The OCD Diaries

November 11, 2010

The Joyless Happy Meal

I’ve been hearing a lot of stink over this toyless Happy Meal story. Maybe I can put the whole thing in perspective.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU16EBurb1Q&fs=1&hl=en_US]

First, here’s the AP to tell you what happened to the beloved Happy Meal in San Francisco:

Unhealthy kids’ meals to get less ‘happy’ in San Francisco

San Francisco has become the first major American city to prohibit fast-food restaurants from including toys with children’s meals that do not meet nutritional guidelines. The city’s Board of Supervisors gave the measure final approval on Tuesday on an 8-3 vote. That is enough votes to survive a planned veto by Mayor Gavin Newsom. The ordinance, which goes into effect in December next year, prohibits toys in children’s meals that have more than 640mg of sodium, 600 calories or 35 per cent of their calories from fat. It would also limit saturated fats and trans fats and require fruits or vegetables to be served with each meal with a toy.

The horror. The frakkin’ horror. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the Happy Meal come under assault.

When I worked at The Eagle-Tribune, Gretchen Putnam — then the features editor — got a little present in the mail from P.E.T.A. She opened the package and out popped a “McCruelty Meal.” There was the Happy Meal-like box, with a blood-splatter pattern. You open the box to find P.E.T.A. literature and the toy — A Ronald McDonald doll covered in blood with a knife in its back.

The idea was to convey that Ronald was a murderous bastard for chopping up cattle for those world-famous burgers.

I checked out the “McCruelty” website and it appears they’ve modified things, shifting attention to the genocide of poultry.

Gretchen, if you read this and still have that lying around, I’ll buy it from you.

So now a few government officials decided to suck the joy out of any Happy Meal that doesn’t meet their nutritional standards.

It takes a recovering compulsive overeater to put this in the proper perspective, and I have a couple thoughts on this whole affair:

For one thing, banning the toy isn’t going to do a thing to keep kids away from McDonald’s food.

Kids know they can always find a toy someplace else, and at the end of the day it’s the fatty food they’re really after anyway. Maybe they won’t get the Happy Meal, but they will still go there and get the same stuff: The burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, etc.

And if you think it’ll keep parents from feeding their children junk, just remember that parental stupidity is one of the things that sends children down the unhealthy path to begin with. If I’ve learned anything on my long journey to recovery, it’s that addicts can almost always trace their behavior back to their parents.

That’s certainly the case for me. My mother was always pushing food on me. She did it out of love and meant no harm, but that and the Crohn’s Disease battle certainly tilted my addictive behavior toward the compulsive binge eating.

If a parent drinks or drugs to excess, there’s a better-than-average chance their kids are going to do the same thing in adulthood.

Recovering addicts have noted this thread in their own lives time and again at the 12-Step meetings I go to.

Chris Hoff, a good friend of mine from the Internet security industry and perhaps one of the most prolific presences on Twitter, saw a good example of this brand of parental failure in a coffee shop over the summer. I’ll share his tweets on the subject, since his content is all public record at this point:

Noticing a fat guy feeding his obese son three doughnuts and yelling at the poor kid for being too slow, Hoff (Twitter handle is @Beaker) wrote:

Hint: If your 4-foot-something 8-year-old weighs more than me, you’re doing it wrong. Makes me want to cry. F’ing up your life is one thing, but his? It’s not that I’m insensitive to his plight; been there. However he’s helping end his kid’s life early by poisoning him with junk and mean words.

He noted, correctly I think, that kids inherently know what’s healthy but they still fall into bad behavior that parents either can’t or won’t stop. Often, they enable it.

Banning the toys in Happy Meals won’t change this one bit.

I see this as another example of trying to regulate addictive food — it may be well-intentioned but it never works. I’ve mentioned this before, most notably in the post “Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility.”

Since I know what it’s like to be deep in the muck of a binge-eating addiction, my wife thought I might find interest in an article from The Environment Report suggesting that the regulation of foods that are bad for you — same way as with cigarettes — might help some sufferers.

