Binge Eating

Binge eating is the compulsive act of over-eating, I would call it an addiction. I don't use the word 'addiction' lightly, as I'm well aware it has the capacity to ruin lives. I'm lucky (?) to have never been addicted to drugs, alcohol etc. but I was addicted to food. I know this because I sought it to self-medicate. I used it as a tool that it was never intended to be.

Imagine trying to unlock a door with a noodle and doing it over and over and over again for the majority of your adult life. Addictions are in their very simplest forms, trying to fix your feelings with a substance that isn't capable of fixing anything.

People with addictions are fearful, we run from our feelings and we run so hard and for so long that we forget which feelings we are afraid of. All we know is that ANYTHING is better/less terrifying than those feelings. And unless you've felt that paralysing fear, you won't really understand how powerful it is. I once pushed a needle through my grown-over labret piercing just to not feel my feelings. It really fucking hurt. Pain is sometimes preferable to feelings.

I feel like I should also mention the obvious; that addiction to heroin is not the same as one to food as it isn't physically addictive. Although there have been some studies done on the effect of sugar on the brain, I don't think that what I went through is on the same level.

I would now consider myself a recovering binge eater. It took me about 25 years to get here and I genuinely thought I never would. I'd tried Overeaters Anonymous (OA) a handful of times but never really committed to having a Sponsor. I had tried all the diets, all the versions of restriction - just everything. I was fucking exhausted. My eating disorder took up 95% of all of my thoughts, I was always thinking about food. I was thinking about how to get it, fighting with myself about when I ate 'unhealthy foods', feeling guilty and obsessing over it constantly. I would steal food from my family, hide and steal money from my partner and inhale junk food in my car on the side of the road so that no one could see me. I would eat so much food that it was physically painful, wait till I could eat again and then eat some more. There was no pleasure in food, I was just trying to figure out how to get more of it, without anyone noticing, all day, every day. It was my biggest shame and I was completely conscious, silently screaming at myself to stop and being incapable of doing so.

I'd love to write that I found the 'fix' that everyone could use to recover but I just don't think it exists. I ended up on the brink of completely imploding my own life. I was totally broken. So I gave up. I stopped fighting and trying to figure out how to 'fix' myself and let go. I let go of my ego enough to ignore the cheesy and religious side of OA, and began working the steps. I didn't go to many physical meetings but I did go to online ones and I found myself a sponsor who lives in the U.S and I began talking to her regularly.

She guided me through the steps and I slowly began to navigate a way through them that I was comfortable with. I'm an Athiest and OA is not, so it was tricky but not impossible. I read The Big Book, which is pretty old-fashioned (it was written by a white man back in the day) and I chose to ignore the sexism and find the intention behind the differences in values. Not easy.

I've since been asked by a few people about how I got through OA as an Athiest. I now direct them to Russell Brand's book 'Recovery'. It takes you through each step of AA with thoughtfulness, humour and most importantly without the religious dogma that puts so many of us off. I wish I'd done my programme with that book but my Sponsor was my Russell Brand and she was amazing.

I worked the steps, I took my time and I tried to be kind to myself. It took me quite a few months but I still remember the day I realised I hadn't thought about food. I was driving in my car and it suddenly hit me. I was so happy and shocked that I had to pull my car over and rang my sister in Melbourne to tell her. She is a recovering Anorexic so has an implicit understanding of the importance of such moments that no one else in my life has. Her support and understanding has been more than important to me - no one is less judgemental than someone who is a recovering - insert eating disorder here -. 

Those moments grew from there and I haven't binge eaten in a very long time. I chose not to count my days of sobriety, mainly through fear of failure. But honestly, it doesn't matter to me how long it has been. It doesn't mean that I'm skinny or eat super healthily all the time either. All that really matters to me is that my every living moment isn't filled with that shitty voice anymore. I don't think about food constantly and I feel like a huge burden has finally been lifted from my shoulders. I found my recovery when I learnt how to stop fighting with myself, and slowly let myself feel what I was so afraid of.

I read a book.

Tonight I read a book called 'Brain over Binge' and it helped me to realise that sometimes therapists guide their clients to look too much into their behaviours and emotions. Sometimes there is an answer and sometimes it's simple and not altogether linked to your other psychological bullshit issues.

I had always thought that my binge eating was the last thing on my list, the least dire of all my issues. The likelihood of me eating myself into a coma wasn't as high as my suicidal thoughts and plans one day reaching fruition. So I put my energy into the many types of therapy, treatments, medicines etc and about six years after I was first diagnosed I could confidently say I was a mostly stable and functioning human being who didn't have the inclination to live under a duvet forever or consistently fuck the most inappropriate people I could find anymore (to name just a few things I did in the past). 

It turned out that binge eating couldn't be dealt with like all my other issues, it wasn't about my emotional baggage (because for the most part I had dredged through and worked through most of that in years of therapy), it was about my lower brain's desire to reinforce a bad habit/addiction. 

I'm not going to go over the entire book but in essence, all the things I'd tried (OA, therapy, diets etc.) had failed dismally. Giving up control, taking control, none of it worked for me and I thought I was alone in that because OA is full of people who are living with the 'illness' and consider themselves to be recovering. I always hated that idea, that I'd always be stuck with yet another fucking illness. It took me long enough to come to terms with my Cyclothymia and stop hating it and myself for being wired differently to most others. 

This book sets out to try and help people who have had no success in the other programmes on offer and instead of making it complicated and super personal and gut wrenching (ha, pun), it makes it simple. Not easy but simple. To stop binge eating I have to separate myself from my lower brain which keeps telling me to eat all that shit and to not stop until I feel like vomiting, and not argue but sit with those thoughts. Listen but not react or interact with them, as it's main goal is to get me to eat but me, myself and my higher more evolved brain doesn't want to. So I will choose not to do as it says. 

I will choose to not binge eat anymore, because I've done it since I was 11 and I FUCKING hate it and myself for doing it. I'm 28 years old and I refuse to listen to that stupid self-sabotaging voice in my head any longer. 

Will keep you posted on the outcome of this new-found realisation.