Deal With It, Get Over It And Get Out Of My Way

It’s been an emotional few days. I came to the edge of a relapse. A father figure died. Then there was the 9-11 anniversary. This stuff can burn a person down to nothing. But I don’t burn like I used to.

Mood music:

It’s funny how people react not only to their own adversity, but that of others. Some people become incapacitated with grief when a pet dies and some of us want to say, “Fuck, man. It’s a pet. Get over it and stop crying in front of everyone.” But that’s just us judging someone without all the facts.

When I come up against difficult things, I write about it. One now-former reader lamented that my blog is “soooo depressing” that she can’t read it anymore. That suits me fine, because she was the type that had all the answers and told you how you should live. She was an expert in everything, but she never really understood the purpose of this blog, which is to stare the horrors of life in the face, describe it honestly and deal with it. Life is full of depressing things, but when you can face those things head on, there’s a ton of joy and beauty on the other side. That’s my experience, so I try to share it without telling you what to do.

And that’s what this post is about. Dealing with adversity and learning to get over it.

Yeah, I came close to a relapse last week. I did what every addict does — I reached a point in my recovery where I got so comfortable and felt so in control that I started getting sloppy. It’s funny how this happens, because when we feel in control it usually means things are falling apart behind the scenes. In my case, my father having three strokes tired me out enough that I started forgetting to do the things a person in recovery is supposed to do.

I went to a 12-Step Big Book study last night and the chapter of the night was perfect for me. It was about people who relapse because they think they have their addiction licked. They have that one weak moment that sends them back down to hell.

Going to a meeting the night that chapter was on the table was a classic case of God trying to tell me something. That something goes like this: Life is full of the good and bad. Deal with it and get over it. And, above all, don’t binge over it.

I write this stuff down and share it because we all have moments where we need that kick in the ass. My ass stings pretty good right now, but I’m feeling very grateful for it.

When you become paralyzed by the hole in your soul, the thought of dealing with it is terrifying. But when you finally take that next step, it’s one of the best, natural highs out there.

Last week I started to deal with things. I told my wife about my sloppiness and decided to declare myself in breach of abstinence and sobriety. I decided to tear it down and start over.

Yesterday I left my sponsor a message telling him I was sorry for being such a lousy sponsee. Now we’ll see if he wants to stick with me or if I need to find someone else. At least I took that step.

This evening I’m going to go to the wake for a man I looked up to, and it will be with a sense of celebration, not sadness. He lived his life as we all should: To the full. He earned a ticket straight to Heaven, and that makes me happy. I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about seeing his wife and daughter for the first time in many years. They haven’t been happy with me in that time and tonight probably won’t change things. I don’t want to be an uncomfortable presence. I’ll just do the best I can.

I have all the coffee I need and I packed three abstinent meals for the day. I guess you could say my pistol is fully loaded and I’m ready for what comes next.

I have a busy work day, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I do, after all, love what I do.

I have to deal with my feelings about ending the estrangement with my mother. This week, I’m going to talk to Erin and carve out an action plan.

If you see me twitching and talking to myself, don’t worry. I’m dealing with life and getting over things I can’t control or undo.

Out of my way.

41 Years

Some people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 41 today is a freak of nature. But a year into my forties, I know I have more cleaning up to do.

Mood music:

Item: When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.

Item: When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. MichaelSean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So here I am at 41, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there. But you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.

I have a career that I love.

I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.

I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

So here I am at 41. feeling a lot better about myself than I did at 31. In fact, 31 was one of the low points.

But I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect beyond perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.

I just recently quit smoking, and I’m still missing the hell out of that vice. I haven’t gone on a food binge in nearly three years, but there are still days where I’m not sure I’ve made the best choices; those days where my skin feels just a little too loose and flabby.

I still go to my meetings, but there are many days where I’d rather do anything but go to a meeting. I go because I have to, but I don’t always want to.

And while I have God in my life, I still manage to be an asshole to Him a lot of the time.

At 41, I’m still very much the work in progress. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think WILL have a happy birthday.

OCD Diaries

I Am Absolutely Powerless

Second in a series…

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over (insert addiction) — that our lives had become unmanageable.

Mood music:

I am powerless. Or, you could say, my addictions have absolute power over me. Even when sober and abstinent, they are right behind me, doing push-ups, waiting for my one reckless moment of weakness.

Now that I know this, life is a lot better. I can do what I must to be well and I’m a lot happier and healthier for it.

