Powerless over ice cream

Last night I was feeling very stressed and self-critical because of a story I read on the interwebs machine, and especially the harsh comments afterwards. It's enough, that I already chastise myself constantly and feel physically debilitated because of putting on an excessive amount of weight in the past year and a half. To read the horrible comments that suggested everything short of suicide as an appropriate punishment for obesity, the scourge of all human conditions, the worst possible thing that a person can do to herself, put me in the frame of mind for great self-flagellation while trying to go to sleep. That was interspersed with repeated protestations from the tiny, squeaky voice rising from somewhere in the vicinity of my pancreas, saying "I'm not that bad, I'm not hopeless, I'll do better, really I will, just don't beat me anymore."

A modest breakfast of yogurt and fruit, with a cup of stout English tea, followed by a brisk walk through the woods, up and down hills with Buddy boy, gave me a great start to my 8,794th new life of moderation and good health. I can even look forward to the delivery of my farm-fresh produce box this afternoon.

Straightening up the front room, I pick up a magazine from several weeks ago that I hadn't read yet. It was early. I still had plenty of time to do laundry and get to the writing I'm going to do. I could flip through it while I had a mid-morning snack, maybe an apple. An hour later, I had read the magazine and eaten a good bit of ice cream and polished off Jill's uber-healthy, expensive whole food potato chips. Really? REALLY?

It's not that I didn't know what I was doing. It's that I didn't interrupt the impulse. And that ----- that is how addiction works.

One would assume, but one would be wrong, that having almost 32 years of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction would give a person every possible tool, desire, impetus and strategy for sloughing off other troublesome addictive behaviors. Alas.

Were the consequences so much greater all those years ago, that I was willing to go through the inevitable withdrawal and very steep learning curve, in order to stop drinking? I had tried many times before, but one day it worked and I never picked up again. Over the years I've been troubled by other self-destructive behaviors that I have since been able to put to rest. But this ---- I don't know what it will take.

Nobody ever got "better" about anything by being yelled at and beaten. When I had kids who had learning problems, I didn't stand over them telling them they were stupid and hopeless and would never learn anything. But I don't seem to be able to stop yelling at myself and launching into yet another cycle of seeking relief in the very thing that is most likely to kill me in the end.

Someday, unless the pols succeed in banishing science altogether, the brain scientists may get this all figured out and work hand in hand with the behavioral scientists to develop effective treatments for such stubbornly resistant subjects as I. I hope they do, and I wish I'd still be around to reap the benefits. In the meantime, though, it is not helpful or effective for me or anyone else to view this as anything but the vicious addictive cycle that it is.

I've got will power. I've got knowledge. I've got desire. What I don't have, is any defense against that first mouthful.

No wisdom here today. No humor, either.