one.hundred.forty.seven

i have acquired an understanding of addiction over the past few years. through my health problems, which affected my ability to eat, i have grown an incredible amount of compassion for people we label as 'addicts'.

on days when i couldn't eat i could think of nothing else but eating. if i tried to eat and couldn't keep it down then there were days i would get trapped into a cycle of eating and throwing up. some days it was very hard to stop. the worst thing was that it wasn't the food i wanted, it wasn't the food i was determined to eat. it was that the food began to represent my pain. my determination was really a desire to conquer my health problem, and at that time i was trying to achieve that through food, because that was how my health issues had manifested. somebody suggested i was bulimic. i wasn't. but i appreciated how thin the line was, no pun intended.

last year i read an incredible article by adam phillips entitled insatiable creatures.

"...our excessive behaviour shows us how obscure we are to ourselves or how we obscure ourselves; how our frustrations, odd as this may seem, are excessively difficult to locate, to formulate. Wherever and whenever we are excessive in our lives it is the sign of an as yet unknown deprivation. Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves."

whether through a bottle, a pill, a needle, sex, food or cutting; those who display excessive behaviour are in search of something. it is something these things can never satisfy. they are trying to catch a ride to freedom in a vehicle that can not take them there. i feel nothing but compassion for people battling addiction. we all display addictive behaviour and traits to some extent. we are no different to 'addicts', we are just resting in a different place on the continuum.

do you remember city high?

 

toby, claudette & robby

a couple of days ago, robby was featured on the a&e television series intervention. he has been an alcoholic for 10 years. he is a man with a big heart, that has suffered some big breaks. by the end of the show i was crying like a baby. this was such powerful television. i highly recommend you set 40 mins aside to watch it. if you are in the US then you can watch the full episode on the a&e website. if not, then you can watch it here.

i felt so thankful after watching this. the universe somehow managed to keep me on the right side of love. tonight i'll be saying a prayer for those one step away from that line and much less fortunate than me.