Recovery Meditations: October 3rd

TRUTH

"The truth will set you free,
but first it will make you miserable."
James A. Garfield

After years of therapy, I thought I knew myself fairly well. I prided myself on my integrity, honesty and responsible nature; however, my morbid obesity and compulsive overeating reflected the exact opposite of these values. After breaking many resolutions to myself, starting and stopping countless diets, and continuing to have no control over my eating, I began to doubt my integrity. How could I keep a commitment to everyone I knew and yet break my promises to myself over and over again? It wasn't until in a moment of frustrated clarity I blurted out, "I'm acting like an addict!" Finally I experienced my own truth.

I am an addict. I am addicted to food. I use food to fill the gaping black hole within me. I use food to anesthetize my pain. As a compulsive overeater, I stuff my face rather than face my stuff.

Working the Steps allowed me to see that even though I thought I valued honesty, I was constantly lying to myself about my compulsive eating. Becoming abstinent from compulsive eating removed the veils of delusion and dishonesty that I had over my eyes. Living this program, one day at a time, freed me from compulsive lying to myself as well as compulsive eating. Telling the truth, while sometimes very difficult, has let me live happy, joyously, and free.

One day at a time...
I will work the Steps honestly, tell the truth about my life, and be the person of integrity my Higher Power always intended for me to be.

~ Bernadette B.

My Certified Health Coach Website

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My Name Is Chris & I'm A Food Addict, Blog 4/2/13

21 years ago I sat at my first AA meeting, thinking to myself, gee, I don’t belong here! I’m not as bad as these people. I am the wife of an important business executive……….I pray  there’s nobody I KNOW here………..or that knows ME! What if the wife of my husband’s tax partner is here? Well……..I guess if SHE’S here, then ME being here shouldn’t be all that big a deal, right? We’ll just look one another in the eye and shuffle our feet uncomfortably, as one would do in a crowded elevator…………..just look down or away……….smile politely and pray for that car to STOP and open the damn door already.

I didn’t know anybody at the meeting, nobody knew me, and there was no elevator. It was a shabby old house built in the 20’s, and the meeting was held in what was once the living room.

I did belong there, as it turned out, with about 20 other drunks, male & female, young & old, rich & poor, smart & simple.  Addiction knows no status, you see, it offers  equal opportunity to all.  It was just my Ego telling me I didn’t belong…….that I wasn’t ‘as bad’ as the others. Humility is what I learned in those rooms, all those years ago, and how necessary it is for recovery. Because hey, if my Ego gets in the way, it might start saying You’ve GOT This! Just Have One Drink, You’ll Be Fine. And then I wouldn’t be fine at all. I’d be off the wagon and back on my knees, enslaved once again to something that was bigger than me: addiction.

Some people on this website, and in the rest of life, dislike the word ‘surrender’ because to them it means ‘giving up’. Waving the white flag, historically, meaning one side concedes and admits defeat.  Yes, that IS what surrender means in all walks of life.  I give UP my control over booze and I admit defeat………yep, it’s stronger than I am, and I am weaker than IT.  Again……….the word humility pops up.  My ego tells me NOTHING and NOBODY is stronger than ME! Humility tells me otherwise. It speaks the truth by letting me know that I am powerless over certain things and that hey, it’s OKAY to admit that. Admitting this powerlessness is the first step to healing.

When I first got sober 21 years ago, I was still smoking cigarettes and overeating. I tackled the drinking, and once I got a handle on IT, I tackled the eating (for the umpteenth time) and then the smoking.  About 18 years ago, I had a handle on ALL of my addictive behaviors: overeating, smoking and drinking; what I refer to as the Unholy Trinity.  At that time, I was inspired to put together a sobriety reminder: a clear plastic zippered bag containing 1 cigarette, 1 candy bar, and one vodka shooter. Oddly enough, Bloody Mary’s were my drink of choice back then, so a vodka shooter was right at home with a Kit Kat and a Marlboro Lite. A piece of paper with The Serenity Prayer typed on it was also placed into that bag. When the urge to drink, eat sugar, or smoke cigarettes came on me, I’d visit that little bag in my dresser to remind me of just HOW hard it had been to get those 3 bad-boys corralled up and put to rest. I took that bag, and my Recovery, very very seriously back then.

