One of the real challenges in the fight to overcome an addiction is leaving your old life behind.
Food addiction, drug addiction and alcohol addiction have one thing in common. You have to leave a big part of your former self behind in order to move through your addiction and get on with your life.
I don’t drink except for a sip of Newcastle Brown Ale every now and then, and I have never “done drugs”. Getting drunk or high never appealed to me.
My parents didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs. Maybe that had something to do with it.
When I was growing up, there were lots of jokes about drunks and Jesus, people walking into a bar or driving off the side of the road. Every comedian told jokes about drunks.
No one joked about drugs but they weren’t popular then, and of course, alcohol wasn’t really perceived as a real drug.
I laughed along with everyone else when my brother did an imitation of our banker who we saw inebriated on more than one occasion. The impression was so hilarious and true to life that I would laugh until I cried. Forty years later, it’s not so funny.
I don’t know any jokes about drugs or drug addicts. Lots of things that seem funny when you are under the influence lose their comedic value when you live sober.
Why can’t there be a place where you can go and specific things you can do to end your addiction once and for all? Then you could just leave your addiction behind, walk away and never look back. If only.
I can’t compare my food addiction to the horror of a drug or alcohol addiction, but I can see some parallels. As I move forward spiritually in my life, it becomes more and more necessary to leave people from my past behind. If you want to leave your addiction behind, that’s part of the deal.
When you make the commitment to begin recovering from your addiction, you have to give up the life that went with it.
You can’t go out with your former drinking buddies. When you do, you feel bad because there is nothing to say. You don’t fit in anymore.
I imagine it’s the same with the people you used to get high with. I can’t go out with some of the people whose company I used to enjoy. When I’m around them, I eat things that defeat my efforts to live healthy.
Being around them makes me want to eat. It makes me become that person whom I no longer wish to be. I am becoming someone else now and I like this me better. They don’t.
If I put myself in stressful situations, I know I will respond with food if I seek support from certain people.
Even though I have to leave my food addiction behind every day, it will continue to pop up. Sometimes I will win and other times I may not. Recovery is ongoing. I’ve learned to be okay with that.
If change is to occur, however, I cannot surround myself with people who will not allow me to change, no matter how much they love me or I them.
If your support team makes you want to overeat, get drunk, or get high, you have to leave them behind. That’s the only way you will be able to leave your addiction behind.
Do what you have to do. Make new healthier friends. Move on. Don’t ever give up.