Since I was little I have always felt fat. My family told me I was fat, my peers told me I was fat....my head told me I was fat. I used food as a comforter and as a weapon.It was my friend and my enemy for so many years that it just became "WHO" I was...how I thought of myself. My anger with myself and my desire to be "NORMAL" just took me to more and more darker places. Besides the food I had addictions to drugs and alcohol, I was bulimic in my 20's and used sex as a replacemnet for substance (including food) when I would lose lots of woeght onone crazy crash diet or liquid diet. I was searching for something to fill this HUGH hole in my soul!!

Nothing filled it and I was morbidly obese, and active speed addict and alcoholic drinking. I slept with men just to feel the warmth of another human being, even if it was fleeting and false. I took myslef to such a dark place that the only out for me was death. So at 30years old and about 7 months in a last ditch effort to find a small mustard seed of hope and a way out of the depression, I made a call to my sister and told her how I felt.

Although sympathic to my plight, as she watch me Yo-yo with my weight all my life, she knew the only answer for me at that time was a 12-Step Recovery program. She suggested AA and I quickly dismissed it as I knew could be an Alcoholic....I didn't drink in the morning (although I was know to drink until the sun came up), I never drank along (I needed an audience and a man - so I drank in bars and slept with strangers at every turn), I could go an entire year without a drink (when I went on a liquid diet -did it 3 times- I didn't drink), and I didn't drink everyday (only when there was a special on in the bar or it was dart night or a pool tournament...basically wednesday to Sunday brunch)....so I just couldn't be an alcoholic.

So she asked me what I thought was my problem and I firmly stated, "It is my weight, my body - it is killing me." So she suggested Overeaters Anonymous. That fit in my head so I went. Within the first six months, sometime I was reading a story in AA's Big Book called, "The Belle of the South." This woman was long dead and the story was written before I was even a twinkle in my Daddy's eye....but she was me. I identified with everything she wrote about. I was amazed
how much I was her and it dawned on me at that moment that "I WAS AN ALCOHOLIC!" I just picked up food first, then cigarettes, then alcohol, then drugs, then sex.....it was the disease of addiction...the substance didn't matter....I would put one down and just pick up another...it was so clear to me.

The progress of my addiction, to the best of my recollection goes like this:
Kindergarten (about age 6) began using food to fill the hole.
Cigarettes started at age 12
Alcohol at age 13
Marijuana at age 15
Other drugs started at age 16 as well as more drinking
By the time I was 18 I was drinking and drugging everyday....sometimes both, sometimes just drinking, sometimes just drugging...ALWAYS EATING!

And when I on a liquid diet or amphetamines to lose weight I slept with anything that would have me. It was such a miserable existence.

So when I realized this....that I am an addict who will use whatever substance...I threw myself into the "Behavior Modification" part of the 12-Step program and things began to change. 

Along the way, I began to believe there was a better life for me. The surgery is the next part of the journey. I am scared and I know it will mean a drastic lifestyle change but I want and need this...so I am puting this in God's hands and walking through with the blind faith that all will be what it will be.

About Me
Blackwood Terrace, NJ
Location
46.8
BMI
VSG
Surgery
11/24/2008
Surgery Date
May 10, 2008
Member Since

Friends 25

Latest Blog 82

×