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Fear of the Fat Man’s Pants

The Esquire Magazine Style Blog has a fascinating read on pant sizes that brings back a lot of fat guy memories. And though I’m not nearly as heavy as I was at the height of my binge-eating disorder, this tale of fat man’s pants still resonates.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q15a15LYYNg&fs=1&hl=en_US]

The author, Abram Sauer, recounts a painful moment when he tried on a size 36 pants and found them too tight. He did some digging and found that not all pants’ sizes are as advertised, and how it opens a can of worms in terms of a person’s perception of their own body and how they might act going forward.

fatman.jpg He writes:

I’ve never been slim — I played offensive line in high school — but I’m no cow either. (I’m happily a “Russell Crowe” body type.) So I immediately went across the street, bought a tailor’s measuring tape, and trudged from shop to shop, trying on various brands’ casual dress pants. It took just two hours to tear my self-esteem to smithereens and raise some serious questions about what I later learned is called “vanity sizing.”

The pants manufacturers are trying to flatter us. And this flattery works: Alfani’s 36-inch “Garrett” pant was 38.5 inches, just like the Calvin Klein “Dylan” pants — which I loved and purchased. A 39-inch pair from Haggar (a brand name that out-testosterones even “Garrett”) was incredibly comfortable. Dockers, meanwhile, teased “Leave yourself some wiggle room” with its “Individual Fit Waistline,” and they weren’t kidding: despite having a clear size listed, the 36-inchers were 39.5 inches. And part of the reason they were so comfy is that I felt good about myself, no matter whether I deserved it.

He concluded:

The mind-screw of broken pride aside — like Humpty Dumpty, it cannot be put back together, now that you know the truth — down-waisting is genuine cause for concern. A recent report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that men with larger waists were twice at risk of death compared with their smaller-waist peers. Men whose waists measured 47 inches or larger were twice as likely to die. Yet, most men only know their waist size by their pants — so if those pants are up to five inches smaller than the reality, some men may be wrongly dismissing health dangers.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/pants-size-chart-090710#ixzz0z1QCV5Ma

A few thoughts on this:

–I’ve always hated clothes shopping because of the blow the experience would inevitably land on my ego. My hips are always wider than my waist, no matter how thin I am. So the right waist size is still too tight in the hips and legs. Buying pants isn’t as traumatic now that I’m some 80 pounds lighter than I once was, but I’d still rather wear pants full of holes than buy a new pair.

–Finding the preferred size too tight never encouraged me to stop binge eating. In fact, the anger and shame led to more binge eating.

–Finding a pair of pants that were looser than advertised did indeed leave me with the false perception that I’d cheated the odds with my eating behavior. The result was more bad behavior because, well, I had cheated the odds.

–I don’t blame clothing manufacturers for taking liberty with the sizes. For one thing, their job is to sell pants and keep the customer happy. I doubt these guys ever met someone who was happy after peeling themselves from a too-tight pair of pants. If they are making so-called vanity sizes, it’s because the customer demands it.

–The measuring tape never lies. Pants may lie, but when you put the tape around the waist or hips, what you see is the truth.

In my case, I’ve learned not to let the fit of new pants get in the way of reality. The only thing I care about is what the food on my plate weighs. I use a small scale to determine that. If I keep weighing the portions, the smaller pants are going to fit. It’s stupidly simple.

Clothing manufacturers can play all the games they want with sizes.

If you have a binge-eating problem like I did, there’s no limit to the lies your brain will spin about your own body perception. I’ve looked in the mirror many times as a fat man and saw a thin man because that’s what I wanted to see. I’ve looked in the mirror as a much thinner man and saw a fat guy staring back at me because that’s how I felt that day.

Clothing companies may play games. Fast food restaurants may play games with the amount of fat and chemicles they stuff into their food.

But in the end, the real enemy is ourselves. We see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe.

And we are more than happy to have accomplices.

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Surrender Does Not Mean Give Up

In my journey through Faith and recovery, I hear the word “surrender” over and over again. I used to hate the word for the same reason you might hate it. To surrender means to give up, toss in the towel and go home defeated, right? Not exactly.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e04OBJzbvc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Let’s see if I can sort it out by the end of this entry.