The cattle prod for this item was book called “The End of Overeating.” The author is David A. Kessler, MD, and a former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I actually have a lot of respect for this guy, whose tenure included the successful push to enact regulations requiring standardized Nutrition Facts labels on food.

That, in my opinion, was a huge win for those of us who want truth in advertising.

In “The End of Overeating,” Kessler makes a compelling argument: Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain’s chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat.

“Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology — what’s going on in our body,” The Washington Post quoted him as saying in a story brilliantly headlined “Crave Man.”

The real question is what’s going on in the brain, Kessler says.

His theory on food as an addictive substance is as on the mark as you can get. Trust me. I’ve lived it. Binge eating is all about addiction for me.

It’s tied directly into the same corner of the brain where my OCD resides.

He is also right that sugar, salt and fat are addictive substances, though for a lot of people, the components of our poison boil down to sugar and flour.

Of course, most of the food that has flour and sugar also tends to be high in salt and fat.

The first and most important tool in my OA recovery program is a plan of eating. Flour and sugar are off the table — period. Almost everything I eat goes on a little scale. 4 ounces protein, 4 ounces raw vegetable, 6 ounces cooked vegetable, 2 ounces potato or brown rice, etc. Every morning at 6:15 I call my sponsor, someone who hears my food plan for each day and gives me the necessary kick in the ass.

But salt and fat are not forbidden for me. In fact, I’m allowed to substitute 4 ounces of meat with 2 ounces of cheese or nuts.

To some, this may sound like a typical fad diet, but people in OA have used a plan like this since the beginning. And the plan isn’t the same for everyone. If you have diabetes, for example, removing every scrap of flour from the diet isn’t usually an option. No matter. The only requirement of the program is to stop eating compulsively, no matter how you get there.

This isn’t something I pursued to drop 65 pounds, though I did lose that amount pretty quickly. This is a food plan for life — a key to my getting all the nutrition I need and nothing more. Just as an alcoholic must put down the booze or a narcotics addict has to put down the pills, I have to put down the flour and sugar.

This is the plan that got me out of the darkest days of addictive behavior and I’m a true believer.

Flour and sugar mixed together becomes a toxin that knocks the fluids in my brain out of balance. Kessler’s research is definitely in line with what’s happened to me.

But the idea of regulating food the same way as something like cigarettes? It won’t do much good.

It certainly couldn’t hurt. The nutrition labels at the very least gave us an education on what we put in our bodies, and it’s been especially helpful to parents who are trying to raise their kids healthy. Regulating cigarettes has certainly made it harder for minors to buy them.

But for the true addict, regulation is a joke.

Knowing what’s in junk food won’t keep the addict away. I always read the labels AFTER binging on the item in the package. And the labels have done nothing to curb the child obesity pandemic.

If you smoke, it’s certainly more expensive to buy a pack than it used to be. But if you crave the nicotine, you’ll find a way to get your fix. It’s the same with drugs, and with food.

I have nothing against the government types in San Francisco who want to do something about this nightmare by targeting the Happy Meal. I just don’t think their approach is going to work.

October 30, 2010

Why Halloween Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore

I used to hate Halloween with a passion. It’s one of the worst days for someone with a compulsive binge eating addiction. Now that I’ve broken the binging cycle, I find myself in the odd position of looking forward to the holiday.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohB922c2uQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I used to dread it because I knew there would be candy everywhere. I would stuff it in my pockets, in the car and every other hiding space. Then I’d spend the next week binging on sugar. That would trigger the urge to go deeper down the rabbit hole, so a vicious, almost crippling cycle of binging would take hold from Halloween straight through the rest of the holidays.

That didn’t happen in 2008. It didn’t happen last year. It’s not going to happen this time, either.

The chain is broken.

Hey, Halloween: You don’t scare me anymore.

