Addiction?

August 27, 2013

            Cigarette addiction makes no sense to me.  I must admit addiction of any kind makes no sense to me, but even I cannot deny being addicted to food.  Aren’t we all addicted to food?  Isn’t addiction a physical need?

            The Goat Man is dealing with his addiction to cigarettes, but his failure to afford them.  Smokers by nature are generous and understanding when it comes to addiction.  They often share their cigarettes freely, but the same is over staying your welcome it is possible to bum too many.

            When money is an issue addiction becomes a problem and it hazes the lines between need and want.  The Goat Man says he needs a cigarette, but he will not die without it.

            I use food in excess or at least the average layman would say so because I am overweight.  The problem with food addiction is simply that we have no choice but to eat.  A drug addict, alcoholic, or smoker has a choice.  Any amount of drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes is in excess; however, food is in a category of it’s own.

            I am reminded of a book I wrote several years ago.  It is not an autobiography, but it is soaked with my reality.  I want to share a piece of it with you.  Please tell me what you think and if I should seek publication for the entire book.

            This is the second chapter of the book I call Invisible:

            “She stood in the hallway of the nursing home examining Cindy.  She was the only person who ever tried to see her.  She had allowed Cindy to read her diary, and at that moment she was witnessing Cindy’s concern.  Cindy was near the age of her mother, but she did not look more than eight to ten years older than her. 

There were small crows feet in Cindy’s eyes that were noticed only if one looked close and studied her.  Cindy looked through copper brown eyes.  They were the same copper eyes of Conrad, her husband.  Cindy and Conrad also shared the same bronze skin.  Cindy had long dark hair that hung down her back.  She wondered if the copper eyes were Indian traits. 

Conrad’s great grandmother was full-blooded Navajo, and his father had placed Cherokee in Conrad’s gene pool.  She had remembered hearing Cindy talk of Indian in her blood, but she wasn’t sure how much Indian Cindy had. 

She loved the copper eyes and the bronze skin that felt as smooth as a baby’s bottom.  Cindy was absolutely gorgeous, and her body language spoke respect.

     It was the end of the day and she was already over an hour late getting home from work.  She went out to speak with Cindy in order to finish her work and go home.  Her feet were already swollen and hurting, and a small headache was forming. 

     It was Friday and she wanted to go home and recuperate for the next week that she knew she would barely make it through.  When Cindy saw her she had grabbed her arm and ran her down the hall.

     She stood in the hallway listening.  “If you don’t stop this self destructive behavior you are going to die.”  A split second of glitter size gleam flashed in her head.  That was the point she thought.  She was happy to have finally reached somebody.  She shifted her weight from left to right.  Her back was starting to mention its pain.  Her stomach growled.

     She had been eating five to six small meals each day since she visited the wish center a month ago.  She had to admit she felt better.  The tiredness was still there, but it did not come in big overwhelming waves like before.  She thought her blood sugars were in better control. She had consumed less than one twenty-ounce soda the entire month and the bonfire in her chest was more like hot coals now. 

     She listened to Cindy as she fought back the tears.  She had given those same fifteen pages of her dairy to six people before Cindy.  Only one other person bothered to even read it. 

     Her husband, Conrad, stood in the middle of their living room as she watched him stare at each page for long moments at a time.  Then Conrad would put the thoroughly stared at page behind the others.  It took what seemed like forever for him to read her heartfelt words. 

     Moments before handing it to him she had tried to read it to him as he played his game on the computer, but she couldn’t read it through her tears.  She had never before had trouble keeping the tears at bay.  She could always feel them, but she could always control them.

     When he finished she looked up at him, now in control of her tears, and waited for a response.  It took him three long seconds to hand the fifteen pages back to her expressionless.

     “Are you going to get my cigarettes now?”  She realized at that moment that she meant nothing at all to him.  She had just given him her suicide note to read, and he had no reaction.

     It was not that he had a reaction she did not understand.  One of those things she could chalk up as a man thing and blame the Y chromosome.  But he had absolutely no reaction at all.  She did not have any trouble controlling her tears this time, because she did not have any to control.

     For several years there had been little moments where Conrad had left doubt in her mind about his love.  It was very clear to her that unconditional love was out of Conrad’s realm of understanding. 

     In the hallway, Cindy spoke about what She should eat as if she knew nothing of nutrition, and sat around eating chocolate ice cream, Twinkies, and ho ho’s all day.  She listened anyway in case Cindy said something she didn’t know.  After all Cindy was a very smart lady.  But it was becoming quite clear Cindy did not understand a few very simply truths about fat people.

     She had watched fat and thin people for years now and was able to decipher that like a man and a woman’s brain are different; there are thin perspectives and fat perspectives. 

     The thought process’s and perspectives of thin and fat people were definitely different.  She created a hunger pain theory that states; a thin persons perspective is simply forgetting to eat, or to actually understand the feeling of being stuffed.  Where as, jokingly told, fat people simply don’t forget to eat.  Just do not call them late for dinner.

