The need of my addiction

My name is Billy b and I am an addict.  I don’t have an addiction anything that would make you say damn, poor bastard.  Basically, I am saying I not hooked on Sweet Lady H, Cocaine, Booze, nicotine, or hell even porn (although this one could be argued, I am a perv after all).  No, I am addicted to eating.  I think I have said this before, but I didn’t really believe it.  Not because I can’t look in the mirror and see I am huge, full, and not hungry and I just keep on eating. 

No I didn’t believe it because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t think my issue was worthy.  I wanted to ignore it and just hope that one day I would wake up without it.  I didn’t want to admit that I was weak.  I didn’t want to admit that I had a problem that I couldn’t fix and make better on my own.   However, I think I finally realize now, that I can’t.

I am 100% sure that my weight will take care of itself as soon as I get my mind right.  My mind has come a really long way.  The prison walls that once existed might still be there, but they aren’t as strong as they once were. 

If anything, I think I have learned from my time in rabbit hole.  I learned that if I try to measure success in pounds that I am not very successful.  However, if I measure success on whom I have become mentally, and emotionally then I can hold my head up high and pull my shoulders back and say,  gods be  damned I have come a long way.

However, what I can’t get around is the eating.  The need to not only make me full but fuller then I already am.  I can binge on four burger at M’s and then still get up the next morning and want a full breakfast.  I can drink 7 liters of water a day and still somehow find a way to put more food into my system on top of a completely full tummy. 

You have to understand this need is not hunger.  It is part boredom.  It is part need.  It is part trying to fill up my soul with something other than the black I live in constant fear of.   

I will end with two stories today, and hopefully be able to return to regular blogging tomorrow.  I have missed writing and sharing.  I have a need to externalize everything to make it real to me.  So, I guess I have not felt very real lately.

The first story is last Friday, I didn’t eat dinner.  It felt so strange to me.  I felt empty almost.  I wasn’t feeling well.  My neck hurt from the whiplash and I just didn’t want to get out of bed after lying down at 4:30 PM to just relax.  To not eat a meal shouldn’t feel so strange.  It is normal, if you aren’t hungry, then you don’t eat.  It is a concept that the addicted mind doesn’t understand.  I understand eating, three or four times a day. 

The other story is that on Saturday I went on a feverish writing frenzy.  I wrote and I wrote.  I lost all track of space and time as I created in my office.  It might take me four hours to seven pages, but none the less I felt so productive.  The entire time I never once thought about eating. I had to remember to eat something that night before I went to bed. 

These are both stories I don’t really understand.  However, I am hoping that it is the start of me seeing that I can detach myself from my addiction.   It would seem to me that I can live a life without the compulsion in my mind to eat, eat, and then eat some more.  I just have to start doing each day little bit more. 

In conclusion a friend approached me at work last week and said hey I want to talk to you as a friend.  I rolled my eyes and sure ok, why not.  I mean how many times have I had a friend talk to me about trying to help me get healthy.  I was surprised this one would approach me about it.  When we met she told she had a friend who had gone to OA.  Lost a significant amount of weight and has kept it off for two years. 

I told her about my one time trip to OA and how as much as I respect people of faith, it just wasn’t for me.  She assured me her friend was a new age thinker.  That she it couldn’t hurt.  What I was most surprised by is that I wanted to meet with this person and that I finally wanted help and I accept the fact that I can’t do this alone. 

The whole purpose of this blog was because I can’t do this alone.   I know that I am in need of the help and support that only my friends and family can provide.  However, I also need an arena free of those who know me.  I need an arena of people who have had their own battles with demons. 

I think I have finally accepted that admitting I am an addict doesn’t mean I am a weak person or that I have major issues.  I think it I have finally just realized that maybe just maybe I have a really shitty way of coping with things in my life that are outside of my control.   I know I have other tools to quiet my mind: swimming, walking, and writing and I need to distance myself from my food.  I need to focus on the holy trilogy of healthy outlets and be better in this moment than I was in the last. 

We are no the eve of the Labor Day weekend.  A year ago in a fog of smoke, and Coors light two old friends.  I and Master Krug (wish you were here buddy) hatched an idea to be better than we were.  I know the Master has lost weight and is getting more active all the time.  I know I am better than I was a year ago, and the best is yet to come.