July 14, 2010

Fear of Fat People

What do you tell someone who says they’re afraid of fat people because they might “catch the disease” if they get too close? Read on and discuss.

Mood music for this post: “Afraid” by Motley Crue:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU-rtOouPOA&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Someone in program told me that she’s afraid of fat people. Being in the same room with obesity fills her with terror. She’s worried that if she shakes a fat person’s hand, she’ll “catch the disease.” I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. It’s for real.

Naturally, I was taken aback. For one thing, why is she willing to be in a room with me?True, I’m much lighter than I used to be. But the word “slim” doesn’t exactly fit me.

To me, the whole thing is too far off the sanity charts to comprehend. My first instinct was to tell her she’s an idiot.

Then I remembered something important: When you are trapped in the grip of an addiction or mental illness, logic and sane thinking no longer apply.

I should know. I’ve been in the grip of both. I’ve had fears that were just as whacked. I never felt anxiety around people who are heavier than me. But there have been times when I thought of them as a lower form of life than myself. Since I was thinner, I was better than them. I thought this way even when I was 285 pounds and binge eating multiple times a day.

That’s just as bad as fearing an obese person. It’s probably worse.

Long before I found recover and the 12 steps, I used to be set off by the dumbest things. If a very old woman was sitting behind me in church, I’d be afraid to shake her hand during the part of Mass where we offer each other a sign of peace. Old people spread germs, too — right? That’s what I worried about. Forget that I’m a father of two boys below the age of 10 and kids are the biggest germ factories around.

I was afraid of plastic chairs. I was afraid that if I sat in one, the chair would stay stuck to my behind when I stood up. Actually, right before I entered OA, that very thing did happen.

Crowds used to scare the life out of me, so much so that I chose to stay in my room all the time.

So, all things considered, someone’s fear of fat people doesn’t seem as far removed from reality as I first thought.

Still, it’s a bad obsession and I hope she can free herself of it.

July 13, 2010

Coping With Tired: Tools of a Reformed Addict and OCD Case

Several writings about how the author copes with exhaustion.

Mood music for this post: “I’m So Tired,” from The Beatles White Album:

Someone who saw my “songs to play when tired” post asked what I do about being tied besides music and coffee. People with addictions and mental disorders are often tired — even when in recovery. These writings cover how I keep exhaustion at bay:

Rest Re-defined
The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/02/02/ocd-diaries-rest-re-defined/

The Bright Side of Exhaustion
For someone with OCD, a little exhaustion can be just what the doctor ordered.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/03/26/the-bright-side-of-exhaustion/

Somewhat Damaged
Sometimes the author lives in overdrive. The result is pain.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/26/somewhat-damaged/

The Rewards and Risk of Service: A Cautionary Tale
Service is a major tool of recovery. But it can also be dangerous.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/29/the-rewards-and-risk-of-service-a-cautionary-tale/

This is Your Brain on Restlessness
The author has hit a wall with his recovery. It’s not what you think.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/27/this-is-your-brain-on-restlessness/

Writing to Save My Life: The author on why he became a writer and how it shaped his recovery from mental illness and addiction.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/06/02/writing-to-save-my-life-the-ocd-diaries-for-6-2-10/

How I Became the Easy Parent
Here’s a side of my recovery that the kids enjoy: I’m more of a push-over than I used to be.
http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/06/06/how-i-became-the-easy-parent/

June 21, 2010

Flour and Sugar: A Tale of Slavery

The author has been asked how he gets by with no bread, pasta and all the other flour-sugar substances. Here’s his answer.

Update: A recent New York Times Magazine article on sugar as a toxin is worth reading as a companion to this post. Article summary: “That it makes us fat is something we take for granted. That it might also be making us sick is harder to accept.”

Mood music:

A reader of this blog wrote me over the weekend and asked how on Earth I’m able to exist without flour and sugar. No pasta? No bread? What else is there?

