goal, I have to do it the rest of the week.  Shouldn't be a problem if my knees cooperate and the creek don't rise.  So now I'm back at work, and the thoughts are percolatin'!

Once again I'm going to use an AA nugget to post about - so often the wisdom in that program informs my thinking and behaving with food.  There is a saying in AA that once a cucumber is pickled, it can't go back to being a cucumber.  It's essential nature has been changed by the process of being steeped in vinegar, sugar and seasonings.  It isn't possible to take that pickle and remove the essential biochemical changes that occurred within its makeup and render it a simple unfettered cucumber ever again.

So it is with alcoholics.  Not all of us started out drinking alcoholically.  Many of us were able to experience the social lubrication of alcohol, the gentle buzz, the blissy relaxation of a glass or two of alcoholic quaff and even an occasional getting hammered, for months or years before "something" happened, before a line was crossed in some undefinable way, that rendered alcohol more than simple pleasure.  That essentially changed who we were, how we behaved and treated others, how we held up our ends of our responsibilities and relationships.  In AA jargon, (and simplified here to spare you even more paragraphs than my usual), we became pickled, and no matter how long we don't drink, work the aa program, find incredible life-affirming sobriety...if we pick up a drink again we will likely/eventually/inevitably return to destructive drinking. 

Maybe not right away.  They say that the worst thing that can happen to an alcoholic who picks up a drink is nothing.  If nothing happens the first time, then we can think "we're over it", "not really an alcoholic", "were going through a phase back then"...any number of hopeful thoughts.  (Hopeful because it's the dream of many alcoholics to be able to drink successfully.  Long periods of recovery and the rich lives that can ensue over  long periods of sobriety definitely take that dreamstate away from many of us.  Finding new life through aa attendance and working the steps make sobriety its own reward, and the dream of drinking again someday finally disappears.)  But if a recovering person decides to experiement with a drink...all bets are off.

Why?  Because we're pickled and can't go back to not being pickled, even after decades of sobriety.  Once an alky, always an alky. (I'm sure there are people for whom this has not been the case, but the vast majority of recovering folks in the AA rooms believe it to be true, at least for themselves. Including me.) There are zillions of stories of people with 20 years of sobriety and beyond who decided to have a glass of "something"...and within short order found themselves back in the revolving door of alcoholic insanity.  This truth of addiction is widely accepted.  Addiction is progressive.  Abstinence from the object of our addiction doesn't halt the progress of addiction.  It's said that our disease is always in the next room, doing pushups and staying strong.  Lying in wait for an opportune moment to pounce - great sadness or great joy.  A loss, a challenge, or just the noon whistle.  Once someone picks up their substance, their disease of addiction is operating at a more fully developed level than when the individual put the substance down.  So it's off to the races at an even greater intensity - often with devastating consequences.  I hear it all the time.

So.  What about food addiction?  Eating disordered behavior?  Does it fall under this unbrella of the nature of addiction I just discussed?  And if so, does it happen to everyone who dares to reintroduce sugar, or highly processed foods, or salty chips, or "organic ice cream" and "all natural" items after long periods of abstinence from certain trigger foods?  I know that 12 step food programs (which I've waxed on many times in this blog, know to be helpful, but personally hate for their various forms of rigidity) believe that this nature of true addiction DOES apply to sugar, and white flour, and who knows what else --for true food addicts.  And do you know what really gives me a major hitch in my gitalong???  I've proved this to myself again and again.  I speak for myself only when I say that once I again eat certain foods after lengthy periods of leaving them out - I turn into the equivalent of a great white shark going for the diver in the shark proof cage.  Not pretty.  Very ugly, and ultimately very painful.

What got me thinking along these lines is watching some fairly obvious and serious relapse happening to a few bloggers who had attained big weight losses - 100 pounds and more.  It's so hard to watch because I've lived it.  I've been struggling for months myself - for now maintaining a 15-18 pound gain that I'd like very much to reverse and move through, but I'm stuck.  I don't think I'm in denial, but when I keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results - maybe I am.  I can't handle sugar.  Interestingly, many alcoholics have this problem, especially given that alcohol is immediately converted into sugar by our bodies.  So now I can claim not only alcoholism and food addiction but also sugar metabolism woes?  And finally, whether I decide to use this information and try to do something about it (like giving up sugar and white flour) doesn't lend truth or fiction to all this I've talked about.  It's a matter of me recognizing the exact nature of my body and working with it.  Or not.  I've been on the 'or not' plan in recent months.  As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that workin' for ya?"

A pickle can't show up in a salad claiming to be a cucumber.  Its texture is different; so is its taste and moisture content.  Maybe the flavor is pleasing or not to the consumer - but one thing for sure - it doesn't taste like a cucumber.  And I don't metabolize sugar and related white products like an earth person.

Believe it or not, I have a part 2 to this that I'll post tomorrow.  I think it will be shorter.  It conckerns taking the information and putting it into action.  And guess where part 2 germinated?  In a room full of alcoholics.