"Skeleton Woman"
Gouache and watercolor
(page 48)
It's been many years since the beginning of my recovery from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating. I wrote "The Door" in the last miserable years that I suffered in secret from compulsive overeating, bulimia and anorexia, and I remember the first holiday season during which I experienced an astonishing freedom from the eating disorders that had manifested early in my life.
Even as a very young child I used sugar as a sedative which gave me temporary relief from acute anxiety. It was only later, when I was 10 years old, that I became obsessed with losing weight, despite the fact that I wasn't overweight. My reality from my earliest memories was that I could not stop eating sugar once I started. I used sugar as a sedative throughout my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.
At age 36, I stopped eating foods made with refined sugar and stopped drinking alcohol. The terrible food cravings that allowed for no satiation were lifted. It wasn't easy at first and still isn't easy to live in a world where sweet foods are offered as love and reward, but I have had the support of others recovering from eating disorders for a long time now.
Twice in recent years I have experimented with returning to the use of refined sugar. Both times I found that I lost my appetite for food that wasn't heavily sugared and that I experienced insatiable craving again. Both times I began to suffer from ocular rosacea. Both times, it was very difficult to return to the way of eating that didn't trigger unbearable craving for excess food.
Knowing what I now know about alcoholism, i.e. the craving for alcohol (and for me, massive amounts of food) that is triggered by drinking alcohol, I have not tried experimenting with alcohol again.
Today, December 19, 2009, is cool and foggy in the coastal Pacific Northwest, but the Red-winged Blackbirds are singing this morning. Listen. It almost sounds like spring.
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