A woman in OA who I start sponsoring today asked the same question in a Saturday-night phone call. She said she’s hit rock bottom with the binge eating and is ready to do what she must to get better. But really, she asked. Does she HAVE TO give up flour and sugar?

The answer is no. Being in a 12-Step program for compulsive overeating is about one simple goal: To stop eating compulsively. There is no official OA diet.

I also tell people new to the program that sponsors are not doctors. We share the details of how we became abstinent and sober. But what works for us will probably not work for the next person.

No two addicts are the same. That goes for the substance we get addicted to, the manner in which we let it destroy our lives and how we come to the point where we realize it’s time to turn it all over to God or die by our own hands.

I know people in the program who are diabetics or who have intestinal problems that make them very sensitive to raw vegetables. Their food plans have to be different.

But it is true that most people in OA recovery abstain from all foods that have flour and sugar in the ingredients. Including me.

In my case, those ingredients were at the root of my addiction. Flour and sugar mixed together were for me what heroin was to Nikki Sixx or what vodka was to Ozzy Osbourne.

Not only did I put on an atrocious amount of weight binging on these things — I was 280 pounds at my worst — but I started running into some serious medical problems. I was waking up in the middle of the night throwing up stomach acid, for one thing. I was also experiencing an increased frequency of migraines, chest pains and deep fatigue.

I’m not a scientist or a nutritionist but I know this — days after I stopped eating flour and sugar all these things stopped happening to me.

That’s when I realized how enslaved I was to the stuff.

I also dropped more than 50 pounds on the spot. By four months in, the weight loss was 65 pounds, and I’ve maintained my current weight for nearly two years.

The wild thing is I lost the weight and have kept it off eating way more food than I ate before I got abstinent.

Almost everything I eat goes on a little scale. Four ounces of protein. Ten ounces of vegetable. Two ounces of brown rice or potato. Ten ounces of veggie is a lot.

My goal wasn’t really to lose weight. I didn’t mind being a big man. Hard to believe, perhaps. But it’s the truth.

I sought recovery for the sake of my sanity. My grip on reality was getting looser and looser, and without action I was going to fall into the abyss.

The weight loss was a bonus. And I won’t lie: I’m much more comfortable in this body than I was before.

Do I still wish I could eat a slice of pizza or have pasta once in awhile? Well, I thought I would have to fight back those urges. But I haven’t.

In fact, the sight and smell of McDonald’s or Papa Gino’s now makes me want to puke.

I never expected that. But I’ll take it.

May 22, 2010

Prozac or Potatoes: Which is Better?

The author votes for some of each. Though only 2 ounces of potato at a time.

Mood music for this post: “We’re All Gonna Die” by Iggy Pop and Slash:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ5Rmt7jYhQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

At the suggestion of my friend Christy Hubbard, I decided to check out Kathleen Des Maisons’ book “Potatoes Not Prozac.” She suggested I take a look after reading a couple of my previous posts about being a Prozac taker. [More on that in The Engine, Prozac Winter and The Bad Pill Kept Me From The Good Pill.]

I haven’t read it from cover to cover, but I’ve digested enough of it to get the point.

Google Books gives a pretty good overview:

You’re not lazy, self-indulgent, or undisciplined. Many people who suffer from sugar sensitivity don’t even know it — and they continue to consume large quantities of sweets, breads, pasta, or alcohol. These foods can trigger exhaustion or low self-esteem, yet their biochemical impact makes those who are sugar sensitive crave them even more. This vicious cycle can continue for years, leaving sufferers overweight, fatigued, depressed, and sometimes alcoholic.

Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons came up with the solution and published it in her revolutionary book Potatoes Not Prozac. It gave you the tools needed to overcome sugar dependency, including self-tests and a step-by-step, drug-free program with a customizable diet designed to change your brain chemistry…

All in all, this is a very good self-help book. The author is deadly accurate in her assessment of sugar as a drug that’s as bad as cocaine. I know it’s true, because my own addictive behavior was fueled by large quantities of sugar and flour. And my recovery program includes a diet that shuns all foods with flour and sugar in the ingredients. I do eat potato, but only 2 ounces per meal.