If you look up the word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you see all the wrong descriptions:

1. a : to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand (surrendered the fort)
b : to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another
2. a : to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner
b : to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)

 

2 b comes closest, but it’s not enough.
They are accurate descriptions, mind you. They just don’t do justice to what the word means in faith and recovery.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the word so far: It DOES NOT mean to quit life and stop trying to be better and stronger. In the context of Faith and the 12 Steps of Recovery, it DOES NOT mean  that you stop thinking for yourself.
It IS about admitting you can’t control everything and that you need the aid of a higher power. For many of us (for me, anyway), that higher power is God. It IS also about putting your trust in others.

As addicts in the grip of the demon, we trust nobody. We picture everyone with a knife in their hand, ready to stab us in the back. We see someone trying to tell us to clean up our act even though they could not possibly understand what it’s like to be truly out of control. We also watch over our shoulders because we expect someone to swoop in and steal our junk at any moment.

When we start to realize we have a problem, we labor unsuccessfully under the delusion that we can clean up on our own, without any help. In that regard, we refuse to surrender. We think our will is enough to get the job done, even though the art of will power has eluded us repeatedly. That’s the insanity of being a control freak.

I tried all kinds of things to clean up from a binge eating addiction. I thought I could tame the beast by chain smoking and drinking 14 cups of black coffee per morning. I thought I could do it by fasting twice a week. I even thought I could do it by drinking wine instead of eating.
Since I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, I looked at the word surrender with pure hatred. To surrender meant to do whatever my mother told me to do. Since her desire was for me to always play it safe and never take risks, it would have been the wrong thing to surrender to.
To surrender also meant to do what my father told me to do, which as a teenager simply didn’t fit into the joys of staying up all night getting high. He had a lot of good things to teach me, but no fucking way was I going to heed his advice. That would mean surrendering.
Surrendering to God seemed like the worst idea of all. That meant giving up my free will and following some unseen being over the cliff.
Motley Crue bassist and lyricist Nikki Sixx once described a similar reaction when he was asked to get on his knees and pray for help to break his heroin addiction. His reaction went something like this: “Fuck God!”
Let go and let God? Screw you.
As I got older and my addictive behavior was about to destroy all my hopes and dreams, I reached a point where I was willing to do anything to stop the pain.
Some would call that giving up, and I guess that’s what it was.
One time I was at a party listening to a group of moms talking about the pain of childbirth. Someone noted that in that moment of agony you lose all modesty. You just want that baby out of there. After a while, you stop caring if the doctor is male or female.
I wouldn’t know, but it is a pretty decent description of an addict who has maxed out their tolerance for pain.
Suddenly, the word surrender doesn’t sound so bad.
Professional life coach Rich Wyler nails it in his write up on the 12 Steps. He brilliantly boils it down to this:
–Effecting a spiritual awakening in which God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, as we humbly submit our self-will and our heart to his will (Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11).
–Overcoming pride and resistance to change through rigorously honest self-examination (Steps 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10)
–Making amends and repairing the harmful consequences of our self-destructive behaviors – especially the harm we’ve done to others (Steps 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12).

There it is, all laid bare. To surrender isn’t to give up and stop thinking for yourself. It’s exactly the opposite. It means doing a gut check, finally being honest and realizing you need help. When you surrender to God, you’re letting in the people who can help you.

It’s about honesty, trust and taking a leap of faith.

Here’s the truly whacked part: In doing so, I suddenly experienced more freedom than I ever had before.

I stopped being afraid to leave my room, getting on airplanes, taking on challenging work assignments that previously would have made me sick to my stomach, and I stopped being afraid to get up and talk in front of a room full of people. I also stopped being afraid to speak up when I disagreed about something, particularly in work.

In other words, I finally started becoming the man I wanted to be.

I still have a long, long way to go. But this beats the hell out of what life was like when I was clinging to that old, stupid will of mine.

Yeah, I surrendered. I gave up the idea that I could go it alone, without people who know better and without God.

Some might think that makes me weak.

I don’t care.

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The Power of Nothing

I haven’t written anything new since Friday and don’t plan to today (well, except for this). Last time I took a break I got a bunch of e-mails from people asking if I was OK.

I appreciate that, but no need to worry.

Mood music:

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

The last two days I re-posted a bunch of older entries. That was for newer readers who asked me to flag older posts that were important to the larger story.

