A Story of Recovery:

Slippery Slope

I remember one Christmas holiday when I left the San Francisco Bay Area and headed north to visit my family in Portland, Oregon for 10 days. As chance would have it, Portland had its worst snowstorm of 30 years that December, and I was there in the middle of it. A white Christmas; how exciting for this California girl!

I’d been abstinent for eight months, and the world felt alive to me again—the temperatures, the smells, and the colors were vibrant. I clearly remember the coziness inside my mom’s sweet little yellow house, which was surrounded by banks of snow. From inside, with heater blasting, we snuggled up to read books under a down, throw-blanket on her couch. One day we donned snow pants and boots to walk a mile to the local coffee shop, where we drank hot tea and played a board game. Later that day, when my 3-year-old nephew came to the house to play, I felt so present with him and so thankful to be there. This was in sharp contrast to when I was using food as a drug and felt dead to the world around me.

Over the ten-day trip, many emotions came up. I’d been free from my former pattern of addictively eating flour, sugar, and large quantities and I’d experienced recovery and lots of positive change in my life. Yet on this visit, several times I caught myself speaking like a bratty child toward my mom. I was aware of this and felt angry that I did not know how to change and be kind to her in the moment. I thought, “I should know better, I’m in recovery!” I was able to spot the character defect of judgment, but I didn’t know how to not be judgmental.

Today I know that I have tools to use in situations like this: I can take a deep breath and pray for God’s grace and strength in my moment of weakness. I can leave the room and call one of my fellow FA members for help. I can say, “Mom, I am going to go into the other room for a few minutes.” On that trip, however, I didn’t take the time to fully make use of these options. Rather, I saw my flaws, got angry that I wasn’t perfect, and tried to control it on my own. Consequently, I unjustly took it out on someone else, which made me exponentially angrier toward everyone involved.

Though I’d experienced tremendous relief from food cravings over my eight months of continuous abstinence, during the course of that Christmas visit, food began looking appealing to me again. I noticed smells more. I would see a family member eating something, and instead of using the lifesaving prayer of, “Thank you God, that’s not my food today,” I found myself thinking the dangerous thought of, That looks good. I’m missing out.

Looking back, I see that I had many emotions coming up and I was not fully using my phone calls. Though I would make connections with other food addicts each day, I wasn’t allowing myself to talk in detail about my thoughts and feelings.  I often felt like I didn’t want to leave the room where my family was to go have a little privacy and get connected to my recovery. In short, I was not taking the full dose of my medicine and, on top of that, my symptoms of this disease of food addiction were worsening. That’s a disastrous combination for a food addict like me. In addition to this, my spiritual connection was weak. I was not trusting in a loving, higher power the way I do today.  I did not realize it at the time, but I was trying to stay abstinent on my own.

The day after I returned from the visit to California, I ate addictively for the first time in eight months. Truly, with just one bite, that vibrant life I’d been living was gone. Of course I didn’t stop with one bite. I tried one food after the next (all those things I thought I was missing out on).  Nothing tasted the way I’d imagined it would, nothing hit the spot. But then I couldn’t stop. I kept eating to try to gain some sense of pleasure. Yet I found that there was literally no pleasure in the food. I was back in that old state of feeling numb to everything.  I’d just given up the greatest gift I’d ever had, the gift of abstinence, and got nothing but spiritual disconnection and despair in return.

Thank you God, the relapse only lasted three days. I truly believe that first bite could have resulted in years of addictive eating. It is only by God’s grace that on New Year’s Eve I stopped eating addictively and haven’t had to do it again since. Now, four years later, I pray that I will never forget how painful it was to go back to the food after experiencing freedom through abstinence.

I learned from that experience. First and foremost, I learned to really seek help from a higher power, the one source I have access to every second of every day. I know that there is no prayer that will go unheard. Second, when I make plans to travel, I must make sure my program comes first. I now talk through my plans with my sponsor before committing to anything, and I take her suggestions on how to prepare. On trips with family or friends, I know that it may be hard to step away to make phone calls, but it is essential that I do it anyway. If visiting with family, I remember to ask for God’s help each day; old family dynamics take time to overcome. I may notice old character defects come up that I’d hoped I had gotten rid of.  Recognizing that I am an imperfect person, I can choose to view each situation with humility and ask for a lot of help from a higher power and my FA fellows that care for me.

I know that I am powerless over food. I had to learn this truth in a way that was painful. But I have the simple plan of the FA program, which gives me practical steps to take in my most difficult situations. By taking those steps in my life now, I have come to find that there is a higher power that is always available to help me. Though I am powerless, I know I am safe as long as I turn my fears, thoughts, and life over to God. When I do this, I have freedom and get to stay in the vibrant life that results from abstinence.