The Sugar Witch

That's the name Mrs. D used for it. I like it. I did a double-take this morning when I read this post on her blog, where she opened by saying she gave herself a B- in something. So funny, since I wrote a post saying the exact same thing yesterday.

The Sugar Witch is something one of my daughters and one of my closest friends struggle with in a very painful way. The way I deal with her is similar to how I deal with wine:  as close to total abstinence as possible. It's easier that way, if I just say, "I don't eat crap" like I say, "I don't drink." I made the mistake of saying that to someone who's been sober in AA for some time, and he went off on me, lecturing me about how you won't kill someone after eating a bowl of ice cream and driving. Sigh...

So I keep quiet about the similarities between food addiction and alcohol addiction now, but I think they're considerable. I remember years ago, long before I started drinking alcoholically, my dad was telling me about a study where they showed alcoholics and non-alcoholics the same short film clip, in which two people were having dinner, finished and got up and left. The alcoholics who watched all noticed -- and were bothered by -- the fact that they people left their wine glasses half full, while the non-alcoholics didn't notice.

At the time, I never noticed unfinished drinks in movies or TV, but I did notice uneaten food that looked appetizing. I understood that dialogue needs required people to talk rather than chew, so they couldn't eat it, but it used to bother me anyway. When my dad told me about that study, I realized that I had addictive tendencies toward food. Well, realized is the wrong word. I'd known that all my life. I never had anorexia or bulimia, but food was always on my radar screen -- how much I ate, how much other people ate, how much I wanted to eat, what other people would think if they saw how much I ate, and so on.

I'm not sure why, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being obsessed with food. After a lifetime of struggling to keep my weight down, it is now stable without struggle. Effort, yes, but struggle, no. Just when women stereotypically put on weight -- over 40 and after kids -- I suddenly became a thin person inside as well as out.

I sometimes wonder if I just switched addictions, trading food for alcohol. It wasn't too long after my weight maintenance became easy that I started to drink too much. I suppose food is a safer addiction, but alcohol is an easier addiction to overcome, for me at least, because total abstinence is possible, whereas it isn't with food. You can give up alcohol entirely, but you still have to eat.

Crying Out Now

This blog, Crying Out Now, is powerful and raw and honest and a godsend.  I found it via this article at HealthLine on the 15 Best Alcoholism Blogs of 2013.  Another of the 15 I loved (I haven't had time to look at all of them yet) was Life Without Beer Goggles, which is well written and funny, and I love anything that is both of those things.  I would read that one just for laughs even if I didn't have alcohol issues.

Crying Out Now is an entirely different kind of blog, a communal blog for women to share their stories about addiction and recovery.  The posts are mostly anonymous.  Maybe all anonymous; I haven't read far enough back yet to be sure.  I really related to this post by a woman who wanted to stop drinking, but hadn't made the commitment yet, in part because

I've gone to some open AA meetings with my husband and was blown away by what I saw and felt. 

I am terrified to suggest to him that I may stop drinking: I'm not sure I want to make that commitment.  

I don't want him being a watchdog on me if I change my mind or fail…

Boy, can I relate.  I went to my first AA meeting not too long ago, haven't told many people yet.  Four, to be exact, aside from the people at the meetings.  One of those people is a close friend who has a close relative who is in recovery.  When she asked me the other day if I had been to another meeting, I admitted that I sometimes wondered whether I would have to make that a lifestyle choice, whether I might not someday be able to be a social drinker as I was during most of my life.  The disapproval and judgment radiated from her like the white hot heat of the sun.  She was careful about what she said, but I could feel it.  The watchdog.

The fact is, I will probably be better off if I commit to a life of sobriety, but that has to be my choice.  I will probably do it, but I don't want to feel as though people are watching and judging and insisting.  But perhaps that is the price of a sober life?  People judge; they can't help it.  As a species, we are Homo Judicans.

I visited the blog of one of the founders of Crying Out Now.  Ellie is a smart, beautiful, brave woman who has survived cancer and addiction.  I have only just begun to explore her blog, One Crafty Mother,  but have already found wonderful posts on motherhood, cancer, alcoholism and recovery.  I particularly liked a recent post about motherhood and alcoholism in which she writes:

Moms talk all the time about deserving their wine at the end of a long day - whether they work outside of the home or not.  You don't have to look further than Facebook to see women talking up their hard earned glass of wine.

I have realized how true this is since my first AA meeting.  I cannot count the number of times I have been advised by a friend or acquaintance or coworker to have a glass of wine and relax, than I deserve it.  In retrospect, I realize I used to prescribe the same thing, both for myself and for friends.

Ellie's post references Ann Dowsett Johnson's new book, Drink:  The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol.  I haven't read it yet, but I plan to.  Johnson was the guest last night on The Bubble Hour, the podcast that the hosts of Crying Out Now produce.  The newest episode link isn't posted yet, so I haven't heard it, but plan to when it's up, as well as exploring some of the older podcasts.

I am grateful to have found Crying Out Now, a site where women can share their thoughts and fears in anonymity and safety, hosted by women who empathize rather than judge.  I have not shared my own story there yet, but I may.

By the way, the fact that I have reluctantly admitted that I have a problem does not mean that I can no longer appreciate the humor of posts like this one from Illustrated with Crappy Pictures, a blog I only just discovered (I guess I live under a rock) and the 2013 Best Parenting Blog according to The Bloggies.  Yes, it is a part of that "mommy needs her wine" discourse, but it is also funny, and in my book, funny makes a lot of things okay.