The problem with addicts is that we’re experts in the art of denial. It takes many years of damage before we are ready to even consider that we have absolutely no control over our lives.

When we really hit bottom and spend some time there, things become so desperate that we become willing to admit how weak we are. How pathetically powerless we are. When that happens, we arrive at the first of the 12 Steps of Recovery. Simply put, admitting there’s a problem is the first step in dealing with the problem.

My most destructive addiction involves binge eating. That is followed by other addictions: to alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and, to a lesser extent, pills.

I’ve often lamented that mine is the most uncool of addictions. We need food to survive, after all. This is certainly not what most of society would accept as a “normal” addiction.

Still, it makes perfect sense that food would be my problem.

As a kid sick with Chron’s Disease, I was often in the hospital for weeks at a time with a feeding tube that was inserted through the left side of my chest. That’s how I got nourishment. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. At a very early age, my relationship with food was doomed to dysfunction.

It didn’t help that I was from a family of over-eaters who would stuff themselves for comfort in times of stress and fatigue.

In our society it’s considered perfectly OK to indulge in the food. Time and again, I’ve heard it said that overeating is a lot better than drinking or drugging. But for me, back when I was at my worst, binge eating was a secret, sinister and shameful activity.

Here’s how it works:

You get up in the morning and swear to God that you’re going to eat like a normal person. You pack some healthy food for the office. Then you get in the car and the trouble starts before the car’s out of the driveway. Another personality emerges from the back of the brain, urging you to indulge. It starts as a whisper but builds until it vibrates through the skull like a power saw.

The food calls out to you. And you’ll do whatever it takes to get it, then spend a lot of time trying to cover your tracks.

Before you know it, you’re in the DD drive-thru ordering two boxes of everything. It all gets eaten by the time you reach the office. You get to the desk disgusted, vowing to never do that again. But by mid-morning, the food is calling again. You sneak out before lunchtime and gorge on whatever else you can find, then you do it again on the way home from work.

You pull into McDonald’s and order about $30 of food, enough to feed four people. From the privacy of the car, the bags are emptied. By the time you get home, you wish you were dead.

The cycle repeats for days at a time, sometimes weeks and months.

For many years I hid it well, especially in my early 20s. I would binge for a week, then starve and work out for another week. That mostly kept the weight at a normal-looking level.

Call it athletic Bulimia.

In one inspired episode, I downed $30 of fast food a day for two weeks, then went a week eating nothing but Raisin Bran in the morning, then nothing but black coffee for the rest of the day. After the cereal, I’d work out for two hours straight.

In my mid-20s, once I started working for a living, I kept up the eating but couldn’t do the other things anymore. So my weight rose to 280. In the late 1990s I managed to drop 100 pounds and keep it off through periodic fasting.

Then I started to face down what would eventually be diagnosed as OCD, and I once again gave in to the food. The gloves were off.

The binging continued unabated for three years. The weight went back up to 260. I also started to run out of clever ways to mask over all the money I was spending on my habit. I was slick. I’d take $60 from the checking account and tell my wife it was for an office expense or some other seemingly legitimate thing. But she’s too smart to fall for that for long.

One I admitted I was without power over all this insanity, I was ready to do something about it.

That’s when I discovered Over-eaters Anonymous (OA), a 12-step program just like AA, where the focus is on food instead of booze. I didn’t grasp it immediately. In fact, I thought everyone at these meetings were nuts. They were, of course, but so was I.

Thing is, I had reached a point in my learning to manage OCD where I was ready to face down the addiction. If it had to be through something crazy, so be it.

Through the program, I gave up flour and sugar. The plan is to be done with those ingredients for life. Put them together and they are essentially my cocaine. I dropped 65 pounds on the spot. But more importantly, many of the ailments I had went away. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night choking on stomach acid. The migraines lessened substantially. And I found a mental clarity I never knew before.

I can’t say I’ve slaughtered the demon. Addicts relapse all the time. But I have a program I didn’t have before; a road map unlike any other.

My odds of success are better than ever.

But before I could get there, I had to unravel the wiring in my head, learn to live with a mental disorder and then make a bold change in my way of eating.

It’s not cool at all. If you’re laughing because I let the food drag me to such a state, I don’t blame you. In a way, it is funny. Crazy people do stupid things. And stupid is often funny.

The Best Laugh I’ve Had All Week

My office colleague John Gallant sent me a video that made the coffee shoot from my nose. “Vegan Death Metal Chef.” It’s good; even better than the Muppets performing Slayer songs.

