A Story of Recovery:

Valuing Discomfort

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 bad, and before I knew it, I had justified my way into another horrible cycle of binging and full-blown relapse. This cycle went on for my first six years in FA, so I experienced being in my first 90 days a lot. 

After one particularly painful relapse, a thought came to me in quiet time. I realized that I actually had the answer and ticket to freedom, if I would choose it. It was FA and FULLY surrendering to the program—not just to the parts that I approved of, liked, and wanted to do, but surrendering to ALL of it, even the hard parts that I didn’t like or understand. 

I realized that taking those suggestions that didn’t make sense was probably the most valuable action I could take. If they were easy and if I wanted to do them, I probably would have done them a long time ago! That morning I realized that, if I worked the tools of FA like my life depended on it (because it really did), I would not ever have to hurt myself with food again.

There is no doubt that the discomfort of being caught in a food craving is horribly uncomfortable. But so is binging to the point of physical pain, remorse, self-hatred, and isolation. In that quiet time, I realized that there was going to be discomfort in my life, but now I had a choice. One choice was the discomfort I knew so well—the black hole of binging and purging and being in active food addiction. 

The other option was to face the real discomfort of my emotions, sit with those feelings, use my tools, and learn how to experience discomfort without food. Eventually I learned to trust that the craving would pass, and what a miracle and surreal experience that was! The beautiful thing on the other side of riding out a craving without eating was that I found myself one step closer to freedom and one experience closer to God. 

One day at a time, one abstinent moment at a time, I would learn how to be uncomfortable without having to put something in my mouth. Eleven years later, I have accepted the value of facing life on life’s terms and being taught to stand in a place of hope, joy, and freedom from active food addiction.