I thought I had grasped that. I thought my problem was I felt so hopeless I thought I might as well eat. But, and I've just made this connection, my original problem this last fall was complacency, as after 3+ months of a good fall where I had been doing the morning routine and life was going ok, I stopped the routine, and fell into a trap of my own construction. Or, to put it in a less self-judgmental manner, I fell into a trap of the disease's construction. Someone I quite respect who even so, half the time drives me nuts once said that her disease's most dangerous symptom is it makes her forget that she has this disease.
The forgetting makes me stop doing the things that keep me sane. I guess my disease model is of a mental disease with physical symptoms --- the compulsive bingeing.
Here's a bit of that passage as adapted for my purposes (my changed bits in italics):
"Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real food addicts. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from others. Therefore, it is not surprising that our struggles with food
have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy moderate eating is the great obsession of every abnormal eater. The persistance of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were compulsive overeaters. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We compulsive overeaters are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating. We know that no real food addict ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals --- usually brief ---- were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a single soul that compulsive eaters of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, not better.
We are like those who have lost their legs; they never grow good ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make compulsive eaters of our kind like other people. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with eating disorders agree there is no such thing as making a normal eater out of a compulsive eater. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.
Despite all we can say, many who have eating disorders are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore non-addicted. If anyone who is showing ability to control his eating can do the right-about-face and eat like the normal person, our hats are off to them. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to eat like other people!
Yup, I recognize the demoralization part. Maybe, just maybe, this hopelessness and worthlessness I feel hanging on to me, like a Dickensian wraith, is a disease symptom itself. I have to put that aside and believe the others that value me... I'm going to make a list to make myself remember that:
Fuzz
my studio mate who's invited me out for lunch today
people who invite me to sing with them
BF who wants us to spend xmas dinner with them
Fuzz's folks who don't understand us but want us to have dinner with them
Mary
friends in OA
other friends
ok ok, I'm worthwhile, I get it... ah, that I really believed it. Perhaps this requires the "act as if" stuff they talk about in the rooms, that if I pretend I do enough I will actually start believing it. OK ok, for today, I will act as if my life has a point.
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