Not everyone liked that and two people un-friended me on Facebook. So be it. As Elwood Blues used to tell people, it’s a “Mission from God.”

The other thing is that I’m forcing myself NOT to write once in awhile. It’s part of learning how to take breaks, something I’ve never been good at.

I’m practicing the power of nothing. It’s hard, but my wife and kids will surely keep me busy in the meantime.

While I do that, have a great day. I’ll be back tomorrow.

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The Clarence Syndrome

Sometimes God puts certain people in your life to show you how you’re screwing up and how to fix it. Sometimes, these guardian angels are disguised as people who need YOUR help. This post is about one such man.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyb7dt9nz_g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

In 12-Step programs anonymity is a big deal, especially in OA, because there’s an extra level of awkwardness that comes with being a binge-eating addict. So I’m changing this friend’s name to Dan.

I first talked to Dan on the phone a few months ago. He got my number from someone else in program and called me out of the blue. I picked up the phone and heard the following:

“Hiya Bill. My name’s Dan and I’m a compulsive overeater!”

The exclamation mark is appropriate, because that’s how he said it.

He proceeded to tell me that he needed a sponsor and I was it.

“Uh, ok,” I said. I had just started sponsoring and this guy was asking for help, so in I went.

The first time I met him in person, I was picking him up for a Saturday-morning OA meeting. He’s so obese that he needed help getting the seatbelt on. His legs were purple from diabetes.

“This guy is going to be a lot of work,” I thought.

Then, at the meeting, I start to realize that he knows a lot of people there. He was greeting and hugging people like it was old home week. It turned out that he had been in OA before.

What’s more: He was a 20-year veteran of AA. He had done it all. He was once a drunk and a drug addict. He shot heroin. He had lost just about everything. After kicking booze and drugs, he turned to the food. He needs a truck scale to weigh himself and last time he did, he was an even 400 pounds.

But it didn’t matter. He was and still is one of the more cheerful people I’ve ever met.

And since then, of all my sponsees, nobody works the program as hard as he is. We talk every morning. Sometimes we talk several times a day. He’ll bend your ear for hours if you let him. Sometimes, it can get exasperating.

Here’s the problem: I can be a selfish, egotistical bastard. It’s not hard for me to think I’m better than other people, especially a 400-pound 50-something who lives in a room the size of my walk-in closet. And my ego is probably too big to weigh on a truck scale.

I’m pretty sure that’s why God put Dan in my life. That’s what He does, you know: puts people in your life who will help you, but he sneaks them in as people who need YOUR help.

Ever see “It’s a Wonderful Life?” It’s like the angel Clarence. He dives in the water and acts like he’s drowning so George Bailey, who is standing on the bridge contemplating suicide, will jump in and save him.

I guess you could call what I’m experiencing the Clarence Syndrome.

Dan, you see, is teaching me a lot more than I’m teaching him. I may be his OA sponsor, but he’s my own Clarence.

As a 20-year veteran of 12-Step programs, he knows every current and former junkie on the streets of Haverhill. We’ll drive up Winter Street or down River Street and he’ll point out every person walking the streets as we pass. He’s seen them all in AA meetings. He’ll tell you their full history and how they’re doing today.

He’s also taught me that people in AA are NOT the same as people in OA.

We have the big things in common. We developed addictions that made our lives unmanageable. Having found recovery, we latch onto each other pretty tight.

But something’s different.

In OA, there’s a tight fellowship in meetings and on the telephone. But the AA crowd really sticks together. It’s more like a gang. Recovering addicts often live together, several in a house. Not a halfway house. They just live together, watching out for each other.

It’s cool to see. But I’ve also found that there are some real animosities among the AA crowd. Another of my sponsees, an OA drop-out for now, spent a lot of time telling me about how I shouldn’t trust this person or that person because one likes to tell lies and the other likes to steal money. The lying part didn’t shock me. All addicts lie.

Come to think of it, Dan warned me that this other person does the same things and shouldn’t be trusted. Ah, the webs we weave.

Dan gives people nicknames. There’s Happy Harold, New York Mikey (called that because he has a pimped-out car with New York plates) and Georgie-B.

He’s always bringing new people into AA. He calls them prospects.