Given the ups and downs of the last two weeks, I needed a good laugh, so thanks, John.

Here it is. All music and video is made by the Vegan Black Metal Chef (Brian Manowitz). Enjoy:

Say Hello To My New Friend

One of the great things about writing this blog is that it puts me in touch with some cool people. Yesterday was one of those days. Meet my newest friend, David Vanadia.

He contacted me yesterday after seeing my post about how flour and sugar nearly destroyed me. It turns out he was a sugar addict who gave it up in 2005 and has been blogging about it ever since.

Check out the blog, Sugar Blog: Stop Being Sweet, HERE.

While sharing his background with a sugar addiction, he goes a step further and offers some concrete activities for those who want to cut the sugar from their lives. There’s a Weekly Sugar Challenge, for example.

I’m going to enjoy the hell out of his blog. And soon, he’ll be talking to me about the effect of sugar on OCD. When that happens, I’ll stare y’all to it.

I particularly love his page called “Why Quit Sugar?” because he sums up my own experiences in simple bullet points:

When I eat sugar I:

• Feel drowsy
• Can’t make decisions
• Can’t wake up easily
• Sleep heavier
• Stay up late at night
• Act moody
• Am more gassy
• Am more thirsty
• Crave sweets
• Find that my teeth ache
• Find my teeth coated with sugar
• Often have bad breath
• Feel depressed & helpless
• Only feel satisfied by sweets
• Have evil and irregular poops
• Have to nap during the day
• Lose control and crave sweets
• Need chocolate every day
• Feel bad about eating junk food

• Overeat and use food as a drug
• Get “sweaty butt
• Reward myself with sweets
• Soothe myself with sweets
• Feel like I’m in a daze
• Medicate myself with sweets
• Feel odd in my joints
• Pee alot
• Eat just about anything
• Can’t have fun without sugar
• Support the sweet system
• Spend money on sweets
• Eat out more often
• End up eating lots of chemicals
• Don’t know what is in my food
• Act hyper and annoy people
• Worry about everything
• Wake up feeling bloated
• Use sugar as an upper

When I avoid sugar I:

• Feel much more even
• Make clearer decisions
• Wake up more easily
• Sleep calmly and thoroughly
• Don’t need a midday nap
• Don’t act so moody
• Am satisfied by veggies and fruit
• Have regular and elegant poops
• Am not parched all the time

• Don’t crave sweet foods
• Don’t lose control
• Feel good about myself
• Think everyone eats junk
• Read labels more often
• Am more aware
• Often make natural foods
• Don’t feel bloated
• Feel tighter in the mid-section

When I avoid sugar for long periods I:

• Feel even and calm
• Wake up energized
• Need less and lighter sleep
• Have increased stamina
• Want to get out and do things
• Am not parched all the time
• Don’t crave processed products
• Think food products taste bad

• Am grossed out by sweeties
• Feel better about myself overall
• Feel more attractive
• Am more confident
• Want to visit the dentist
• Focus better on long-term goals
• Am a happier person overall
• Find natural food delicious

Check it out.

How Flour & Sugar Nearly Destroyed Me

When people ask about my giving up flour and sugar, they have an easy time grasping the raw health benefits. What’s harder for them to understand is how these things can form a mixture as addictive as heroin.

Here’s my attempt to explain it.

First, the point I need to make is that for us addicts, the substance isn’t the root of our problem. Two other things bring us down:

–A hole in our soul that we try to fill with anything that might make us feel good, be it drugs, booze, food or spending money.

A lot of times when someone sobers up or stops binge eating, it’s a white-knuckle experience.

It’s not just because you’re missing your junk and the momentary feeling it gives you. It’s because the hole in your soul — the thing that drove you to addiction in the first place — is still there. If you don’t deal with that hole, you might stay clean for a year or two. But sooner or later, unless you stay on top of it with brutal discipline, you’ll fall right back into the old, insidious patterns.

–When we latch on to a particular substance as a crutch, we can never, ever get enough.

It’s very simple, really: Once we take the first drink, the first hit or the first bite, we’re off and running and nothing — and I mean nothing — can make us stop. In my case, I would eat and eat and eat. The wall that goes up inside most people when they get their fill doesn’t exist for folks like me. I just keep gorging. Here’s an example of what the behavior looks like:

6 a.m.: Wake up, pour coffee. Resolve to live on nothing but coffee and cigarettes for the day.

