Baby's first addiction (caution: LONG post)

It's not my intention to become a weekly blogger, but that seems to be how this is playing out for now.  My work has gotten busier as we add more clients to our program, and there is the added sword of Damocles that is our annual licensing by the state of PA the will occur next Tuesday and Wednesday.  It is a very big deal because without their "approval", we can be shut down.  We'll be fine, but it's always a stressful time.

I have done 75% of my posting from work over the last 3 years, but that is just not possible now unless I shut my door and refuse to respond to the persistent knocks and phone calls!  Not the best action plan for a nurse.  I've been starting posts on a daily basis in my head, but they haven't made it to the computer screen much less the publish button.  Today I decided to not go to my 7 a.m. meeting so I could have some time to breathe, slow down and at least begin a post.  Wouldn't you know my coffee pot decided to have a mission failure this morning and cause coffee grounds and water to overflow all over my counter and on to the floor?!

Anyway, the best way to start is simply to say something related to my food addiction.  How about, "I'm Leslie and I'm a food addict."  (As Chris M. says, Thank  you Captain Obvious!)  That's the most important thing for me to know, if not to say.  And in the last couple of months I've come to KNOW this at a much deeper level than before.  In the last month we've had a family wedding/inevitable family reunion in Kentucky that was great. There was food galore, emotions galore and many gatherings and events in which to watch myself operate from my place of chronic feelings of "less than" with this family of whom I am an essential and well loved member.  I can take in my place of belonging, and know that I'm loved and appreciated.  I believe it in my head - completely.  But at a deeper level, vapors of "less than" and "apart from" still haunt, and distort reality.  I've operated from this place my whole life, though have gotten better and better over the years, especially since I began recovery in AA.

You hear similar things in AA rooms often - recovering folks talking about how they always felt different from everyone else, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.  That sense of being different is neither accurate nor rational.  But it's very real. 

Are addicts wired that way?  Is it programmed into our hard drives, or even more fundamentally...our DNA?  Were we mistreated or neglected in childhood?  It doesn't really matter.  What does matter is that feeling shitty about oneself is a bad feeling, and human ingenuity has helped addicts (as well as plenty of non-addicts) discover ways of tamping down bad feelings, even before you actually experience them.  In fact, it's very possible to totally obliterate those bad feelings so well that you really "forget" you have them.  I've said before that food was my first addiction, though obviously I didn't identify it as such. 

After many years of sobriety, while knowing that I have "issues" with food, I am seeing that my issues are more than a collection of bad habits around food.  My thinking and behavior related to eating and food is really kinda nutty.  Not all the time, but often.  Binges are ugly things to live through, though at their beginning is often a heady sense of relief - an "ahhhhhhh" that for the next 5 minutes, or hour, evening or even a whole day and beyond, I won't have to wrestle with the annoying and bedeviling thoughts that come with food obsession and any addictive process.  I've seen it clearly in myself in the last couple of months more clearly than ever before, and so it's in the forefront of my consciousness. 

At AA meetings when we're reading AA literature (there's a lot of it, but especially the Big Book, which is the basic text of the program), where we're reading about the "exact nature" of alcoholism, I now can truly substitute food and eating and relate.  Just the way I did about booze in the beginning.  For example, we read about someone sneaking away from a lovely gathering of family and friends so they can do some "real" drinking unobserved by the gathered, then to return in an altered and numb state.  Did it with booze.  With food?  Check. 

Just this week I was hanging out with my daughter, son and husband in our den - having a good time, laughing our asses off.  I think a feeling began to emerge about dreading Jean's departure back to the Peace Corps later in the week.  Or something...because suddenly my actual presence with them in the moment was derailed by wanting to do some "real eating", that they didn't see.  Now realize my family has NEVER ONE TIME "noticed" or criticized my eating - EVER.  No need to hide - except my addictive mind felt the associated shame of an impending binge.  I was already doing a little noshing of chips and salsa (big mistake as there aren't enough chips in the world to fill the hole in the soul - which I forgot because I was pretending I was a normal eater, and once I introduced chips into my body the inevitable reaction was set in motion). 

What did I do?  I invented an errand "I remembered", and went out to the local convenience store and bought 2 Tasty Kakes and ate them right up.  Then came back home and rejoined the already in progress chillaxin' that I'd just left - but with the aforementioned "ahhhhhhh" that sort of paved the way for the rest of the day to be food obsession free, because I just ate what I wanted the rest of the day.  I didn't do any more crazy eating, but was unshackled from my mind chatter of "do it", "don't do it".

(One little example from an encyclopedia of them - I'm sure it sounds like I'm ready to shipped off to the loony bin - but trust me when I say that's addiction.  It's embarrassing to admit.  It's the truth.  And allegedly the truth will set me free.)

Here's the rub...I knew what I was doing as I did it, especially given my new found acceptance of the fact that I'm not normal when it comes to eating.  Once you know something, you can't NOT know it.  So I did my little binge thing with full awareness, a bit of shame, and increasing awareness that I really need to address this.  And that I'm getting closer to addressing it in the best way I know of to deal with addiction - a 12 step based approach that begins with abstinence from offending substances. 

I've mentioned a post or 2 back that I did go to an OA meeting.  It was okay - less awful and annoying than I remembered.  It is one that I believe I could go back to for reasons I'll talk about in another post.  For now, it is my intention to give up sugar in all forms and white flour for starters, and go to that one meeting a week.  I can't wrap myself around weighing and measuring everything I put in the temple, though I already do that with certain things because it's convenient and helps with portion control.  I still hate rigidity, but several people, including blogger Vickie from BabyStepsV have noted that my aversion to "rigidity" may be another of my addiction's tactics for keeping me away from true recovery.  Striving to keep an open mind on that one.  I appreciate honest reactions from others about my schtick...when it comes to food, my thinking is distorted.  I may not like being called on my bullshit, but I genuinely appreciate when it's honest and well-intentioned.

Finally - I do intend to begin posting each day, even if it's just a paragraph or 2, to chronicle this new phase of my journey.  I'm having a hard time building my own momentum with honest blogging when I'm so sporadic.  This time it's really for me.  And that means it may not be pretty.  But I can't not know the truth of myself now that I've been given the gift of true awareness of the status of my relationship with food.  I know I can be freed from that obsession just as I've been freed from alcohol obsession, and that's what I want.