Trying

This morning, I lay in bed for two hours surfing the internet.  And I don’t feel guilty.

After writing that, it was easier to get on the elliptical.  I exercised for half an hour, finishing the last page of Susan Cheever’s Desire just as the timer beeped the end of the session.  Very zen.  That may be the wrong way to use the word zen, but I don’t care right now.  This is my journal, and I’ll use and abuse words as I see fit.

My, what a rebel I am this morning.  A rebel or an addict?  Cheever thinks addicts are different from non-addicts, but that addictions are not different from one another.  In other words, addictions are interchangeable:  when an obese person addicted to food gets bariatric surgery and can no longer feed that addiction, he or she becomes a compulsive shopper or gambler or alcoholic.  Is it true?  I don’t know.  Not in my dad’s case anyway, I don’t think. 

Was I addicted to food?  I had obsessed over it and struggled to self-regulate for more than 30 years before I took what is probably as near as can be to an AA-style abstinence approach to processed food, sugar and starch.  Since doing so, not eating sugar isn’t very difficult anymore.  Halloween was two nights ago and I didn’t even really want to raid the kids' bags for Reese’s peanut butter cups.  My kids are baffled by my indifference to sweets, since they are all sick addicts themselves.  I mean that in a playfully ironic way, I hope, the way that all kids are sugar addicts.  I gorged on Halloween candy as a kid, but sugar was never really the monkey on my back.  I’d much have preferred two chili dogs and a bite of chocolate to one chili dog and a pile of sweets.  For me, it was mostly savory foods (except mint chocolate chip ice cream, for which I had a desperate passion) and a penchant for excessive portions.

When I stopped overeating, and the feeling of food addiction eventually passed, was I more prone to other addictions?  Did a third glass of Malbec become my third helping of Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing and gravy?  Did two workouts a day replace the two chili dogs?  Did figurative mint chocolate chip (a euphemism for something I have not yet worked up the nerve to write about) become a surrogate for its literal namesake?  Ironic, that.  The connection had not occurred to me before.  I think there may be a memoir title in there.  A memoir to be written when I am old and my children have had their own experiences with that other kind of mint chocolate chip, and so may not judge quite so harshly.  I will be an old lady, dignified and well-preserved, and my amorous past will be no longer scandalous, but only quaintly amusing:  Oh my, can you imagine Grandma doing that?

Do I love mint chocolate chip (figuratively), or do I just love ice cream?  I loved that question Eleanor asked, though I think she said chocolate, and I substituted a flavor I liked better, my flavor of the moment.  Or is it merely a flavor of the moment?  I don’t know.  And the beautiful thing is, I am growing more comfortable with not knowing.  I am beginning to grasp at the edges of what paradox means, and this aspect of my life is nothing if not a paradox.  For a change, I am content to live with the paradox, to be with the uncertainty, not to try to figure out the future.  For the first time since it began, I feel at peace with it.  Well, not completely, but closer to being at peace with it.  And that feels good.

I look at the surface of my desk, and the piles of papers that usually frustrate me, make me feel overwhelmed, lead me to beat myself up for allowing the mess to go on, do not do any of those things this morning.  I realize even as I write the words, that those active verbs are inaccurate:  the mess does not make me feel anything.  The mess is just there.  I feel the way I feel, and blame the mess.

Mindfulness, gratitude and kindness.  I am trying to practice these three things.  Forty minutes ago, I wrote down the time, 7:34, and started clearing the mess off my desk, putting things away, timing myself to see how long things took.  Some of the things to put away were three checks, and I decided to fill out deposit slips for them so I could get that out of the way.  I only had two deposit slips in the house, so I went to get one out of my car, and on the way, instead of thinking what mess the yard was, I breathed in the cold morning air and thought how good it felt, savoring the feeling of it filling my lungs, and feeling gratitude.  When I got to the garage, I was not annoyed at the fallen bicycle in my way, just picked it up and put it to the side with neutral thoughts.  There was no deposit slip in the car, and I found to my surprise that I was not annoyed by this.  On the way back to the house, I looked down at my hands, nine long nails with clear polish and one broken down to the quick, and felt not annoyed by the broken nail, but grateful that I have ten fingers and ten toes, grateful that I have beautiful hands.  Yes, beautiful:  the veined hands of a middle aged woman, and beautiful.

When I came back in the house, the cat was yowling in her discordant way.  It is strange, she is so pretty and delicate, but her meow is harsh and masculine and grating.  The tomcat we used to have was huge and black and majestic, but he mewed as though he were the little white kitten from The Aristocats.  This cat’s guttural howl has always annoyed me, and as many times as I have tried to feel benevolent toward her (I am not a cat person, so it doesn’t come naturally) I don't often manage it.  Today I did.  I spoke kindly to her, and let her out.  Then let her in again.  She had food and water, but still she kept meowing.  “Do you want to be petted?” I finally asked, and bent down to stroke her fur.  Apparently she did, because after that she was quiet.

I never did get the desk cleared off, and it’s more than three hours after I set out to do so.  It’s not cleared off, but it is better than it was, and that is something. 

I have no illusions that I can go on being kind to the cat and the dog and the kids and all of humanity indefinitely, but I can try.  I don’t think I can always keep my desk clear or look with equanimity upon the mess when I don’t, but I can try.  I doubt I can consistently look at my hands and see ten whole, perfect fingers rather than age spots and chipped nail polish, but I can try.  That’s all any of us can do:  try.