validation

Caught a few minutes of HBO's new series Addiction (thanks Tater). Got a little goose-bumpy listening to one of the researchers liken the state of addiction to that of having no brakes on a vehicle. Goosebumpy because I have thought of my many addictions in those very terms for years now. I saw it in my youth with the dope, that others would stop while I continued hell for leather. It was the same with drinking, but worse. The researcher discussed the disconnect between the "go" part of the addict's brain and the "stop." That, too, is something I've felt without knowing the physiology behind it. No matter how desperately I want it to, my stop brain cannot win out over go. It is, as one drunk described it, torture.

In this most recent struggle with food, with my sugar addiction, I know absolutely that I am missing something others have, the stopping factor, the ability to quit when on a run. I don't know what "too rich" means, and being full means nothing when I have my drug in hand. I go until it's gone, just as I did with liquor, just as I did with drugs. Unchecked, I am a future Discovery Health episode of The 800 Pound Woman. That's what no brakes means for me. It really is no brakes. That being said, 11 pounds are gone since my last surrender. And the other blessing, the great joy of just giving up is that I feel peaceful and happy and clean. Getting the sweet, crystalline drug out of my system is such a relief. Yay. Getting closer to that -125 I loved so much last summer.