That was one of my first lessons: He’s not just a poor obese boy living in a box. He gives freely, helping others every day. He doesn’t have a job, but he fills his time in meaningful ways.

I’m better than him? Hell, no. He’s taking ME to school. He’s so busy looking for my guidance in OA that he doesn’t seem to realize it.

Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

It’s been a powerful, humbling lesson for me about not judging a book by its cover or thinking of yourself as above others.

We’re all in the same struggle for redemption. And God keeps giving us a shot at it by sending along guardian angels disguised as people “worse off” than we think WE are.

The trouble is, we’re often too blind and/or stupid to see it.

I know I was.

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Discriminating Against Head Cases

I’ve seen plenty of examples of failed justice in my day: A judge letting an abusive dirt-bag dad get unsupervised weekend visits just because he reappeared after a few years. A thrice convicted pedophile being let back out on the streets. I never expected to hear about the court discriminating against someone for having OCD.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI3RneGO_ks&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I usually try not to write posts in response to comments that flow into this blog. I like to let readers’ statements stand on their own. But when someone flags something particularly insidious, I have to share.

The two examples that follow came my way by way of a couple mental health forums on LinkedIn where I post blog entries.

I’ll keep their names to myself to protect privacy.

But to help you appreciate the first person’s perspective, I’ll tell you she’s a certified mediator who provides psychotherapy for adults, children, couples and families. She also does group sessions for anger management, domestic violence and parenting.

I have a special respect for someone in this line of work. As a kid suffering from a particularly vicious form of Crohn’s Disease and, by extension, behavioral issues, I firmly believe I was saved by the children’s therapist assigned to me. That same person kept me on the sane side of the line when my parents’ marriage dissolved in hatred, abuse and mistrust.

In adulthood, my recovery from OCD would be nowhere without the three therapists who have helped me in the last six years.

I’ve had a couple really bad therapists along the way, too, so I never take someone’s word as Gospel just because of what they do for a living. But the person who contacted me yesterday seems solid and worth listening to. Here’s what she wrote to me in response to Monday’s post, “More Bullshit About Mental Illness“:

My clients just lost their kids in family court because the mom had OCD. She “counts” and so this was considered “traumatizing to the two older kids.” They are in their teens, however; the bureau allowed them to keep their two younger children. The Child and Family Services organizations are off their rocker. I see kids returned to abusers and drug addicts, I don’t get it.

There are elements about this that I have questions about. For starters, why take the teenagers but let the younger kids stay? I suspect it’s because the teenagers are at an age where seemingly abnormal behavior is going to freak them out more. Teens are almost always confused. But the larger suggestion that someone got a raw deal in the courts because of her OCD quirks is totally believable to me.

I’ve seen more than one fellow OCD sufferer scorned in the workplace for being a little different. Not in my workplace, but in other companies.

True or not, I think that when someone has OCD, they always need to be prepared to defend themselves against someone else’s stupidity. Of course, it’s not enough to say someone discriminated against you for having a mental illness. You need to be able to prove it. That shouldn’t be hard for obsessive people who are known to be painfully diligent at documenting things.

Breaking a stigma is hard. There’s no play book. There’s always the danger of coming across as delusional or whiney. Come to think of it, some of us ARE delusional and whiney.

Despite all I say about breaking stigmas and fighting back, I have to be honest and say that I’ve never experienced the kinds of things people write to me about. I’m very lucky. I’ve gotten nothing but support from every office I’ve ever worked in. If I was going through depression and needed time off, I got it. When I decided to write this blog, the folks at work were very supportive.

You might say that for an OCD patient, I’ve led a charmed life.

I do know this, though: When you take a skeleton like mental illness out of the closet and toss it to the middle of the street for all to see, the control it has over you lessens and the bones of the disorder turn to ash.

I’ve lived it. I know it. I used to live in mortal terror of speaking up for myself. Once I got over that initial hump, there was no turning back.

Another reader recently wrote to me about the injustices she has suffered for having a mental illness:

I have two very bad instances of discrimination based on mental illness. I worked for medical doctors for ten years, had all outstanding performance reviews, and received bonuses periodically. I began to have trouble functioning because of undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. I had doctors working with me who told me I needed a leave of absence to get medical care. I went to my boss, the executive director and an MD, and told him what my therapist and neurologist recommended. His words were “I’m a doctor, I can’t have someone with a mental illness in a position of authority in a company I run!” Second case, my supervisor docked my pay for going to the doctor even though I was exempt. Also, she told me that I had to have therapy sessions via phone or email because she couldn’t afford to let me leave the office. She also told others about my illness without my permission. It was at that point I decided I have to try and find a way to work for myself even if I had to leave in a homeless shelter.  I will never be treated that way again.

