I am Susan and I am a food addict. I am just stunned and amazed at the difference that FA has made in my life. I remember when I was a teenager going on a band trip. I was very socially awkward. Being on a bus with all the other kids was especially difficult because there was no place to hide the fact that I didn’t know how to talk to my peers. I would often pretend that I was sleeping or reading, and that would be my excuse to myself as to why I wasn’t talking with the other kids. I was very ashamed of my near-muteness. I read and “slept” all the way from Oregon to Canada and back. I was a big pretender– fine on the outside, lonely and ashamed on the inside. Somewhere around my early twenties I went on a camper road trip with my... Continue Reading
On Leap Day, I heard an ad for Leap of Faith Day so I took a leap of faith. That leap was to attend a meeting of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous which I had previously read about in a health magazine. My thinking bounced between “I’ve died and gone to heaven” and “I may have just joined some sort of cult.” Pouring through my head were the “I’ll never be able to” and “This sponsor lady! Just who does she think she is telling me this?” There were times when I would think to myself as I made the dreaded calls to her, “I can’t do this!” My first month or so in FA was a nightmare of kicking and screaming in my head. I lied, cheated, broke, and was sure I was one of those people known as constitutionally incapable. But the fat was melting off which gave... Continue Reading
I didn’t have a choice before. When a craving would hit, I had to eat. Period. There was no pause, no phone call, and no strength to fight it. I ate, and then the food took me always to the same pit of despair. A horrific cycle of binging, laxatives, cleansing, and then more binging would take over. Once I came into FA, I had hope that there was another way. I got abstinent and found a new way and a new sense of peace. After a year or so, when I was no longer experiencing the intense pain of addictive eating, I started to get complacent with my tools. I told myself that I was very busy with other things and had very important things to do. I didn’t share this with my sponsor or my fellows. Then followed the rationalization that eating a little extra something wasn’t that... Continue Reading
Prior to finding FA, I attended another Twelve-Step program for children of alcoholics for a short while with a friend. In those meetings, I heard many members talk about being in Twelve-Step programs for things like alcohol, drugs, and other addictive behaviors, though throughout my life, I prided myself on never engaging in “addictive behaviors” because my conservative religion taught me better. Little did I know that I was a full-blown food addict who was using the legal drugs of flour, sugar, and quantities to deal with all of life’s problems. After one of those meetings, I found myself sharing my issues around food with my friend. I told her I thought I had a serious problem and that maybe I was ready to deal it. I went home that night and entered “food addiction” into an online search engine. The FA website was the first link listed. I... Continue Reading
I woke up this morning thinking about my first day in an 8-week residential treatment program for food addiction. I was 41 years old and had been bulimic off and on for 25 years; I was underweight and unhappy. It was two days before Christmas, and although I did not particularly want to be there, I didn’t want to be anywhere else either. How had I gotten there? At the time, I had my own business and had been married for the past 15 months to a man I adored. Those were two of the things on the top of my list of “if only I had (fill in the blank), then I would stop this crazy eating.” Yet, there I was, unable to stop by sheer force of will. I don’t know when I became a food addict; I may well have been born that way. I was always... Continue Reading
