If you ask anyone who has an addiction what led them to relapse, there could be one of a thousand different answers. I am someone who has experienced relapse in my journey of recovery. I wish I didn't have to learn lessons in quite such a painful fashion, but sometimes it takes what it takes. After being in OA for 2 1/2 to 3 years I had lost 189lbs and was slowly beginning to approach a more normal body weight. I remember when I weighed in and the scale registered a number that started with the number 2. I believe there was a subconscious decision that I made at that point that I wasn't going to lose weight, and in fact I started putting weight back on. I moved from the first apartment that I was in to an apartment that was closer to where my social life, but it also enabled me to make choices that did not serve my health of continued weight loss. My weight started slowly creeping up and I put on a happy face and was doing my utmost to make people feel like I was "fine". In the midst of no longer making progress in my physical recovery I had taken on two substantial service positions within my recovery community. My need to people please and do for others left me in a position where I was unable to be honest with myself about what was necessary to place my recovery first in my own life. LET ME BE VERY CLEAR: I believe with every fibre of my being that the 12 Step recovery process WORKS. The trouble that I got into was that I stopped doing the things that brought me success in recovery in the first place. My relapse in recovery is NOT the result of a failure of the program, it was my failure to work the program.
As I continued to work at the health care agency I knew that I needed to move out of the department that I had started working in. I spent concerted time working for a promotion and finally was offered the position of being a Customer Service Supervisor of a small call center team. It was a big sign of external support for me that I needed at the time, but in retrospect I think that the stress of the new position was a trigger for even more uncontrolled eating. I made the approval of people I worked for more important than my physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Part of the challenge was that my direct manager worked in Southern California while I worked in Sacramento. It left me feeling like I was sort of hanging out on a limb in this new position. As I learned at a training seminar for new supervisors, being good at what you do, DOES NOT make you good at supervising people who are doing what you used to be good at. While I don't blame ANYONE for my choice to pick up food and behaviors that I had put down, I realize that I was not set up for success. As my stress and anxiety level grew, it just became easier to make poor food choices, go to fewer recovery meetings because I was "tired" after a long day or work , and generally let go of everything that had gotten me to where I was. Anyone who has worked in a call center will attest that the wind blowing from the east is a good enough reason for a pot luck, and as I began to participate in those pot lucks, it was one of the final nails in the coffin of my progress.
As I continued to put on weight I began to have more substantial consequences due to my weight. I had to start using a cane because of the inflammation in my knees that was creating balance issues. I wasn't able to walk effectively with my left hip being do degenerated and my knees had started to exhibited inflammation and loss of mobility. I began to have incidences where my balance would fail and I would fall down. Because of my weight and my joint problems I was unable to get up myself. It was absolutely MORTIFYING to not be able to get myself up after falling. It would take calling the fire department to help me get up. Being 30 years old and having that happen was such a shaming experience if I could have crawled in a whole and died I would have gratefully done that.
As my disease became more and more encompassing, my depression grew again. I couldn't accurately voice my shame and anguish about being in relapse, to the people in the program who had become so important and vital to my life, and whom I had grown to love so much. There is nothing worse that feeling shame and being unable to be honest about what was going on. I wanted SO BADLY to feel like I had my "S%*T" together. I wish even today I could surgically remove my ego from my mind and body. As far as I can tell, the only purpose it serves is image management and making me feel "separate from". But that may change over time.
In my next post I will share about my decision to seek inpatient treatment for my eating disorder and what I experienced during that time.
No comments:
Post a Comment