May 14, 2002

• SealKitty–I know that you are right about the addictions.  Although I never got the tobacco habit or became addicted to heroin or cocaine, I’ve kicked amphetamines and barbiturates, and worked through sex addiction.  I’ve kicked the caffeine habit four or five times, stayed off alcohol for decades at a time, and I’ve even managed to stay on my highly restrictive diet for two whole months one time before yielding to cravings.

  
  

   oOMisfitOo–Do, please, let me know if you find in those dusty, cobwebbed tomes any hints to why I’m so ambivalent right now.  Meanwhile, I’m preparing to hop on the upcoming Mercury retrograde to go within and get acquainted with myself.

  
  

  On the one hand–

  
  

  I read and researched and tried things out for years, seeking the healthiest diet for me.  I learned to do kinesiology muscle testing to determine my body’s needs and detect those things it cannot tolerate. 

  
  

  The first days on that diet, I lived on that “pink cloud” of euphoria alcoholics experience at the start of recovery.  My appetite disappeared, and I was careful to eat anyway, to keep my blood sugar stable.

  
  

  Within a week, my sense of smell had come back; I could get up and walk around without becoming dizzy and falling down.  When my appetite returned during the second week, I continued to eat only approved foods in proper portions.  For once in my life, I could depend on my appetite to tell me when I was hungry.

  
  

  And on the other–

  
  

  From the day the appetite returned, the forbidden foods kept by the rest of my family tempted me.  Ads in print, TV commercials, and anything red and white even remotely resembling a Coca-Cola can, made me hang onto control with white knuckles.

  
  

  Playing Final Fantasy VIII (another addiction at the time–now I’ve moved on to X and fallen in love with Auron) a little tune accompanying the card game grew a set of lyrics.  In my mind I heard, “pizza, pizza, gotta have a pizza,” over and over.

  
  

  From about the third week, all the way to my lapse at the end of the second month, there was no euphoria for me.  Dysphoria-R-Us!  I dared not smoke any weed for fear of the munchies.  I was hateful to my family when they wanted me to cook for them the foods they love.  This is especially hard for me because a lot of the applause and approval I’ve gotten in my life has been for my excellent cooking and baking skills.  I win competitions with them. 

  
  

  The kid and the old fart were hateful to me if I offered to share my foods with them.  Bear in mind that this diet allows no sugar, honey, stevia, or artificial sweetener; no grains such as rice, wheat, corn, or oat.  No milk or cheese except that from a goat.  No red meat and only two small portions of poultry, three of fish and three eggs a week.  It’s tailored to my needs, and I have many allergies and sensitivities that limit even the varieties of fruit and vegies I can have:  no nightshade-family things, for example (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers), and no artichokes, avocadoes, oranges, apples….  This list goes on and on.

  
  

  I’ll cut to the chase:  I love food.  After I “cured” the sex addiction and became too disabled by fibromyalgia to dance, eating had become the only one of my three favorite activities left to me.  I began asking myself if life without pizza was worth living.  I still don’t have an answer to that one.

  
  

   

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