Me neither, my friend.

I can’t tell someone how to fight back when a judge or employer screws them over their illness.

I only know what I do: Minimize the impact of my OCD by exposing it for all to see through my writing.

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More Bullshit About Mental Illness

Every once in awhile I read something on mental illness that sends my blood boiling. Please indulge me while I rant about one such item.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPfkK7bcyfE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I recently tripped across a website called HeretoHelp, a project of the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information. It’s a great resource for people like me who are recovering from mental illness and addictive behavior. It’s chock full of articles from medical professionals and people who suffer with various mental disorders. There’s also a news feed that includes upcoming events like mental illness screenings. I like the no-bullshit approach to the writing and layout.

The item that set me off was a fact sheet on discrimination and stigmas around mental illness. Specifically, it documented instances where employers view mental illness as a weakness; a reason not to hire someone. I’m not suggesting this form of prejudice is limited to something like depression. How many job candidates admit freely to having a heart problem or cancer? Employers discriminate against that, too, especially when they worry about health care costs and potential disability leave. I’m not even going to suggest that those are evil concerns.

But there’s something that strikes me as more insidious about the perception society has of people with mental illness. If you’re depressed, that somehow makes you a weakling who can’t cope with the normal challenges we’re all supposed to know how to deal with.

It’s true that someone in the grip of depression can’t cope with those challenges. I’ve greeted many “normal” situations like a crisis that threatened to bring everything crashing down. When I worked at The Eagle-Tribune, I was so paralyzed with depression and worry that I missed a lot of work. I also spent many a shift so mentally weak that I could barely edit properly. By the end of my time there, I was as close to a nervous breakdown as I’d ever come. I’d come much closer in the two years after I left that job, but I was in a pretty low place.

I still feel badly about leaving half-baked edits for the morning editors.

But here’s where I was lucky: Though I might have been looked at as weak by some of my colleagues, I wasn’t tossed out on my ass. I worried that I would be, but I had a lot of support from bosses like Gretchen Putnam, who I consider a dear friend today. At SearchSecurity.com, I had another nurturing boss in Anne Saita. I was in her employ when the mental illness, depression and addiction really started coming to a head. By some freak of nature, I was able to do some quality work for her during that time, but trust me on this: Had she not been the type of person I could open up to about what I was working through, I almost certainly would have failed at that job. I was that close to the edge.

In my current job, I’ve been Blessed enough to work around open-minded people that I was able to start up this blog without fear of getting blackballed.

So yes, I’ve been lucky. Others have not been as fortunate, however, and their livelihoods have suffered.

The article makes the following point: “Even clinical depression, which has arguably received the most media attention this past decade, is still stigmatized. A 2005 Australian study noted that around one quarter of people felt depression was a sign of personal weakness and would not employ someone with depression. Nearly one third felt depressed people “could snap out of it,” and 42 percent said they would not vote for a politician with depression.”

Considering that one of our greatest presidents suffered from crushing depression, that last sentence is particularly unfortunate.

The article also noted how addiction is also viewed as a weakness of character, something that a “strong” person could stop simply because it’s wrong.

“Addiction, which is a chronic and disabling disorder, is also often thought of as a moral deficiency or lack of willpower, and there is the attitude that people can just decide to stop drinking or using drugs if they want to. The study of the effects of stigma on substance use disorders is still a fairly undeveloped area, but research is revealing that social stigma and attitudes towards addiction are preventing people from seeking help.”

I love the description of addiction being a lack of willpower, because in the bigger picture a lack of willpower never held a person back in society. It suggests that someone who can’t help but eat junk food all day is somehow better than someone who can’t stop shooting heroin or drinking. Hell, smoking cigarettes with a few beers or a few glasses of wine is more accepted than the illegal addictions.

