Welcome to this qualification meeting. I am a food addict from the UK, and I am your leader for this hour. After a moment of silence, will you please join me in the Serenity Prayer?
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I am very grateful to be recording a tape. I still call them tapes. I come from a very small fellowship, and as you know from hearing me for a long time, I’ve had a lot of health issues. I am often too ill to get to meetings, and I’m often bedbound, listening to these recordings. These recordings are important—important to us in meetings and important to us if we can’t get to meetings. So this is good.
I came into FA in 2004. I was 25. I think I’ll start at the beginning. I was born in England. My mom is English, and my father is Portuguese. We moved back to Portugal. We lived in a one-room place. My father was a sex addict and a drug addict, and they were both really young. It was a fairly untenable situation. My mom was having a nervous breakdown. A friend came over and said she couldn’t live like this. She had no money, so the friend gave her the money for a ticket. Over months, she packed clothes in a suitcase hidden under the bed, slowly replacing drawers full of clothes so he wouldn’t notice. One day he went to work, and we went to the airport. That was it.
I didn’t really get on with him after that. I used to go over there for very long, sullen, resentful summers. I don’t know what I wanted from him, but I wanted something he was totally unable to give me.
Back home, I was a small child. My mom, coming back from a horrible experience, needed something to validate her, and for her, that was work. I felt alone, and of course, she had to work, but I was left by myself a lot. I had a stepdad, who is still my stepdad today, and today we get on fabulously thanks to FA and the work we’ve both been able to do. But at the time, we didn’t have blended families the way we talk about them now. It was just this collection of people who had no idea how to get on with it. There wasn’t much communication—people dealing with their own stuff, however they dealt with it, or not dealing with it.
My stepfather had a previous family and massive divorce guilt. When his kids came around, which I later learned in FA was only once a month, it felt like they were there all the time. If you had asked me before FA, I would have said they lived with us. But they didn’t. It just felt like they did. They were in a very rough and dangerous situation at their home, and that bled into our home. My parents had no emotional capacity to deal with the bullying I experienced, and when that bullying turned into sexual abuse, there was nowhere for me to go.
I don’t think any of those things made me a food addict. I really identify with that sense of fear, doubt, and insecurity all the time, but those experiences gave me plenty to feel angry about and eat over.
I was always a very skinny, small child. Getting me to eat anything was a chore. Then all of a sudden, food blossomed. I would have said I was a really fat kid. I don’t think that’s true now. I look back at photos and see that I was taller than everyone and developed earlier. I wasn’t as fat as I felt, but everyone else was skinnier, so I was known as the fat kid. Things just progressed like that—this maelstrom of dysfunction—but on the outside, everything looked fine. We had money, and we went on nice holidays.
I never had to try very hard at school. I was lucky. I could do very little and get good grades—until school got harder and I couldn’t anymore. When I was about 12, I started to get memories of the abuse. I didn’t know where to go. I started to drink alcohol at 13. I started taking soft drugs around that time, which escalated to hard drugs very quickly—14, 15. By 16, I had many stress-related illnesses. I got lupus, with sores all over my body and face. For someone already eating compulsively, it wasn’t good.
By 16, it became apparent I was going to fail. I had an attendance record at school of 28%. My mom went to parents’ evening, and they said I was good when I was there. She said she dropped me off every day—where was I going? I would get on public transport and go back home to eat, or I would be out taking drugs. Several times a week, I was on a comedown and couldn’t function.
Failing was not an option for me. So I left the first year of A levels at 16. I put down the drink and the drugs. I worked, and I ate. Our summer holidays are six weeks long. When I left the first year, I was a size 10, which would be a size 6 today. When I went back six weeks later, I was three stone heavier—45 pounds. I put on 45 pounds in six weeks because that’s how I eat. But I passed. I got good grades. I worked from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I can do anything I put my mind to; I just can’t sustain it. Give me a hard thing to do, and I will throw myself into it, but I cannot keep it up long enough to truly achieve anything.
That’s how my further and higher education went—lots of intense effort, doing really well, then crashing. I would spend two weeks in bed because I couldn’t do it anymore. The resentment was there.
Part of what I loved about drugs was that I didn’t think about food for those hours. I couldn’t have told you that at the time; it’s something I only see with hindsight. But that’s what I loved about it. Still, it didn’t work. Alcohol and drugs didn’t work as well as I thought they should. I thought I was such an addict that they should work, so I needed to try harder. I applied the same logic to everything: I needed to try harder, find the right combination, walk the narrow tightrope. If I got the wrong combination, the wheels fell off quickly and embarrassingly. It never occurred to me that the substances didn’t work—I thought I just had to try harder.
This pattern progressed. I couldn’t get out of my own way. When I was 16, my mom realized something was seriously wrong. She quit her career, went back to college, and became a therapist, which was amazing. I was in therapy on and off for the next ten years. It was useful in many ways, and the people really tried to help me. But I learned to talk a good game and keep people at a comfortable distance so they could never question what I was actually doing. I could talk them down. I was angry, frightened, and clever, so nothing changed.
