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NOVEMBER 30TH, 1997, FOOD DRUNK
Imagine if you were a recovering alcoholic and you just had to drink three nips of whisky a day and not a drop more? If you are a food drunk you can't just give it up and distract yourself. It all has to do with discipline, measurement and proportion. You have to have absolute control at all times. You must have control over that food and what goes into your mouth. At the same time you can be eating quite regularly, but the 'out of control' bit will be the obsession about the food, the worry over it. I know that when my friend Michelle visits me, that she is disciplined. If I make sandwiches I simply cook the toast. I bring out the avocados, tomatoes and sprouts. She must slice and place that salad onto the toast into a healthy and sensible arrangement. My first 'out of control' thing would to to slather the toast in margarine and thick wedges of avocado, and then keep eating it until I was very satisfied. Sometimes I may have to be almost sick with nausea to be satisfied. Then I can lay around drunk on toast and margarine, especially at night, the television talking to me. The next day my face is twice its size, my chin falls down in a roll and my eyes have bags under them. I looked like a fifty-year-old woman is expected to look. Whereas Michelle has extra sprouts whether she wants them or not, she has learnt to like them, and thick tomato pieces and just a slither of avocado, no margarine and it's just the one piece of toast or two, and usually only after her blood sugar level has dropped significantly. She has it under control. At the moment I am floundering in the surf like a disorientated whale. I realise that it has to be a day to day thing. At every moment it will take discipline and quite a bit of my time will be taken up with thoughts of food. I was very drunk last night. You said that you hadn't seen me, it was like I was far away, overwhelmned, very weak and very sick. I couldn't feel your massage on my hands and feet, and most of the time I only heard half of what you said. It wouldn't have been like that if I had eaten salad and fruit instead of carbohydrates. So for the next few days I will be in detox, and it's going to get really hard. At the end of the hard day's work I look for the comfort and the rewards, something small, some small dream to be kept alive, some treat to take away the fear of night and it goes from there. As a child with parents that hated me, I fed myself the sustenance through food. The food put a good solid weight on me, that protected me from my mother's attack, her competitive and disinterested eyes and my father's knocking me in the head. The food going down was both parents loving me through my stomach. One day, I will finally take permanent control of my eating habits, confront the storms with a stomach digesting an apple, my strength over this addiction as flimsy and part-time as waving a lettuce leaf. |
