I used substances to escape from my life from an early age.  I grew up with alot of medical problems.  I had to wear a body brace for almost 5 years.  I learned in that time to soothe myself with food.  I hated myself so much,  I hated my body and I was trapped in all my medical problems and the chronic pain.  As I grew up, I started doing drugs— first the morphine and pain killers fromthe doctors and very soon afterward street equivalents.  I chose the most fucked up drug addict men to make my own addictions look less intense.  I became addicted to really bad relationships.  I lived for them and the more they hurt me, the more I loved them.  Junkies really don’t know how to love each other but we are so needy.  So terrified.  I remember loving not being hungry and throwing up.  I lost weight and was thin and gross and angry and thin.  For that time the food addiction seemed to be masked.  But when i stopped the drugs, cigarettes, and bad relationships, the food issues really kicked in.  In some ways, kicking drugs was the easy part.  And by easy I mean a living hell—- but the other addictions (overworking, over eating, over over over) were more socially acceptable and took longer to bottom out on.    

When i became a mother, I knew I would never be a junkie again.  But I didn’t know it would take me so much longer to give up my other addictions.  The food got so much worse and then anorexia.  back and forth, back and forth.  eating and starving.  As a single mother, I was so overwhelmed by all the things i had to do in a day.  I felt totally maxed out all the time.  to do lists ruled my life and i just ate all the time.  I also developed a ton of social anxiety and ate to help with that.  I also ate to deal with the chronic nerve and orthopedic pain that I had from my childhood.  The pain would get bad at night and I would eat all night.  I was trapped…until 45 days ago when I found recovery.