I lost my sobriety again in 2000, when I found my birth-family and a nervous breakdown was threatening me mightily. By then, I’d started smoking again and eating sugar, too, but the final ‘failure’ was falling off the wagon. The smoking and sugar addiction I could sort of deal with, the drinking relapse was another matter. I’d let myself down BIG time, back then, and I was not in a good place, emotionally or spiritually. I went back to ALL of my drugs of choice and the little clear plastic zippered bag was disseminated one night when I really, really needed to smoke a stale cigarette that had been sitting around for years.  The candy bar had been devoured long before, in a weak moment, when I just ‘didn’t care’ about my weight or anything else for that matter.

It took me EIGHT more years to find sobriety and abstinence from sugar once again.  In June of 2008 is when I took on the 5/1, quit drinking cold turkey, and quit eating sugar in the same manner.  I was still smoking, though, up until December 4^th of this year, when I quit, for GOOD, one day at a time (of course).  After quitting that nasty little habit, I re-awakened the sugar addiction & gained 14 lbs, as I blogged about recently.  Keeping all THREE under lock and key seems to be something I struggle with, historically.

Not long ago I went to Walgreens and bought a clear plastic zippered bag. I sat at my desk and typed The Serenity Prayer in size 16 font, printed it out, and cut it down to size to fit into the clear plastic zippered bag.

I’m getting all THREE addictions BACK into remission and I’m KEEPING them there nowadays. When I get tempted to eat sugar, smoke or drink, I can bring out my clear plastic zippered bag to remind me of why I DON’T want to succumb this time.  

Because, if I succumb again THIS TIME, it may take me ANOTHER EIGHTEEN YEARS to get these dreadful, hideous, miserably hateful addictions BACK INTO REMISSION and boy howdy folks, I will be 73 years old by then.  And I can tell you this for certain: I DO NOT have another ‘sobering up’ left in me. This old gal is DONE playing THIS game for GOOD.

I will live out my remaining years WITHOUT smoking, drinking or eating sugar. I will do it one day at a time by surrendering, YES SURRENDERING, my powerlessness over these three foul substances.  I will treat the Unholy Trinity with utmost respect and deathly seriousness.  I will never again utter the words, “What’s The Big Deal?” or “WHAT do you MEAN ‘trigger foods’?”  I will never again scoff at someone who says No Thank You to a luscious looking dessert or goes running away from a smoker, treating him as if he has leprosy.  I will never again delude myself that I can ‘handle’ A Drink, A Cigarette, or A Candy Bar.

I know better. Been there, done that, not going back to The Pit again (thank you Lifeisgood Cathi, my dear friend) Because the pit is dark and black……..it’s bottomless and it has no heart or soul. It just wants to swallow a person WHOLE and suck him down into its belly, never to be seen or heard from again.  And I’m not goin’ there, not this time.

So, if there is anyone out there that snickers at food addiction, insisting it’s not ‘real’ or ‘valid’, or certainly NOT such a bad thing like drugs or drinking or smoking, THINK AGAIN! I am here to tell you you’re right: It ISN’T as bad as drugs or drinking or smoking!

It’s far, far WORSE.

Not that the drinking & smoking albatrosses are ‘good’……they’re not…….but once they’re locked up, they’re out of sight AND out of mind.  Sugar is NEVER out of sight, and only occasionally out of mind, since our society deems it necessary to force it UPON us at every turn.  We can never be ‘rid’ of it entirely, at least whilst out of our own homes, but we CAN be done with it permanently nevertheless. That’s where I’m at right now; done bargaining with a substance that, to me, is poison.  

So, for today, I am grateful for abstinence from sugar, cigarettes & alcohol. I like to wake up every morning feeling GOOD about myself instead of miserable & hopeless. And if I suddenly feel the need to get into one of those addictive behaviors again, I’m going to visit my clear zippered bag to remember why I CANNOT.