Food Addiction

Food, eating, alcohol, “street drugs,” gambling, shopping, internet, video gaming, cigarettes, sex, pornography… all of these and more can be addictive. People can be addicted to substances and/or behaviors. Addiction, like obesity, is a whole person disease. Both diseases negatively affect every area of a person’s life.

Addiction is, in my mind, a “disease of disaster.” People rarely seem to seek treatment for an addiction unless there is a disaster: someone loses a job, gets a DUI, has a spouse threaten to leave if they don’t get help, has a spouse actually leave and maybe take the kids, gets picked up for indecent exposure or solicitation, gets thrown into jail for public intoxication, or experiences something much worse involving injury or death. When a disaster of some sort happens a person is more likely to seek help for an addiction. 

People are reluctant to recognize when they have an addiction. After all, we typically see the “worst of the worst” cases on reality shows. The people on those programs are worse off than we are (they drink more, spend more, gamble more, snort more, sleep with more people, work more hours, eat much, much more, etc.) … and so we reason, “If THAT PERSON is an addict, surely I’m not! My situation isn’t nearly as bad as theirs!”

A LOT of people are functional addicts. They go to work every day, take the kids to daycare and remember to pick them up. They perform surgeries, represent you in court, deliver your mail, fix your plumbing and teach your children. Functional addicts need help, too, as do their families. Addiction is a family disease that requires family recovery.

Here’s a practical definition of addiction:

If you know something is causing a problem in your life: relationship issues (with spouse, kids, parents, etc.), work problems, health problems, legal problems, AND you want to stop the problematic substance/behavior (alcohol, cocaine, food – usually sugar and/or other carbs — shopping, online shopping or gaming or social networking, exercise, online pornography or other sexually-related behaviors, gambling, etc.) AND you crave it (think about it or physiologically crave it)… BUT YOU CANNOT STOP, it’s most likely an addiction.

The good news is, there is HOPE and there is HELP!

Contact me and let’s talk about your situation. 

Remember, there’s no shame in having a problem. There’s shame in doing nothing about it.