     The medical profession measures pain on a scale of one to ten.  One is no pain at all, and ten is described as the worst pain one can imagine. She based her hunger pain theory on this premise for the measurement of hunger.

She always associated hunger with two things the pain in her stomach, and/or the shaky feeling of her sugar dropping.  The shaky feeling usually came with a headache she was able to rate the pain on.  She would rate her hunger pain as an eight to a ten almost all of the time.  Previously interviewed Thin people rated their pain between one and three unless they were in a state they called starving. 

She daily ignored a pain of three and would be able to forget to eat as well if three was her hunger level.  However, she could not ignore a hot poker turning and twisting in her gut at a scale of eight to ten.  She believed a thin person would not be able to ignore it either.  Is hunger pain that high starving? 

With the knowledge that when the poker arrived if she did not eat the poker would be joined by a headache, shaky hands, spaghetti legs, sweaty body, uncontrollable heartburn and nausea, and loss of energy and strength to even continue threw the day she had no choice but to feed her addiction.  Anyone in that much distress would do whatever it took to make things feel right.

Was the state of starving a different story?  Or do thin people just not understand the literal pain their counter parts are dealing with.  When a thin person is starving the rules change.  They are no longer required to wait for dinner to be cooked, or sit down politely with others.  In the state of starving one has resorted to Maslow’s heirchy of needs and the top thought in the brain is food.  The starving person cares about nothing but getting food, any food, as quickly as possible.  But when a fat person is starving and dares to eat it is simply considered a loss of will power.

We are very fortunate as a country because food is always readily available.  It is the readily available food that is killing our young with obesity, and diabetes.  It is a lot more satisfying to stop the pain instantly at a drive through or out of the microwave then it is to take the time to cut up fresh vegetables and dig out the steamer and prepare a healthy meal. 

Eating well becomes even more difficult if you are poverty ridden, or already late for wherever you are suppose to be next, or simply unaware of what is healthy and how to prepare it.

The second question of the hunger pain theory is what is food?  To so many people there is not a black and white answer.  The response hangs in the grey areas of fast food, and microwaveable meals.  Our society has lost touch of a family home cooked meal.  We have changed the food pyramid, but we still have not updated our definition of a vegetable or a fruit.

Children grow up eating what they are given, and their comfort foods come from childhood memories.  Therefore, if they are not given a vegetable they will not instinctively eat vegetables later in their lives. Society has made it a waste to put anything but the pickle on a fast food burger in the vegetable spot on the food pyramid.

Another basic truth she knew was that after years of this catch .22 she lost her feeling of satisfaction.  She could not remember what full felt like or the last time she felt full.

She had heard Conrad say numerous times when she commented on the last bite of food he always left on the plate. He could not eat another bite he would be too full.  He could remember how sick he was one Thanksgiving several years ago and he did not want to be in that much pain again.

It all came down to the simple act of avoiding the pain and sickness of the eating ritual.  Thin people avoid pain by not eating and fat people avoid the pain by eating.

Different perspectives are why, as she stood in the hallway with Cindy, they drifted apart.  She had been fat for years and it was not a new diagnosis or revelation.  Although Cindy treated it like the news was just found out yesterday. 

Obesity comes down to simple truths, but the road to the truth is very complex.  She had eaten the wrong food, too much of the food, or something to get this fat.  It no longer mattered if it was a health problem, genetic predisposition, a learned behavior, a consequence of poverty, or simply an avoidance of pain.  It no longer mattered because she was aware of her obesity, and she had already made changes.

She stood in the hallway holding back her words.  She probably ate a better well balanced diet than Cindy.  She was very conscious of every bite that went into her mouth.  She had completely stopped drinking for no other reason than the calories and carbs.  Not because she was older and it didn’t fit her lifestyle, not because it caused her blood pressure to rise, and not because her husband was an alcoholic and it killed her to watch him slowly kill himself.  No, she stopped drinking because it used up too many weight watchers points. Did Cindy even know about weight watcher’s points?

Her problem was no longer getting obese, but losing the tub of lard she now possessed.  But she knew to Cindy this was a new problem to deal with.  Therefore, she disregarded the sentences that hit the raw nerve of fat people. 

Cindy was not aware all fat people have the nerve.  It is the nerve that picks up on all of societies misconceptions about how we got fat and why we are still fat.

It is a highly sensitive nerve.  It is the painful reality that only the person with the nerve understands.  Touching the nerve elicits a person to feel condemned or less because of the stupid things those that do not understand say and do.  It is in every aspect of life and almost impossible to avoid.  It affects every thought and action until the beliefs become transparent and even those holding the nerve begin to believe.  It is a constant fight to maintain self.