I searched for answers everywhere. I tried so many strange things. I remember going to a therapist who claimed to talk to spirits, asking spirits in the room what was happening. I remember thinking, Have I really come to this? Yes, apparently, I would try anything. I noticed that when I was happier or more emotionally stable, my food was better—not controlled, but better. And I thought that must be the formula: figure out what’s wrong with me, fix it, and then I’ll be thin and happy. I followed that idea to the ends of the earth. In a way, it kept me going until FA, but it didn’t work.
I did a series of geographical moves. I went to university as far away as the schools would accept me. I never visited before moving there; the first time I saw the place was the day I arrived. After university, the same pattern: trying, failing, long stretches in bed. My mom would drive 300 miles, get me out of bed, take me food shopping, fill the fridge, and try to get me together. I’d say, Right, this time I’m going to do it. She’d leave, and I’d go back to bed. I just couldn’t do it.
After university, I got a job in a shop. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I only did it because I was too scared to put myself out there in the field I trained for. Eventually, I tried to push myself and applied for a job far away—400 miles is a big deal where we live. Again, I moved on a weekend without having been there before. I fell in with people who took my drug use to another level.
I worked the early shift and would leave around two in the afternoon. Walking home was the best part of a binge. I’d think, I’m so tired, I’ve been up since five, and now I’m going to get this food, go past this place, get into bed, and watch TV. It was going to work—that’s what I always wanted. I’d get everything, sit down, and it would be fine, but not what I wanted. It didn’t fill me up. I had no idea that what I wanted had to do with my soul and spirit. That would have sounded ridiculous to me then, but that’s what I was missing.
So I thought I must be eating the wrong things. Maybe savory foods, maybe sweet foods. I’d try combinations, baffled but with no other way to cope. I’d try the next day again with different foods to see if they “worked.”
It became a routine. We’d go out drinking on Friday. On Saturday, more drinking and lots of drugs. Then on Sunday morning, I needed alcohol to deal with the comedown from the drugs. Then, food to deal with the hangover. Then food to deal with the emotional crash on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Wednesday and Thursday were always the worst. Then it was Friday again, so who cared? It was a merry-go-round I couldn’t step off. I couldn’t imagine another way.
Therapy stirred things up, but I never got vulnerable. I’d talk from my head, never from my heart. I would leave therapy and go straight to the shop across the road, buy loads of food, go home, and stuff it all down until the next session. Nothing changed.
I was working as a journalist when our country won the Rugby World Cup. Trust an addict to compare my insides to other people’s outsides. I watched them get their medals and thought, I will never know what that happiness feels like.
I had already had one suicide attempt. I tried to run my car off the motorway. It was lashing with rain. I had no seatbelt on. I was driving at about 120 miles an hour, weaving through heavy traffic on the circular motorway around London. The last thing I remember was being in the fast lane. The next thing I remember, I was on the hard shoulder with my phone in my hand, talking to my mom. I told her she had to come get me. She said she was going to call the police. I told her that if she did, she would never see me again. She asked where I was. I didn’t know. They would have to find me. And they did.
They took me home, and I made them stop at a fast-food place because I knew I couldn’t get through it without food. They asked what we were going to do next. I said I needed to go somewhere. For years, I thought that because I said those words, I had chosen to go into treatment.
I thought I was in treatment to learn how to eat, drink, and take drugs like a normal person. I believed that the whole time. I remember my therapist’s face when I said, “I had some sugar product last night that I found under the sofa in a tin, and I felt different afterward.” She said, “You’re home,” but I didn’t understand what she meant.
Last weekend, they sent me home to acclimatize before coming back. I went out for dinner and had no pudding, half my main course, and only one glass of red wine. I thought I was winning. I thought that was a good sign. I had no idea.
They sent me to AA meetings, and I sat in the back reading magazines. Everyone seemed old. I wasn’t interested. They sent me to a different food program, and I loved that one. Being in a room where people talked about what I was doing with food was something I had never experienced. I tried really hard, and things were better than they had been in a long time, but I wasn’t getting better. Not really.
By then, my addictive behavior had caught up with me. I had been fired for being rude, abrupt, and causing a bad atmosphere in the newsroom—as if I wasn’t spending half my time crying in the bathroom. I was having multiple nosebleeds a day, arriving late, and stopping at the shop to get lunch and all my binge foods. The shop was only a couple of minutes from the office, so I had to eat everything before going back. I remember cramming food into my face in the stairwell, aware that I’d been gone too long, praying nobody would come through the doors. Then I’d walk in pretending everything was fine. I couldn’t sustain it. I needed so much food and everything else just to maintain the illusion that I was okay.
I was in the treatment center, fired from my job, unable to pay rent, so I lost my flat. I went back to my parents’ home, in one of the few cities that had FA meetings. I still hadn’t found FA yet; I was trying the other food fellowship.
I went on holiday with a group of people—some I’d known forever, some I’d never met. For the first time, I felt comfortable in my own skin. I was trying not to have added sugar or certain flours. I was texting someone my food. It was loose, but it was something.