True, something like heroin can take you to a place where you no longer function in society. But my addiction was binge eating. It was perfectly legal. But the state it brought me to was about as bad as a heroin addiction. When all you can do is lay on the couch and isolate yourself from the rest of the world, it doesn’t matter what you’re addicted to, does it? The result is the same.

Maybe expecting society to  stop thinking of the depressed and addicted as weak outcasts is asking too much. It probably is.

All I know is that nothing will change unless more people in recovery work to break the stigma. I know many drug counselors, therapists and 12-Steppers who are doing just that. But we clearly have a long, long way to go before an environment exists where most sufferers can get the help they need and return to the world as productive members of society.

I’ll do my part by continuing to write this blog and sponsoring others who want to turn their lives around.

That’s all I can do, I suppose.

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Anatomy of a Near-Binge

A few weeks ago I described a day in the life of a compulsive binge eater. Here’s the sequel. Even in recovery, the demon is constantly breathing down your neck. But you don’t have to let him win.

Mood music: “Starve” by the Henry Rollins Band:

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

4 a.m.: Wake up in a hotel room, grab some coffee and start typing away on the computer. Congratulate yourself for nearly two years of abstinence from binge eating and eight months of sobriety.

6:15 a.m.: Stop working — which is hard to do because you have OCD and don’t like to stop working — and call the sponsor. Tell her your plan of eating for the day and make sure to ask how she’s doing. That can be tricky, because when you’re an addict it’s all about you.

6:30 a.m.: Eat your abstinent breakfast

7:30 a.m.: Talk with the guy you sponsor. Control your temper as the call goes five minutes beyond its alloted time, thus knocking the day’s schedule off course.

7:45-8:15 a.m.: Take a quick shower, shave the head and get dressed. Get your ass down to the conference you traveled 14 hours to get to.

8:15-9 a.m.: Walk past the breakfast food they put out at these conferences, because to you it’s all poison. Have more coffee.

9 a.m.-noon: Take notes during various talks, then start your writing. Write as many stories as you can even though you only have to write one. get it posted and remember to send it out on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The day has been pretty good so far. You’re doing what you love, and you are keeping the abstinence and sobriety together.

2 p.m.: You realize you didn’t eat lunch. This is fucking bad if you’re a recovering food-binging addict. The danger that you’ll say “screw it” and sacrifice lunch altogether in favor of a giant dinner is high. Doing it that way will almost certainly break your abstinence.

2:05 p.m.: Find a salad, thus keeping the abstinence intact.

2:30 p.m.: Write another story from the conference and get over the fact that you’re not networking as much as you’d like because your OCD is making you produce.

3:45ish: Fatigue sets in. So does the urge to drink some wine. After all, you’re not at home and nobody’s going to know. And hell, your main addiction is binge eating and drinking wine isn’t binge eating.

4:30 p.m.: After wrestling with this one in your head for 45 minutes, you remember that you gave up alcohol because getting drunk leads to binge eating. But if you binge just this once, you could always keep it to yourself. Addicts are excellent liars.

You head to the place where snacks are sold. You stare in and suddenly turn and walk the other way. Sure, you can lie, but the guilt will eat you alive. And besides, you worked too hard to get clean.

5 p.m.: You remember that while OCD drives a lot of your writing, you also do it because you love it. So you go do some blogging and you feel better.

6:30 p.m.: After an abstinent dinner — another salad — you call the wife and kids and get caught up on their day.

6:50 p.m.: Go outside and have a cigar. That too is an addiction and you indulge more on the road than when you’re on the normal routine. But avoiding the food and alcohol must be the priorities for now, so you allow yourself the tobacco. In your heart, though, you know the cigars will have to go — sooner or later.

7-10 p.m.: You meet up with associates from your industry over drinks and food. You’ve eaten already and you don’t drink, so you order coffee and, later, club soda.

11 p.m.: You collapse into your hotel bed, thanking God for another clean day.

The demon is always seconds away from ripping your day out from under you.

But not today.

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Saturday Morning Sanity Check

Didn’t get up until 6 a.m., which for me is sleeping in. Kids came in the room, dragged me out of bed and down the stairs to the living room.

Poured myself into the chair and used the kids as a blanket. It got cold overnight. They make good blankets.

Got out of the chair after an hour and grabbed a Red Bull. Now I’m listening to this while blogging:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irskrVvKR1E&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Gotta pack for the drive to DC tomorrow. Gotta go feed the in-laws’ cats.