Here’s my problem with the book. Well, not really a problem, but…

I admire any plan designed to bring a person to sanity without medication. Nobody WANTS to take anti-depressants. But sometimes you have to. I certainly had to. So when someone pitches a plan designed to avoid it, I grow skeptical.

I have no doubt there are people who have successfully recovered from mental illness on diet alone. But I tried that and it didn’t work. After several years of therapy, learning various coping tools and dietary tweaks, I still needed Prozac to balance out the chemicals in my brain.

I also got burned pretty badly a few years ago when I tried to do another drug-free program. You might have heard of Lucinda Bassett, star of the “Attacking Anxiety” infomercials and president of Midwest Center for Stress & Anxiety.

I watched her infomercials over and over again at the deepest depths of my anxiety and depression and, desperate to try anything, I got on the phone and bought the tapes, books and DVDs that encompass the program.

More than $500 later, I found that while useful, the program wasn’t nearly enough to help me.

And I felt burned because I got hit with extra costs that weren’t as advertised. One day a packet of vitamins came in the mail. I didn’t ask for them, and they were expensive as hell. I called the Midwest Center and told them I didn’t want the vitamins and I wanted a refund for the money they sucked out of my bank account. They essentially told me no refunds and that I should have read the fine print.

The problem with that is that when a person is messed up mentally and seeks out a program in desperation, it’s easy to take advantage of them. A desperate person is easily roped into extra costs that weren’t made clear to them during the purchasing process.

So in my mind, the center took advantage of me and suckered me out of extra money, then refused accountability. It didn’t matter in the end that the program included some useful tools — some of which I eventually adopted through the 12 Steps. I was burned, and that ruined the whole thing.

I still have the tapes and books. I’m going to gather ’em up and donate them to the local library someday so people can use it for free. I can’t think of a better way to say “fuck you” to the Midwest Center.

For me, the ultimate lesson is that there is no cookie-cutter path to mental wellness. Some tools work perfectly for one person but prove inadequate for the next guy.

In my case, it took a combination of therapy, diet change and, in the end, Prozac to make everything click.

When people suggest to me that such medication is a sham, I want to tell them they have no idea what they are talking about. Usually I just nod my head and move on, though.

Prozac worked for me, though I know drugs do nothing for other people. In some cases, the medicine can make things worse. I was lucky because I found a therapist who was up front from the beginning and took me through a very gradual process of dosage tweaks.

The big point here is that no two head cases are the same, nor are the solutions that work for each individual.

When taking the fight to mental illness and addiction, an open mind is essential.

May 12, 2010

How a Binge Eater in Recovery Packs for a Trip

The author’s program of recovery from addiction makes travel more interesting. Here’s how.

Mood music for this post: “White Trash Circus” by Motley Crue:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w5eegIa97s&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Traveling was easier when I had my face in the junk food. I would just buy whatever poison I wanted to binge on and that was that. Of course, in doing so I had practically no drive to get out there and live.

A couple years into my 12-Step Recovery program, there’s a lot more preparation to be done on the food front. Breakfast and lunch for each day of the trip gets packed in advance. I’ll do the restaurant thing at dinnertime each evening, but my choices will be limited to my plan.

Otherwise, my meals look like this:

BREAKFAST FOR EACH DAY OF TRAVEL:

8 ounces of Greek yogurt

2 Ounces of granola

1 bannana

LUNCH FOR EACH DAY OF TRAVEL:

–10 ounces of vegetable (6 ounces cooked, 4 ounces raw)

–2 ounces of potato

–4 ounces of protein (meat)

Clean livin’ aint easy, my friends. But it beats the hell out of the alternative.

March 20, 2010

An OCD Diaries Primer

A collection of posts that form the back story of this blog.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:19n9s9SfnLtwPEODqk8KCT]

The Long History of OCD

An OCD Christmas. The 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 Pill. How the drug Prednisone brought me to the brink, and how Prozac was part of my salvation.