On the first day, I said, “No, I’ll just have fruit for breakfast.” On the second day, I added more food. On the third day, I dropped all the rules entirely. The speed of the change shocked me. It was like someone switched off a light. That day, I changed my clothes five times because I was convinced the clothes were the problem. I picked arguments with everyone. By five the next morning, I was shivering as I bought family packs of food from various shops.
I was back in the treatment center as a day patient and told them I didn’t know what to do. The only place left for me was back on the motorway. I had run out of resources. One therapist broke her anonymity and told me she was in FA. She took me to a meeting. It was a big meeting, and I remember being welcomed by almost everyone there. They made me feel so welcome.
The strange thing was that they looked like people who had never had a problem with food. I couldn’t relate. I heard what they were saying, but I was blinded by how well they looked. I thought they couldn’t possibly understand me—because I was special and different. But I went home and told my parents. I felt something pulling me from deep inside that said I had to do this, even while the rest of me said I couldn’t.
I got a sponsor that night and started. That was when I began to learn I was actually a food addict. I’d always had this belief that I could turn it on or off. In my teens, I had periods of under-eating when I could go a long time without food. I assumed that resolve would return someday. That’s what I was waiting for. It didn’t.
Early recovery was hard. It felt like someone had taken my skin off. I was full of unresolved issues and rage. I had to start dealing with them. The healing in this program is powerful and gentle. I remember doing my first study of the steps in an AWOL, writing my Step Four, and calling my sponsor in shock, saying, “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.”
Therapy had fed the addict in me. I could sit around thinking about why everything happened, focusing on all the terrible things done to me, without changing anything. But people in FA weren’t interested in that. I’d say, “I have real problems,” and they’d ask if I’d done my quiet time or made my calls. And it worked. I started to change. I started doing things differently.
It began with honesty around my food. I ate what I said I would eat. I stopped breaking promises to myself. That gave me integrity. It rippled outward. I had been unemployed and unemployable for about 18 months, but eventually I went back to work. I started in the role I used to have as work experience. I thought, I’m very good at my job, why am I doing this? But I showed up. I learned how to be an employee. I learned to go to work on time, make cups of tea for others, do what was asked, take criticism, and go home. I had never done any of that before.
I learned how to be a friend. My mom and I worked hard on our relationship. I worked on my relationship with my dad in a different way. He never got into recovery and died suddenly, but before he died, I got the chance to make peace with him. My sponsor told me it was an opportunity to say thank you—thank you for what?
He’s never given me a birthday present or a Christmas present. But we kept talking, and I eventually realized he was the most resourceful addict I ever met. I inherited some of that, and it helped keep me alive. It was also helpful in my job. I was known as someone who got things done. We also had the same hands, so I was able to go to him and say this.
He had a stroke and was completely paralyzed in the hospital. He could sense I was about to say something emotional when I sat down, and he was trying to get away as far as a paralyzed person could. I said thank you and shared everything I needed to say. We left it at that.
When I went back the next day, I realized I say these things for myself—for my own sense of self-respect and self-esteem. I grow from that. When I returned, he said, “We do have the same hands.” Oh, you were listening. That was cool.
Then a nurse walked in, and he lit up from the inside. I had this moment where I understood that whenever a woman walked into the room, I would cease to exist for him. That had nothing to do with me. For my whole life, I thought it was about me and that I was lacking. It really wasn’t.
Grief wasn’t simple, but now I have a program that helps me resolve all those unresolved things. I spent my whole life drowning in them, and it’s not like that today. I feel solid and robust in myself, with a deep sense of okay.
About ten years ago, I got Lyme disease. I’ve been pretty well for the last two years, much better than before, but for eight years starting in 2010, I was bedbound most of the time. Somehow during that time, I got married and had two kids. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a program, even if you’re just doing ten things for ten minutes a day—just the next right thing, over and over.
Lyme disease affects every system in your body, so everyone has different symptoms. The medical community can’t agree it even exists, let alone what to do about it. So you’re left with a blank piece of paper. It’s the next right thing—again and again.
I’ve had to learn to embrace this because I can feel equally awful physically on two different days. One day, I’ll think, great, I’ll go to bed with a rubbish book and be fine. The next day, I’ll think I don’t want this, I’m letting everyone down, I can’t get to my meeting, and then panic that it means I’ll end up in a binge. But it’s not any of those things. I put one foot in front of the other—usually toward my bedroom. I make calls, I do what I can, and I just do the next right thing. If I really get into the program, I am okay.
While I haven’t enjoyed the last ten years in that respect, I’ve also had amazing things in my life, and the illness hasn’t defined me. That’s because of this program. We learn how to show up daily and do difficult things. There is absolutely no way I could do any of this alone.
I’m a stay-at-home mum, which I don’t always like, but I feel privileged. If I were well, I’d be out working—it seems much easier. I often think other people have it easier than I do. But it’s amazing that I get to show up for something I sometimes struggle with every day. My kids are great, but they’re really annoying, and I am easily annoyed. The program helps me be a little less easily annoyed. And when I am frequently annoyed, I get to say I’m sorry. I say sorry a lot, and that is wonderful.
This program hasn’t given me my life back because I never had one before. It has taught me how to exist in a safe world. I used to feel like the world was unsafe, and I don’t feel that way anymore. Thank you.