These days it seems like folks throw around the word "addiction" with reckless abandon. Tiger Woods is addicted to sex. Kirk Franklin to porn. Lindsay Lohan to crack. You get my gist. Video games, internet, shopping, chocolate, exercising, etc. Well like Chris Rock joked, when you start to hear all the symptoms associated with illnesses that the drug companies can cure with their pills, you start thinking you're sick too (oh yeah, don't forget painkiller addiction). I say all that to say I don't know if I'm addicted to food or not. Or if maybe the media is telling me that I am.
I could certainly do a bunch of research on addiction, but I do have a day job. So that's not happening right now. I do know, though, that if I am addicted to food, it's not like I can just go cold turkey and stop eating, which actually kind of stinks. Alcoholics need to swear off liquor. Even Tiger can decide become celibate (but with that new facial hair he's sporting, something tells me he doesn't plan to). But I can't decide not to eat ever again. I mean I can, but I don't think it's really a good idea.
I've been wondering for a while if I'm addicted to food. I don't think I am, though. I can turn things down. But I have some very strong weaknesses, and I wonder if maybe I'm addicted to some foods. Like brownies. Turning down a brownie is just not something I do very well. Turning down a piece of cake is not a piece of cake (who came up with that diddy anyway? How is a piece of cake easy?). A meeting at work made me think of addiction earlier today. Someone brought these very cute frosted cookies with the name of our project iced on them. Two weeks ago I would have eaten one without too much thought. But today, I didn't touch one. But I sure thought about the cookie. I thought about how it wasn't worth it to eat it. I thought about how I had no idea how to calculate the points in it. I thought about how it probably didn't taste all that fabulous anyway. I thought about the guilt I'd feel afterward for wasting my allocated points on it. So I didn't eat it. But man I thought about it. And had it been a slice of yellow cake with chocolate frosting, I'm not sure I would have resisted.
So am I addicted? I don't know. Yesterday I was watching a movie. There's a scene in a bar, and the two characters leave their almost-full glasses of stout beer (my fave) on the bar and walk out. Befuddled, I whispered, "Drink the beer," a little too forcefully. I could taste it on my tongue. I could feel it going down my throat. My reaction startled me. The beer was completely not the point of the scene, but it was my focus. Who leaves a full glass of beer on a bar? There's a scene in the show "The West Wing" in which Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff, is explaining his alcoholism to someone else. He says he doesn't understand people who leave some of their drink in the glass. Why not finish it? Why would you not finish it? Why would you have just one glass? He doesn't understand that, or at least has never experienced the feeling.
And neither have I.
One drink. One cookie. One brownie. Not finishing the glass. I've never experienced the desire. I can leave lots of things on my plate. Rice. Pizza crust. The leafy greens.I can leave that easily. I don't finish my water all the time. But cake crumbs? The frosting? The last drop of wine? Not so much.
Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. This weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) I wanted a cupcake. I even planned to go get one. But I didn't. I resisted, and it was no big deal. So maybe I'm not addicted. My boyfriend keeps ice cream and candy and cookies (SAMOAS!!!) in his kitchen all the time. He doesn't eat them (which I just don't understand at all) and of course they taunt me. But I didn't eat any this weekend. So maybe I'm not an addict. Maybe now I'm just really paying attention in a way that I haven't in a really long time.
But it lends the question, if I am an addict, what will be my next addiction? You know they say (there "they" go again) that once an addict, always an addict, and if you end one addiction you just pick up another. What will be my next addiction? It won't be alcohol because that has calories, and I found myself turning down a glass of wine and a bottle of beer on two separate occasions because I just didn't know the nutritional info of either of them. And drugs scare me. Actually, jail scares me, so it won't be something illegal. And I just doubt it will be running or Spinning or something like that (oh, but if I could pick my poison). What will I do in excess? I have a feeling shopping might be a disastrously strong contender.
Why can't I find something guilt-free and productive to make my obsession?
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