8 a.m.: Fuck it. You’re hungry. Eat something healthy for breakfast. A bagel and cream cheese will do. Serving size, one 12-ounce container of cream cheese. Add swiss cheese.

8:15 a.m.: Smoke another cigarette and decide that’s all the food you’re going to eat for the day. Resolve to eat one giant breakfast and nothing else for the day for the next several days.

9 a.m.-10:15: As you work, start having a back-and-forth in your head as to whether you really should be having lunch.

10:45 a.m.: Walk to the vending machine for a healthy snack of animal crackers. Choose the Pop Tarts instead. Continue to ponder lunch.

11 a.m.: Take a break from work and drive around to clear your head. Resolve to have a smoke or two but no lunch.

11:02 a.m.: Proceed to the nearest fast-food drive-through or buffet place.

11:15-noonish: You chose the buffet place. Good. Stay there until you’ve had your fill. This will require going back for seconds, thirds and fourths.

Noonish-3ish: Resume working while pondering why you’re such a shameful idiot.

3ish: Get in the car. Plan to drive straight home.

3:05 p.m.: Stuff yourself with the $25 bag of McDonald’s you don’t quite remember buying a couple minutes ago.

3:30 p.m.: The three cheeseburgers, two large fries and two orders of chicken strips is consumed, and you’re sitting there wondering what you’re doing in the Dunk ‘N Donuts drive-through.

3:32 p.m.: Stare at the empty box of donuts and wonder what’s wrong with you.

3:35-4 p.m.: Keep your eyes on the road as you try to put the shame you’re feeling in the proper perspective.

4 p.m.: Get in the house and try to act like nothing’s wrong. When the kids ask you to play with them, explain that your back hurts and lie on the couch.

5:30 p.m.: Dinner time. Try as hard as you can to eat some of what’s on your plate, even though it looks healthy and your gut is throbbing from what you did earlier.

6:30 p.m.: Get the kids ready for bed.

7:30 p.m.: Fall asleep on the couch and forget the day you’ve just had.

Repeat process the next morning.

No matter what you latch onto as the crutch, this is usually what the itch and the scratch look like for the typical addict. You scratch until you bleed.

In my case, the substance and crutch was flour and sugar. I would binge specifically on the food that was loaded with those two ingredients.

Once in my system, it flipped a switch in my brain that twisted my thinking. I would grow paranoid, depressed and afraid, seeing imagined enemies around every corner. A friend would look like just another animal out to get me.

In that mindset, there’s no limit to the stupid things you’ll do or say.

Like any addict who finally reaches a special point of desperation, I turned to a 12-Step program to get better. The steps are effective for the simple reason that it targets the hole in your soul — not the substance itself.

In the end, that’s what you need to work on to have long-term recovery.

That’s how it is for me, anyway.

Back Story Of THE OCD DIARIES

Since I’ve been adding new readers along the way, I always get questions about why I started this thing. I recently expanded the “about” section, and that’s a good starting point. But more of a back story is in order.

Mood music:

Before I started THE OCD DIARIES in December 2009 with a post about depression hitting me during the holidays, I had always toyed with the idea of doing this. The reason for wanting to was simple: The general public understands little about mental disorders like mine. People toss the OCD acronym around all the time, but to them it’s just the easy way of saying they have a Type-A personality.

Indeed, many Type-A people do have some form of OCD. But for a smaller segment of the population, myself included, it’s a debilitating disease that traps the sufferer in a web of fear, anxiety, and depression that leads to all kinds of addictive behavior. Which leads me to the next reason I wanted to do this.

My particular demons gave me a craving for anything that might dull the pain. For some it’s heroin or alcohol. I have gone through periods where I drank far too much, and I learned to like the various prescription pain meds a little too much. But the main addiction, the one that made my life completely unmanageable, was binge eating.

Most people refuse to acknowledge that as a legitimate addiction. The simple reason is that we all need food to survive and not the other things. Overeating won’t make you drunk or high, according to the conventional wisdom. In reality, when someone like me goes for a fix, it involves disgusting quantities of junk food that will literally leave you flopping around like any garden-variety junkie. Further evidence that this as an addiction lies in the fact that there’s a 12-Step program for compulsive over-eaters called Overeater’s Anonymous (OA). It’s essentially the same program as AA. I wanted to do my part to make people understand.

Did I worry that I might get fired from my job for outing myself like this? Sure. But something inside me was pushing me in this direction and I had to give in to my instincts. You could say it was a powerful OCD impulse that wasn’t going to quit until I did something about it.

