Sunday November 27, 2005

Like many people in today’s society, I have unconciously turned to chocolate and some other foods when stressed, depressed, frustrated, feeling low in self esteem, etc.

I’ve avoided candy or chocolate of any kind since the surgery until this week. I wanted to see what would happen. I was concerned about either scenario: A) I could dump and have a horrible last memory of chocolate, or B) I could handle it fine and then still be able to use it as a crutch.

Well neither extreme really happened. I did dump but I wasn’t violently ill and the chocolate didn’t taste bad or anything. I had two squares then the next night I had two more squares. After eating those last two squares, I felt two things. First it was icky…after all, I’m a GBS patient who just ate chocolate. What did I expect?

The next feeling I had was “who cares?” I didn’t need the chocolate to fake feeling better. It did nothing to assuage my feelings of self doubt or anything else. I set the chocolate bar down next to my keyboard and thought well I might try the last bit later (I still hate to waste food but I’m getting better at it, LOL). It’s still there.

I know this may sound odd, but I think I’m going to keep it there because right now, it has emotional significance. After all, it is what to me is my last chocolate bar. But besides that, have you ever seen on TV or whatnot how some alcoholics will leave their last, half drank bottle of alcohol on the table so they can be reminded of how far they’ve come? That’s how this feels to me. I can see that wrapper with chocolate in it and it reminds me of how I coped before. Better yet, it tells me that I don’t need it anymore.

Granted, the mild dumping helps my decision but to be honest, chocolate has always made me feel weird because of what it would do to my blood sugar. But instead of craving something that I know will make me feel worse, I can just leave it alone.

I know I’m going to falter and still eat crap like that even though I know it will make me feel bad. That’s normal. That’s human. Most addicts get overcome by their addiction during recovery at some point, right? But I’m now determined to pull myself out of that need for the stuff.

I will probably get rid of the chocolate sometime but that will be entirely up to me to decide when and if that happens. For now, it represents my slowly changing life where I am in control, not my food.

Jamie