My sponsee lives in a quaint northern California town that I adore, but visit infrequently. After leaving her house, I drove down the road and through the tiny downtown. A longing began to build within me as I started feeling sadness, coupled with that old familiar sense of wanting something to “hit the spot.” At thirteen-and-a-half months of back-to-back abstinence, I am thankful to say that I rarely have a desire to hit the spot with food. That day, I felt the desire to hit the spot in a different way. My first thought was: I wish there were someone with me right now. But how could I be lonely? I had just had the pleasure of having lunch with a sponsee at her home, where she is recovering from a surgery she had only three days ago. We talked about life, addiction, and the profound and simple pleasures that... Continue Reading
Desperate and willing When I arrived in FA in 2007, it was suggested I go to three meetings a week. At the time, I was a small-business owner, working over 50 hours a week helping to run the company my husband and I owned. I was single-handedly managing the art department. There were no FA meetings in my area at the time, so getting to an FA meeting meant traveling over two hours one way on a Sunday afternoon—my only day off. Therefore, a good chunk of my “down time” from working so hard was going to be spent fulfilling only one of my weekly meeting commitments. How would I ever get the rest I needed to continue to work at the pace I had set for myself if I went to an FA meeting each Sunday and to two area AA meetings each week? The answer was, I wouldn’t.... Continue Reading
My top weight was 285 pounds, so it was obvious that I was eating large amounts of food. The amounts consumed, however, didn’t come close to the amount of time that was consumed by the obsessive thoughts that controlled my head. What can I eat, how can I eat, where can I eat, what can I buy, how can I sneak it, how can I cook it? These thoughts were wild in my head. I didn’t know how to shut the voices out. I was uncomfortable in my body, in my skin, and in my personality, which was too often unpleasant. My enthusiasm for life had diminished, and most days seemed like a struggle. Although I had heard about a Twelve-Step program a couple of years before 1985, it wasn’t anything that I pursued. I guess I hadn’t had enough pain. At that time, I was not as heavy and... Continue Reading
Self-care sounds great in theory—bubble and pedicures; but in real life, self-care is dealing with life on life’s terms, even when those terms are in the form of a world-altering pandemic. My history, along with binge eating, is one of negativity. Alcoholics Anonymous states “[The grouch and the brainstorm] may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” For me, the “brainstorm” includes fear, negativity, anger, and self-pity and whole host of other character defects. This is not to say I never venture down those paths—I am human; however, if I engage in negativity for too long, it will lead me back into the ultimate poison–food. I don’t have TV, but I have become very selective of the media sources I read, and I have also pooled all my work emails related to the pandemic so I can read them at set times during... Continue Reading
As a nurse, I am used to very hectic days in a Level 1 Emergency Department (ED) in a Boston hospital, but I had no idea how much the world would change when COVID-19 arrived. My days were filled with donning and doffing masks and gloves while wondering whether we would have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to get me through my next shift. I was feeling discomfort due to the changes, but I was just getting in the groove of my new reality when I got sick. Even though my COVID-19 test came back negative, it took two-and-a-half weeks until I was well enough to get back to the ED. Like most other people, I was watching the news and hearing how the pandemic was growing in strength. My work friends were telling me how busy it was, that the patients coming into the hospital were very sick and that there were different rules and policies being announced daily. The... Continue Reading
