Pizza for Christmas, and some thoughts on heroin

Dec 25, 2011

 Every year for Christmas we all chow down on an extra-extra large steaming hot cheese pizza with all the fixins. Except this year. Well, the rest of my family is chowing down on pizza. I'm in my room. Hiding. From pizza.

I'm two weeks out and completely consumed by hunger. Mind hunger, sure, but also that deep aching growling burning PHYSICAL hunger I thought this surgery was supposed to snip away along with my intestines. If it weren't for my incisions, the lingering pain, the horrible gas cramps, and, oh yeah, the 20 pounds I've lost, I would think the doc pulled a number on me and sent me home with a totally unrerouted stomach. And those 20 pounds? Here's my deep dark secret: catch me at a weak moment (all my moments lately) and I'll admit I'd trade them in a heartbeat for a single slice of gooey, cheesey, delicious pizza.

The worst part is that my family is totally unsympathetic. The physical stuff, the recovery, they can understand that, but this deep hunger that I'm fighting, this battle against food? They don't get that at all. They never have.

Here's what food is like for me. It's like heroin. It's like instead of food, the entire human race is kept alive by getting shots of heroin three times a day. 90% of the human race is totally immune to the addictive effects of heroin, and can enjoy the rush in moderation. I'm one of the unlucky 10% who gets completely, hopelessly addicted. We will beg, borrow, cheat, steal, lie, and scrounge around in the trash (all things, shamefully, that I've done) in order to get our fix. And the normal 90% do not understand it. They think we're disgusting and weak-willed. They don't understand that unlike heroin addicts, we really DO need our fix to live, and we have to confront it constantly. It's in the refrigerator, sure, but it's also on the TV and radio, in magazines and books, on billboards, crowding our lives, impossible to avoid. We live in a culture saturated with food. 

So forgive me, family, if I skip the Christmas meal. Watching you eat pizza while I sip my protein shake and listen to my stomach growl will probably end in someone getting punched in the face. Instead I'll be up in my room, trying to go through the hell of withdrawal as gracefully as possible. 

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