Powerlessness/insanity

I am powerless before sugar. I can quit candy for a while. One time I quit candy for 6 months--because I told my friend Ang that every time I ate candy I would owe the Catholic church $150. At the sixth month mark I was on a mission trip with a bunch of middle schoolers, and I couldn't take it. The anxiety was too much, and the Slovakian people offered us endless mini-cakes. By the end of the 2 week mission, I owed the Catholic church $1,050.

I quit for a month this fall--a total cleanse in an effort to kill the army of candida yeast I could picture living in my stomach. When I went to my church retreat, I ate whatever I wanted and my body reacted violently. I spent the weekend throwing up and farting (I was sharing a room with, among others, Wonderful Mike...alas, our relationship was over before it began).

Usually when I swear off sugar, I start making exceptions. Granola bars are not too too sugary. And Farley's Fruit Snacks have real fruit in them! Dark chocolate is supposedly healthy for me...and animal crackers are really crackers, right? Fundamentally, chocolate chip cookies are not really much different than cliff bars, which are healthy. And, if you break it down, eggs and butter are dairy products, wheat and sugar are plant products. Plus Red Vines always taste better from that big plastic tub, and no one buys those for just themselves, so I should take advantage of them when they are around, because I won't get another chance. And free food, it might go to waste if I don't eat it. If its around the holidays (and aren't we aways near a holiday?) there are all these special treats that only get put on the shelves once a year...and then after the holidays, those treats are so cheap! I can't pass up a bargain like that! And so it goes, until I am eating only candy. When I am not retreating to candy, I can still find solice in bread. Have you ever tasted Ezekial bread? Its not too delicious--but I can still OD on it. Scenes of horror include gorging on granola bars and raisonettes in the bike room in college, stealing desert from every roommate I have ever had (with my current roommate, I got into a cycle of eating her candy, replacing it, eating what I replaced, replacing it again). I wonder of the school cameras have caught me repeatedly stealing candy from the poor kid stash of treats. Invariably at the store I talk myself into buying a quantity of treats (for the week, month, year?), telling myself I will ration them out. I usually ration them over a period of about a day.


I am not only powerless over food. I am powerless over my depression, my "death wish", my anxiety, my chaos. I am powerless over growing, changing. I am powerless over my wanderlust, my resistance to staying on a schedule, a budget, a plan. I am powerless over my attraction to "quick-fix," "the good life," "the life that is just around the corner if only I could..." I am powerless over my obsession with fabulousness, my tendancy to become the "hot police." I can't stop staying up too late, and checking my many email accounts. I feel sorry for myself, and if I try and stop, I feel sorry for myself about how hard it is for me to stop feeling sorry for myself.

I am powerless over filling my schedule too full, cutting into Sabbath, and sleep-time and rest with frenic activities.

I think I will have more later.

"You may be powerless over your addictions, but you are responsible for your recovery."~an AA saying.