People are very selfish and centered in only their little world of reality and not aware that something has been said or done that hit the nerve inside the other person.  However, when it comes to the nerve the owner takes their perception of the events personally.

She believes the fat nerve runs next to several other nerves that only society and ridicule can turn on.  All she knew for sure was that these nerves were very sensitive and that they can run very deep.  She was always conscious of the nerve, and tried very hard not to get on anybody’s nerve.  Although she was sure as opinionated as she was there had to be some nerves she stomped on, but she tried desperately not to.

She stood in the hallway shifting her weight again because now her back was screaming.  She was thanking God that Cindy did read the pages.  Cindy wrote down her phone number telling her to call if she ever felt she needed to.  Cindy meant if she felt like suicide, but that word was never said.  She wanted to say right then that she would never call, but it would not be that she did not want to She feels that way everyday.  Every God blessed day! 

The infamous “They” say that how important a person is to you depends on how much you reveal to them.  She stood in the hallway very aware that all of the secrets she carried inside herself Cindy read in those fifteen pages and she knew almost nothing about Cindy.  How sincere could Cindy be? 

Is she now trapped in another situation where she gets hurt?  She stood in the hallway shifting her weight back and forth very conscious of everyone passing by.  Her back was screaming and she could feel the beads of sweat in her hairline.  Even as Cindy tried to help her and was all consumed in telling her what she needed to do, Cindy had forgotten what she wrote the fifteen pages about.

It was all about her pain.  Her constant pain.  The pains in her feet, knees, hips, and back.  The heartburn.  It was also about her fear of a stroke or heart attack, and the constant feeling of needing to take deeper breaths.  As Cindy spoke she realized Cindy had made the same mistake of most people. 

She spoke only of physical pain, literal pain.  Emotionally she was okay.  But she was in physical pain.  Pain that eating did not take away.  She was overwhelmed by her inability to breath, move, and the one hundred and forty extra pounds she carried around.  But nothing else overwhelmed her.  There was nothing she could not over come, except this pain. 

The science of it was very simple.  Her bones and joints could not hold up her two hundred and seventy pound frame, but they were not quitters either.  They were giving it all they had, and would continue until one day they reached the inevitable collapse.

Cindy almost understood her, and the fact that she read the fifteen pages is what made her want to spend days thanking her. 

She learned a long time ago that she thought on a different level than the average person.  She knew that they were just as consumed with their lives as she was with her thoughts and feelings.  She knew it was a great compliment if somebody came out of their own reality to see her, and even more profound for them to attempt to deal with her private realities problem.  However, Cindy was trying to fix things that were not broken, and She still stood invisible.

Then as quickly as the conversation started, it ended, and she went back to work.  She was so very thankful to sit down at her desk and wait for the pain in her back to melt away to only the normal ache of existence.  It had reached the point where she hurt just to exist. 

She awoke at a two or a three on an average morning.  By the time she was up and dressed she was living at a pain level of five.  There was no longer a time where she was comfortable, and she was acutely aware that if her waist grew just two more inches she would no longer be able to drive her truck, until she learned how to make her legs longer.  If she did anything during the day that caused her to stand more than literally five minutes, or walk more than literally twenty feet then her pain went up.  After an average day at work not only is she moving excessively heavy tired limbs, but her pain is an eight to a ten.  But if she works the floor for even part of the day her pain is eleven plus, and her activity tolerance is to put some quick easy food in her mouth and fall asleep exhausted by five p.m. 

Most of her waking hours are at work, and she would love to have at least one nap (two would be better) in the middle of the day just to make it threw.

However, she continues threw the exhaustion because she needs the job and the money to feed her children.  And, like Conrad pointed out to her, she was brought up that naps are a sign of being lazy, and being lazy is a sin. 

She did not understand.  If she was a cancer patient and she was in this kind of pain no body would hesitate to help her.  Nobody would mistake it for mental anguish, and nobody would expect anything less than depression, the feeling of powerlessness, overwhelmed, and fear of what was to come, and what capabilities were going to go.  If only she was a cancer patient. 

If she was a patient with a recent amputation everyone would help with her concept of self and appearance alteration.  If she had been hideously deformed in a fire nobody would say to her that she was too depressed to deal with the inevitable changes that were about to take place after her plastic surgery.  If she wanted her breast augmented or a face-lift the only question would be do you have the money? 

If she were a drug addict “they” would whisk her away cloth her, feed her, and shelter her.  They would help her beat her addiction every way possible.

But she was just an average mother with no health insurance plagued with the two things worse than leprosy.  She was poor and she was obese.  When she had insurance and traveled eleven hundred miles to the doctor to relieve her physical pain, and as an added perk improve her appearance they told her she was too depressed for the surgery.  But if she wanted to improve her breast size mental depression doesn’t matter.  The wish center did not offer her anything to take away the pain.  But she spent all of her money asking for help and the insurance is now gone.  And she was still invisible.”