The bitched named addiction – raw and real

This is me, raw and real. Tonight there aint no sunshine, rainbows, unicorns or fucking lollipops, although I do like lollipops, a lot.

I have written before about being an addict. In case you haven’t seen it, I am a food addict and my drug of choice is sugar. It has taken me many years to own it and this year I finally did and have been working through it. Addiction is fucked. For those of you who aren’t addicts, I really can’t explain it, but believe me when I tell you it is fucked.

As of today I was 35 days clean of sugar. Probably the longest I have ever gone without lollies, cakes, chocolate, soft drinks and the rest in my entire life. I was feeling really good about it, although being an addict, I never felt like I had it beat, but rather managed – one day at a time. But part of me kinda hoped it really was beaten.

Well, all that changed this afternoon. I am doing a Diploma in Positive Psychology, which I am loving, and as part of it today we did an exercise in savouring – mindful eating. I have facilitated this exercise before and I really love it, and I usually do it with sultanas. Today we did it with Lindt balls. To be fair, they did offer me a mandarine, but I wanted to be part of it and thought I could do it. How fucking wrong I was. As I left, I grabbed another one didn’t I? Actually that one was shit, it was strawberry and tasted like cough medicine. Well once the sugar rush hit my brain the addiction was triggered and like an addict I was mindlessly looking for more. Strange that an exercise in mindfulness led me to become a mindless junkie. Got home, and had or rather scoffed two biscuits, and prior to that, they hadn’t even crossed my consciousness all week, and then I headed off to a workshop. Guess what they had there – fucking Lindt balls!! I had one, then another and then another and so on, stuffing the wrappers into my pockets so nobody could see me.

Addiction is fucked.

After the workshop my addict brain was still peaking and needed to continue, because hey what was the point of stopping, I had fucked it all up now, so I might as well keep going, and tomorrow is 1st August and all new things must begin on the 1st of the month right? So off to KFC I went (what tha?) and sat in my car and ate that shitful greasy food.

Didn’t enjoy it, didn’t taste it, and felt sick during and after it.

Addiction is fucked.

I am a successful woman who has everything she has ever dreamed of and to everyone else I would appear to have my shit together. Yes that is true. But I am also an addict. People who work in the addiction field say that food addiction is the hardest of them all to beat. Not to say that quitting any other kind of substance is easy, but abstinence might be a little bit easier to manage when you can avoid your substance entirely.

But we have to eat.

Addiction is fucked.

So as an addict, I have decided not to dwell on it, apart from writing this, and I really wanted to write about it while it was fresh in my mind.

I also wanted to share it.

You may be wondering why I would share something so damn personal and to be honest, something most people would find embarrassing. The fact is that there are millions of people living with addiction every day and many of them are food addicts. There is great comfort in feeling a sense of community or connection with others who have lived or are living with a similar experience to that which we are living.

For that reason alone, I share. Addiction is lonely and isolating and people don’t talk about it, so often addicts, and especially food addicts, suffer in miserable silence. If you are one person reading this who has always thought that you are fucked up, or that there is something seriously wrong with you.

You are not alone.