Talking about food and eating with the same verbiage as other addictions always felt bizarre to me.
But the parallels are undeniable, the psychology is the same, the obsession, the secrecy and the damage is all the same.
And regardless of whether you’ve been a food addict by consumption or by restriction, you can never walk away from it. Literally.
Because if you’re a recovering alcoholic, you go to an AA meeting instead of a bar when you want a drink. If you’re a drug addict you call your mentor instead of going down for another high when you feel that desperation in your bones.
But if you’ve found yourself caught in the addictive ways of an eating disorder then you. . . what? Stop eating? Refuse to feed yourself when you feel the pangs of hunger in your belly?
When drug and your vice is also the very thing that sustains your body, food, it’s quite the juxtaposition.
.Quite the predicament to find yourself in.
And for that reason, I will never be sober.
So sobriety by definition, the sparing in the use of food and drink, must take on a different meaning.
Sobriety for the food addict, the anorexic, the bulimic is a mindset of grave and earnest thoughtfulness, a sedate sort of demeanor, calm and consciousness rather than wild and ravenous approach whether it be towards binges or restrictions.
It is a sobriety marked by a temperance towards the very substance that was once used and abused but still, for life sustaining reasons, must continue to be used.
It’s a sobriety that requires me to approach with seriousness and reverence the very substance I’ve used that I can never physiologically be clean from.
It’s a mindset of moderation instead of excess or deprivation.
It’s a mindset of health and healing rather than control and withdrawal.
So I will never be completely sober, I will always use my drug of choice.
But my life will be marked by sobriety, a consciousness, temperance and presence, a thoughtful way of living