For Today - In my Mind, Not Just My Body

I'm continuing with the questions on the OA Slipping and Sliding reading and writing tool for relapse.  Today, I looked at one part of question 6.

I read Appendix A of the OAII which is called "A Disease of the Mind" and considered the idea that "my main problem as a compulsive eater is in my mind rather than in my body."

This appendix is written by an American psychiatrist, Dr. William Rader, who specialized in drug abuse and alcoholism programs.  He examined compulsive overeating as a disease process identical to alcoholism and concluded compulsive overeating was indeed a disease and that treatment used for alcoholism was very successful in treating compulsive overeating as well. 

I loved how he wrote how the "remarkable thing about OA" is that people function better than they ever have in their lives after recovery.  Dr. Rader wrote (OAII, p.230):

With any other disease, you're lucky to get back to where you were  If you have a heart attack, for example, you're fortunate to get your heart to function as well as it did before the attack.

With the compulsive overeater, not only do you get back to a normal weight, but more importantly, your life is changed and in a sense you're ahead of where you were before you became a compulsive overeater.  Now you have tools of feeling, touching, caring, loving, sharing, being honest with your family, and looking at life in an understanding way and not fighting it but going along with it.  Once you treat the illness, you have the potential for a more 'together' person than you were.

He then goes on to describe the problem as one of control over food or a preoccupation with controlling food intake to the point it interferes with your life.  Dr. Rader observes this usually starts as a defence mechanism early in life and gradually takes over:

What is probably true in most cases is that the individual develops the compulsive overeating mechanism for dealing with life at an early age and then starts to push problems down with the food.  Once people become compulsive overeaters, every aspect of their lives is affected.  Now they get into psychological physical, and environmental problems and start changing their lives, their friends, and their social structures.  All these changes are really caused by the compulsive overeating. [OAII, p.231]

When I think about my food compulsions, especially overeating and eating amounts and foods that make me feel ill, I know in my heart they are not driven by physical needs but emotional ones.  I binge so I feel nothing.  I binge until I feel sick, my stomach sore and distended, my blood sugar skyrocketing and then crashing, to punish myself, to make me feel anything but the troubling feelings I don't want to face. 

I think the cravings have some physical elements -- in my experience, food can elevate my mood, especially chocolate.  And I do crave sugary pastries, sweet bread with fresh butter, candy and chocolate, as well as savoury salty snacks.  But the impetus is not hunger, not physiological really.  It's emotional:  I want to comfort myself, to lose myself in a snuggly warm carbohydrate daze, where a nap is needed while my poor body processes all these excess calories and nutrient empty foods. 

So yes, I think the disease of compulsive overeating is in my mind.  My body works with this as best it can -- overloaded hormones, insulin in particular, the insults to my metabolic, digestive and excretory systems when I binge.  But the suffering is just as much emotional as physical.  I really can't separate the two.

Today was day 9 of abstinence...  Blessed be.