All in all, life is just as it should be.

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How the Recluse Became a Road Rat

Since my OCD and anxiety used to make me deathly afraid of travel, it’s kind of weird that I do so much of it now without giving it much thought.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47HVhzF6No&hl=en_US&fs=1]

This time, me, the wife and kids are driving down to the D.C. area. Not a White House tour like we had a couple months ago, but good times all the same. The family will stay with relatives in southern Maryland for a couple days while I drive on to DC to work two security conferences: Metricon 5 and one of my faves, the USENIX Security Symposium. After I’m done writing all there is to write down there for CSO Magazine, I’ll retrieve the family in Maryland and head home.

I still take my precautions, of course. I’ve enlisted people to look after the house while we’re away so someone will be here. I write about security. I can’t help but think of these things.

But the fact that I’m making this drive twice in one year really flies in the face of how it used to be, when I felt complete terror if I took a wrong turn and got lost in a city other than my own. Even getting lost in Boston would freak me out.

This week I’ve been driving all over Boston, taking side roads in the city to avoid traffic hell on I-93 as I traveled to and from Haverhill for SANS Boston 2010. It hasn’t bothered me one bit.

I used to have a fear of flying, too. Not any more. I get on planes all the time now. In fact, I start to get a little crazy if I go too long without leaving Massachusetts for a few days. It’s always for work, but I ALWAYS make sure I build in some time to experience the city I’m in.

Frankly, it would be easier to fly to and from DC on my own. But I treasure these long drives with the family as well, so it’s all good. I’ll be fried by the end of next week, but it’ll be worth it. And as a bonus, I’ll have several security articles to show for it.

This makes me happy. And it makes me feel weird.

These are just more examples of how I now crave most of the things I used to fear most.

I don’t have to over-analyze it. I just thank God and make the most of the gifts he gave me.

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AA vs. OA: 12-Step Dysfunction

The folks you find in Overeater’s Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous often mix well. But when they don’t, well…

Mood music: “Dead End Justice” by The Runaways:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jhAzSZYfg&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I’ve noticed lately that there are more folks coming into OA that have also been in AA. Some of them have been sober for more than two decades. Now they need OA because in the process of putting down the booze, they developed a food addiction.

I know how it is. I’ve gone in reverse. I stopped the compulsive binge eating and at first started to use wine as a crutch. When I realized how much I was starting to need a drink every day, I stopped that, too. But I still like my cigars and can’t exist without caffeine. The cigars will have to go at some point. I know it in my heart. But not today. Caffeine I won’t be giving up anytime soon.

Anyway, I’m mixing with the AA crowd a lot more these days, perhaps because one of my sponsees has been in AA for decades. We have the big things in common. We developed addictions that made our lives unmanageable. Having found recovery, we latch onto each other pretty tight.

But something’s different.

In OA, there’s a tight fellowship in meetings and on the telephone. But the AA crowd really sticks together. It’s more like a gang. Recovering addicts often live together, several in a house. Not a halfway house. They just live together, watching out for each other.

It’s cool to see. But I’ve also found that there are some real animosities among the AA crowd. One of my sponsees, an OA drop-out for now, spent a lot of time telling me about how I shouldn’t trust this person or that person because one likes to tell lies and the other likes to steal money. The lying part didn’t shock me. All addicts lie. wine_bottle_face.jpg

There seems to be an extra level of paranoia that comes with being a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I understand. Those addictions tend to go hand in hand with getting arrested and spending time in jail.

If anyone has ever gotten arrested for getting junked up on food, I’d love to meet them.

I don’t write this stuff down to complain, or to act high minded. There’s plenty of dysfunction to be found in OA as well. If we weren’t dysfunctional, we wouldn’t need a 12-Step program in the first place. There are control issues and grating personalities aplenty.

But the AA crowd? There’s more of an edge.

I’m not complaining. I learn a lot from them.

There’s a lot of love to be found among the AA crowd. Those who have recovered are among the strongest people I know.

So to hell with it. I’m going to accept it — just as other people have accepted my own brand of dysfunction.

I’m going to start doing a 12-Step Big Book study soon, so I’m going to be spending a lot more time with these people.

I’d better get used to it.