I write a lot about my upbringing, my family and the daily challenges we all face because I still learn something each day about my condition and how I can always be better than I am. We all have things swirling around inside us that drive us to a certain kind of behavior, and covering all these things allows me to share what I’ve learned so others might find a way out of their own brand of Hell.

I’m nothing special.

Every one of us has a Cross to bear in life. Sometimes we learn to stand tall as we carry it. Other times we buckle under the weight and fall on our faces.

I just decided to be the one who talks about it.

Talking about it might help someone realize they’re not a freak and they’re not doomed to a life of pain.

If this helps one person, it’ll be worth it.

When I first started the blog, I laid out a back story so readers could see where I’ve been and how personal history affected my disorders. If you read the history, things I write in the present will probably make more sense.

With that in mind, I direct you to the following links:

The Long History of OCD

An OCD ChristmasThe first entry, where I give an overview of how I got to crazy and found my way to sane.

The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good PillHow the drug Prednisone brought me to the brink, and how Prozac was part of my salvation.

The Crazy-Ass Guy in the NewsroomThink you have troubles at work? You should see what people who worked with me went through.

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story. About the wife who saved my life in many ways.

Snowpocalypse and the Fear of LossThe author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.

The Ego OCD BuiltThe author admits to having an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels and that OCD is fuel for the fire. Go ahead. Laugh at him.

Fear FactorThe author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

Prozac WinterThe author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.

Have Fun with Your TherapistMental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.

The EngineTo really understand how mental illness happens, let’s compare the brain to a machine.

Rest Redefined. The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.

Outing MyselfThe author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.

Why Being a People Pleaser is DumbThe author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.

The Addiction and the Damage Done

The Most Uncool AddictionIn this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.

Edge of a RelapseThe author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.

The 12 Steps of ChristmasThe author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory.

How to Play Your Addictions Like a PianoThe author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?

Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in FutilityAs an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he weigh in on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.

The Liar’s DiseaseThe author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.

Portable RecoveryThough addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.

Revere (Experiences with Addiction, Depression and Loss During The Younger Years)

Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies. The author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends and he realizes he was pretty damn stupid back then.

Lost BrothersHow the death of an older brother shaped the Hell that arrived later.

Marley and Me. The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.

The Third BrotherRemembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.

Revere Revisited.

Lessons from DadThe author has learned some surprising lessons from Dad on how to control one’s mental demons.

The BasementA photo from the old days in Revere spark some vivid flashbacks.

Addicted to Feeling GoodTo kick off Lent, the author reflects on some of his dumber quests to feel good.

The lasting Impact of Crohn’s DiseaseThe author has lived most of his life with Crohn’s Disease and has developed a few quirks as a result.

The Tire and the FootlockerThe author opens up an old footlocker under the stairs and finds himself back in that old Revere basement.

Child of  Metal

How Metal Saved MeWhy Heavy Metal music became a critical OCD coping tool.

Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or LessThe author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.

Rockit Records RevisitedThe author has mentioned Metal music as one of his most important coping tools for OCD and related disorders. Here’s a look at the year he got one of the best therapy sessions ever, simply by working in a cramped little record store.

Metal to Stick in Your Mental Microwave.

Man of God

The Better Angels of My NatureWhy I let Christ in my life.

The Rat in the Church PewThe author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. The author goes to Church and comes away with a strange feeling.

Running from Sin, Running With ScissorsThe author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.

Forgiveness is a BitchSeeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.

Pain in the LentThe author gives a progress report on the Lenten sacrifices. It aint pretty.

The Hole in Your Soul

A lot of changes to my program of sobriety and abstinence are under way, and I feel like I’m running on nuclear power. Last night was my first Big Book Step Study meeting, which is quite different from the speaker-discussion meetings I’m used to. It only took me a few seconds to realize why I had to be there.

Mood music:

A lot of times when someone sobers up or stops binge eating, it’s a white-knuckle experience.

It’s not just because you’re missing your junk and the momentary feeling it gives you. It’s because the hole in your soul — the thing that drove you to addiction in the first place — is still there. If you don’t deal with that hole, you might stay clean for a year or two. But sooner or later, you’ll fall right back into the old, insidious patterns.

Speaker-discussion meetings are a vital tool for the initial clean-up. You can’t start working on the hole until you stop the addictive behavior. It did me a ton of good and I still need to go to those events, but it’s no longer enough. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is all about dealing with the hole, and studying it more closely is a must if I’m going to stay clean.

