 |
|
|
|
Original image by Jacqueline Ramseyer. Photo illustration by S.R. Woehrmann
|
One Last Bite
For some residents on the verge of breakdown, help is just around the corner
Photographs by JACQUELINE RAMSEYER
Story by SCOTT STEINBERG
'When I get up in the morning, I get down on my knees and call God," Charlie said. "I'm praying to this God, asking him to keep me abstinent for the day, to keep me away from the food."
Charlie is a thin, good-looking man with an accent that does not betray his East Coast roots. He's been calling this God for six years of abstinence during his immutable fight against compulsive overeating. He's one of a legion of Americans who are following the 12-step program of Overeaters Anonymous to treat their addiction.
"When I was into food, I didn't care about anything," Charlie said. "I used to have this fantasy of picturing my parents (who are living) in their coffins. It was so bad for me in the end, my wife had to hide food from me. I would remember some food I had dropped at work, and I would go back and eat it."
And the addiction, of course, is equal opportunity.
"We had a saying in AA," Charlie said. "Yale or jail, it don't matter. They're just degrees. Degrees only count on thermometers, and we know where the end of that stick goes."
There are a 1,001 diets to seize upon--Jenny Craig, the all-cabbage diet, Mama Jean's no greens diet, the Beverly Hills diet. There are several surgical procedures--stomach stapling, intestinal bypass, gastric bypass, stomach balloons ... none of which tap the cerebral part of the addiction.
The idea is you have to fix your mind too, Charlie said. He started the 12 steps of OA not merely to lose weight but also to regain his sanity. "I only weighed 190 lbs. when I first started. But everything in my head weighed 1,000 lbs."
Overeater's Anonymous was fashioned after the Alcoholics Anonymous program. There are 12 steps and 12 traditions, and those comprise what's known as The Big Book. Step One says, "We've admitted we were powerless over compulsive overeating--that our lives had become unmanageable."
Step Two says, "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." The addict then finds that power.
Veterans of the programs suggest starting out with a doorknob.
Debbie chose an oak tree. It came to her during meditation. It was quite a surprise, but it was a specific tree she recalled from her childhood, a tree with roots of steel off in the Palo Alto Hills.
"I will be a food addict until the day I die," she said. "My daily reprieve is based on my spiritual condition. I must stay in contact with that higher Power."
Today her higher Power is what one might call the traditional Christian God, although she's by no means pious. She can be caught saying things like "food Nazi" and "Get off the cross. We need the wood."
She has a charming face; she's slim, almost diminutive, and she's been abstinent for five and a half years.
"It made no sense," she said. "I felt fat so I would eat. But now there's life beyond pumpkin pie. There's life beyond pasta. I used food the same reason I used drugs and alcohol. I thought there was something wrong with me. Food numbed me."
Addicts call it "food fog." They seem to have a difficult time defining that experience.
"Think of Thanksgiving," Debbie said. "You're full, lethargic, unbuttoning your pants. Food zoned me out.
"At 90 Day meetings I saw all these happy people. They were coherent. They weren't in a food fog. It's not just about the food. If it were, it would be a diet club. This is a way of life that I would not trade for anything."
She continued, "I have to 'walk the beast,'" (that is eat three meals), "but in-between eating, I have to live my life."
There's a chapter of 90 Day that meets in Cupertino at the Union Church five times per week. 90 Day is a compulsive overeating movement that splintered from OA. In it newcomers choose a sponsor. A sponsor is someone who has been abstinent for three months.
That sponsor chooses a food plan for the newcomer. No sugar, no flour, weigh and measure three meals a day, no more, no less.
Although addicts remain guarded about their specific food plans, they all follow the same basic principles. Each and every meal gets put on a scale before being eaten. The plan can change week to week, except for those basic principles. No flour. No sugar. Weigh and measure.
90 Day gets the name from the way meetings are held. Only those who have been abstinent for 90 days can speak. But the commitment is full-time, for a lifetime. If an addict has been in 90 day for 10 years, and they binge one Friday night, they are not supposed to speak at the meeting the next morning.
"I've been in meetings where people have binged that day," Debbie said. "I don't want to hear it. It's like being in AA and letting the guy talk who just came back from the bar.
"It's OK though. They have to ask themselves, 'Why did I pick up the bite?' You can see it coming. They're not making their telephone calls. They're obsessing. They're not calm. Food is the last thing. They've lost their serenity. They start over. Today's day one and we go from there...."
Don is abstinent. But he is on the verge of a binge. He knows it, and the moment of absolute collapse is only a matter of time. Being unemployed doesn't help matters.
He says he has a lot of time on his hands. He said the refrigerator is kind of speaking to him. Lately he feels like less of a man, without a job. He's been abstinent long enough to speak at meetings. His sponsor said Don should attend three meetings per day. But he's not making the meetings. The distance between his abstinence and him digging in dumpsters is too close for comfort.
Hannah has been abstinent for years, but she too has received quite a scare of late. She was meditating a few days ago, reaching towards her higher Power. She asked her higher Power, "Where were you when I was young in an abusive household?"
The thought came from nowhere. "I didn't mean to think it," she said. Now Hannah questions the power of her higher Power. And for these addicts, that's literally all they have between them and them at their worst.
And one woman sat in the back row at a recent meeting, holding a teddy bear. She was a svelte woman, and she had clearly binged recently. She told her sponsor she couldn't talk "about the food. It was too emotional." She passed a note forward and left early.
Every day, these addicts are on the verge of a binge. And in a country where obesity will soon rival smoking as the leading cause of preventable death and disease, they can only laugh. They already have the disease.
What is the cure?
|
|
|
|
Cupertino, California Since 1947
