10/2/2015: Therapy, Addiction, Where to Start?

Days of abstinence: 9 (Oops, I miscounted yesterday.)

Days until surgery: 75

Weight:  166.4 pounds

I don’t often sit in my chair and fidget when it comes time for me to write a blog post.  I either have something I want to write about and the words just pour out or I don’t have anything I want to write about and I type a quick update and go on with my day.  That has not been the case since my session with Stan on Wednesday.  Yesterday morning I didn’t have enough time to write a long post but I wanted to touch base so I tried to record a couple of thoughts.  I found myself stumbling over my words.  I am doing that again now.  It’s not that it’s hard to talk about, because I talked freely to a few people about going back to therapy, but it is hard to write about.  Maybe it’s because things become more real when I write about them.  It’s one thing to talk.  It’s another thing to put things in writing.  It makes it a lot more difficult to hide from the truth.  There it is.  The answer just came out through my fingertips.  It is hard to write about this topic because when I write about it, it makes it much more difficult to hide from the truth.  Well, good!  We got that out of the way.  Let’s go for it!

First of all, therapy is a process.  It is not a simple, “This is your diagnosis and here is your cure.”  Yet, one of my hesitations about blogging about this process is that a lot of what I am going to talk about will seem like an over simplification, a gross generalization, or a little trite.  We need to keep in mind that Stan really has seen it all.  He started out his career treating prisoners at Leavenworth and has established a well-respected practice in gambling and other addictions.  He has a tendency to start out bluntly and fish around for answers.  He is a no bullshit kind of guy and wants to make as much progress as he can in every session.  Because of that he offers up theories to see if they fit.  We ran through a lot on Wednesday and I won’t remember it all.  I guess what I am asking from you is this, don’t judge the process.  If something sounds off base or ridiculous, it could very well be off base or ridiculous.  Or it could be a roundabout way of eliminating possibilities.  It could also be hitting the mark and we just don’t know it yet.  One of the things I know about Stan is that therapy with him is most effective if I challenge his ideas and tell him when I think he is wrong.  I guess a good way to describe therapy with Stan is that I am the one that has to fix these things that I think are broken, but he has a bigger and better equipped tool box than I do.    Stan is an effective therapist for me because he is not reluctant to share his tools.  As we talk he makes suggestions, I try them on, reject most of them, accept some of them, and then I need to process this new idea that seems to fit.  Sometimes I come back a week or two or more later and tell him that this thing that seemed to fit doesn’t fit after all.  Sometimes he disagrees and we argue about it.  I have been angry with him before.  I have no idea if I will get angry with him again.  As I said, this is a process. 

OK, let’s stop putting this off and begin.

I made the appointment with Stan last week after my sister Ruth, responding to my blog post about abstinence being easier than moderation, asked me if I had ever considered getting therapy for my food addiction.  Oh shit.  There it is.  She said it out loud.  Well, she said it in a text because I missed her call.  Food addiction.  I have thought about this for a long, long time.  Longer than you can imagine, probably.  Many, many years ago (I was 30 or 31 at the time) I attended Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meetings for a while.  This was the first time I was introduced to the idea of food addiction.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that I exhibited a lot of the patterns of having a food addiction, a sugar addiction, in particular.  I found it interesting to learn that one food a lot of people are addicted to is peanut butter.  Peanut butter is a real trigger food for a lot of people.  Mine is sugar, plain and sweet.  Usually sugar mixed with butter in some combination.  Today, since I have my own money and access to a grocery store and know how to bake, that sugar and butter combination usually ends up as a cookie, but as a kid I thought the most delicious thing in the world was a piece of bread (it was all white bread back them!) slathered with a thick layer of butter and sugar.  Not just a little sugar, mind you, but enough sugar that some would fall off the butter when I was eating it.  So yeah, the best combos includes butter and sugar, but plain old sugar will do.  I used to eat brown sugar right out of the bag.  I liked those little moist clumps of brown sugar that I could pop in my mouth.  Until this minute I forgot that I used to do that.

So when I was 30 or 31, significantly overweight, again, for the umpteenth time, I needed some answers and tried OA.  In fact, Stan may have suggested it because I had started seeing him shortly after my 30^th birthday.  I know we talked about it in our therapy sessions.  Through the OA meetings I started to explore the possibility of having a sugar addiction and I think I pretty much decided I did have one.  I say pretty much, but I don’t think I completely accepted the notion.  I say that because now, 23 years later (I guess I am a little slow on the uptake), I am finally rephrasing that statement from, “I have a sugar addiction,” to, “I am a sweet treat addict.”  OK, there are two big differences between these two statements.  The first one was easy to type, the second one I typed, changed, typed, changed, and finally typed and left it the way I originally typed it, because I think it is the best way to describe my addiction.

The first difference between the statements is saying “I have an addiction,” vs. saying “I am an addict.”  The difference seems subtle but there is a powerful difference.  The difference is you can get rid of something you have, but you can’t get rid of something you are.  It is so powerful that it is making me squirm around in my chair right now to say it. “I am an addict.”  Saying those words forces me to change my behavior because I know that the substance I am addicted to, sugar, is bad for me in more ways than I can imagine.  I want to be healthy.  I don’t want to take maintenance drugs as I age.  I don’t want to develop type 2 diabetes or heart disease or high blood pressure or be overweight.  I believe that sugar is bad for my brain and bad for my blood.  I believe that sugar messes up my hormones in ways that we are just beginning to understand.  I know that sugar is bad for me.  Therefore, if I believe I am a sugar addict and I believe that sugar is bad for me, I must change my behavior or I will not be content with myself.  I have a great quote by Gandhi taped to my monitor at work.  It says, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”  Those words ring true to me.  Therefore if I think and say I am an addict and I know I am addicted to something that I know is bad for me, I must stop using that thing.  There really isn’t a grey area here.  I am an addict.

The second difference, before I get too far off track, is taking out the word “sugar” and replacing it with the words “sweet treat.”  This is a lot more subtle and is the part that I am stumbling over.  Should I use the word sugar?  I am not absolutely certain about this yet.  My thought process is this:  I don’t eat sugar out of the sugar bowl, anymore.  I don’t dig my “baking box” off of the top shelf of the cupboard to get a fix of brown sugar.   Thanks to the Whole 30 (and a couple of other programs I tried before settling on the Whole 30) I don’t cook with sugar, honey, syrup, sweeteners or artificial sweeteners of any type.  My food contains no added sugars of any kind, and that is fine by me.  I like my cooking.  It is delicious and healthy and satisfying.  Therefore, I don’t get sugar, nor do I crave sugar, in any form other than sweet treats.  Sweet treats include any form of baked goods (cookies are my favorite), candy of all kinds (preferably chocolate, but mints aren’t far behind), and ice cream.  I’ve never been a huge fan of puddings or jello.  I can honestly say that I have never craved either of those things.  Sweet treats definitely include muffins.  What I crave, when I have cravings, is a sweet treat.  I can’t explain it exactly, but describing my addiction that way makes sense to me.  I think it is more precise and accurate than saying I am a sugar addict.  So, at least for now, that is what I am going with.

I am a sweet treat addict. 

Enough for now.  I have to go to work.

Have a beautiful day!!