The Crazy-Ass Guy in the Newsroom. Think 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 Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.

The Ego OCD Built. The 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 Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

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

Have Fun with Your Therapist. Mental-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 Engine. To 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 Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.

Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The 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 Addiction. In 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 Relapse. The author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.

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

How to Play Your Addictions Like a Piano. The 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 Futility. As 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 Disease. The author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.

Portable Recovery. Though 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 Brothers. How 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 Brother. Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.

Revere Revisited.

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

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

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

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

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

Child of Metal

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

Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or Less. The 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 Revisited. The 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 Nature. Why I let Christ in my life.

The Rat in the Church Pew. The 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 Scissors. The 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 Bitch. Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.

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

January 25, 2010

Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility

As an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he (cough) weigh in (cough) on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.

The cattle prod for this item is a new book called “The End of Overeating.” The author is David A. Kessler, MD, and a former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I actually have a lot of respect for this guy, whose tenure included the successful push to enact regulations requiring standardized Nutrition Facts labels on food. That, in my opinion, was a huge win for those of us who want truth in advertising.

In “The End of Overeating,” Kessler makes a compelling argument: Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain’s chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. “Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology — what’s going on in our body,” The Washington Post quoted him as saying in the story “David Kessler: Fat, Salt and Sugar Alter Brain Chemistry, Make Us Eat Junk Food.”

The real question is what’s going on in the brain, Kessler says.

His theory on food as an addictive substance is as on the mark as you can get. Trust me. I’ve lived it. Binge eating is all about addiction for me. It’s tied directly into the same corner of the brain where my OCD resides.

He is also right that sugar, salt and fat are addictive substances, though for a lot of people, the components of our poison boil down to sugar and flour. Of course, most of the food that has flour and sugar also tends to be high in salt and fat.

But salt and fat are not forbidden for me. In fact, I’m allowed to substitute 4 ounces of meat with 2 ounces of cheese or nuts.

This is the plan that got me out of the darkest days of addictive behavior and I’m a true believer.

Flour and sugar mixed together becomes a toxin that knocks the fluids in my brain out of balance. Kessler’s research is definitely in line with what’s happened to me.

But the idea of regulating food the same way as something like cigarettes? It won’t do much good.

But for the true addict, regulation is a joke.

Knowing what’s in junk food won’t keep the addict away. I always read the labels AFTER binging on the item in the package. And the labels have done nothing to curb the child obesity pandemic.

If you smoke, it’s certainly more expensive to buy a pack than it used to be. But if you crave the nicotine, you’ll find a way to get your fix. It’s the same with drugs, and with food.

I’m going to read Kessler’s book because it sounds like he has some breakthrough findings that can help make people better.

But when someone suggests regulation as a solution, don’t ever believe ’em.

A suffering brain will always find a way to disregard the rules for the three minutes of rapture that follows the binge.

December 8, 2009

The Most Uncool Addiction

In 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.

I don’t beat myself for having engaged in addictive behavior. That kind of thing is obvious for someone with OCD. If there’s a compulsion to be rubbed raw, you go for it, no matter how destructive it is on body and soul. Then you wake up the next day and do it again.

But on occasion I find myself wallowing in this question: “Why, oh why, couldn’t I be addicted to something more common like alcohol or heroin?”

Hell, many of the musicians, writers and political leaders who’ve inspired me drank to excess, smoked nonstop or even used needles.

Winston Churchill spent every waking hour of WW II buzzed. He dipped his cigars in brandy and port. Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) and Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue) almost made being a junkie look cool. It wasn’t cool, of course. But that’s how I think when under the haze.

In my case, the addiction is food, something we need to survive. It’s not the least bit cool. Certainly not a “normal” addiction.

That food would be my problem makes perfect sense. As a kid sick with Chron’s Disease much of the time, 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.

Then 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.