Studying the pages will also pull me deeper into the meaning of working the 12 Steps.

I also have a new sponsor starting this week. Instead of me simply telling him my plan of eating for the day, we’ll talk about the deeper issues at the heart of sobriety and abstinence. I’m looking forward to it.

My life is full of Blessings. This program is the one that allowed for everything else.

I’m glad I’m starting to take it more seriously.

A guy at last night’s meeting noted that there are two types of addicts:

–The type who is doomed and DOESN’T KNOW IT, and

–The type that’s doomed and KNOWS IT.

The latter type has a better chance of escaping that fate, because in knowing you’re headed for disaster you might be willing to take action. I’m glad I was that type.

I had an advantage: Several years of brutal therapy for OCD. The tools I had to develop to manage that are a lot like those you need to clean up. And it was all about identifying the hole in my soul.

It’s still there, but I think it’s getting smaller all the time.

Because I keep working on it.

I’ll have to until the day I die.

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No Flour or Sugar for Life? How!?

Some new readers came across my posts about eliminating flour and sugar as part of my recovery from a binge-eating addiction. The idea of eliminating these things for life is scary for some people. And who can blame them? It certainly scared the hell out of me once upon a time.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g86KUHGlOg&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Only after I kicked it did I realize how evil a combo those ingredients were to me. I envy people who can handle the stuff. It’s just that I can’t.

But you know what? I’d much rather have the freedom, mental clarity and weight loss than flour and sugar now.

I want to share one of the comments, from “Lorie”, and see if I can address it at the end:

“Just found your website. Sorry, but it made me cry (joy and sorrow). Happy that I found someone who articulates my own feeling so well and sad that I’m so out of control. I’m a serious sugar binger. Just finished off the Christmas treats I made for our family to give to friends. I’ve gone sugar/flour-free 3 times in the past,. – 4 months, then 10 weeks, then 11 weeks. Following each period of abstinence, I tell myself I’ve got things under control now. I can just eat moderately like a normal person.

If I can go cold turkey, I should be able to handle moderation. That’s logical right? This last time I lost 50 lbs. Man! That felt SO good! I reached my lowest weight two months ago and then, still off flour and sugar, easily maintained it over the next month. Then I decided I was ready to add in a moderate amount of sugar. I’ve been on a binge ever since, up 13 lbs. now. Each day I see the scale go up and my heart sinks. What kind of a crazy person does this to themselves?

“Every day I start out saying I’m not going to eat sugar today. My anxiety builds to the point that I break and then the lies start. ‘I’ll just eat one piece.’ ‘I won’t eat the rest of the day.’ ‘One more day of sugar won’t matter, I’ll start tomorrow.’”

“I’ve been convinced that I have a physical addiction, like an alcoholic. But yesterday I had an epiphany. This is as much or more like OCD than alcoholism. There is some serious OCD in my family. Grandma was a level 5 hoarder, mom’s got OCD, brother’s got OCD. I’ve always said to myself, boy am I glad I don’t have OCD like them. Yesterday as my anxiety was building until it was released with copious amounts english toffee I made, I realized, “you idiot, this is classic OCD.” Anxiety/Compulsive Behavior/Anxiety diminishes.”

“I have a degree in psychology. How can I have gone for 35 years and not seen this? Now what? I still don’t know how to stop. Hence the tears of sorrow. I don’t know if I have the strength to give up the sugar and flour again because I realized if I’m going to conquer this, it means a lifetime of abstinence, right?”

“How do you do it?”

I can certainly feel your pain, Lorie. I’ve had all those same thoughts play through my head at one time or another. Obsessive-compulsive thoughts always fueled the desire to binge.

I can also understand how you feel about the idea of giving up something “for life.” 

But in the final analysis, this is about making a life change. Sometimes we have to quit things we love for the rest of our lives in order to attain the quality of life that eludes us.

A diabetic has to give up a lot of ingredients for life.

A smoker who quits always misses the feeling of drawing smoke into their lungs. But they like that they can breathe again.

These choices can be hell. It’s also the kind of choice you need a doctor’s help to make. A doctor will always know better than me if you SHOULD give up certain things.

This program isn’t for everyone. But it IS for me.

It’s the only thing that ever worked.

I hope that helps you to some extent, Lorie. Keep fighting the good fight and you’ll eventually find long-term victory.

That’s my experience, anyway.

God Bless you.