Someone on TV slagged-off Kate Moss recently for saying "Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels". Apparently it was irresponsible to say such a thing. I actually think it's a fantastic quote to put on my fridge. It's going to be my new Mantra.
Clearly the years of dieting and snorting coke have addled her brain, because I've been skinny and it did not feel as good as dark chocolate lemon drizzle cake tastes.
That's just an excuse.
An alcoholic still needs to drink - they just can't drink anything with alcohol in it.
Someone overweight still needs to eat - they just can't eat anything with shit in it.
True, up to a point, but the complex bit is the reasons behind the harmful behaviours. What makes someone risk damaging their health, their relationships and their whole lives by drinking so much it's harmful, or eating so much it's harmful? Some substances have physically addictive properties so that once you've had one dose/shot/bottle/smoke/whatever your body feels bad without it and wants more to remove the bad and bring back the good. That's what nicotine does - smoking doesn't actually make people feel relaxed. Nicotine's a stimulant. Smoking relieves the unpleasant nicotine craving, and because the craving is gone, the person feels better, and learns to associate the intake of nicotine with feeling better, so when they feel bad (because of the nicotine craving causing tension and anxiety) they have another fag.
Food doesn't do that. Over-eaters, of which I am one, often have an emotional compulsion to eat. Something is hurting them or upsetting them or worrying them, and it might be so far inside they don't even realise it, and that prompts them to seek comfort by eating. I'm learning to be better at identifying
why I'm hitting the chocolate, so that I can consciously choose to deal with the feelings another way. And one of the things I've worked on with the Shrinking Thinking people is doing some weird visualisation stuff so that now cheap chocolate - Cadbury, all the usual newsagents' chocolate, and the chocolate on cinema chocolate raisins (which I could previously eat by the bucketload) - now tastes disgusting to me. It's like eating sweet brown fat. So if there's chocolate in the office, I don't eat it all because I don't like it any more. If there are mars bar icecreams in the fridge, I won't eat the whole box in one night because I don't particularly like them now. I still love good dark chocolate from Hotel Chocolat and Cocoa Black and similar, but I can't walk into a newsagent on my way to the bus stop and buy that. And when I do have some, I can make it last now rather than eating the whole lot in 90 minutes and then wanting more. There are still occasions when something's bothering me and I want to eat to comfort myself, but I'm getting better at using the techniques they've taught me to reduce those feelings.
Never seemed to stop you contributing to it.
That was uncalled for.
Is there one universal nature of addiction, then?
All addicts experience addiction in exactly the same way?
Well I never...
You're right, there isn't and they don't.
Different people become addicted to their substance of choice in different ways and for different reasons, and they need different types of support to help them quit. Some people once they've reached a certain state of mind can just go cold turkey and never use that substance again. Other people need a lot of help to do that, and for some people it might be about returning to normal social/life-supporting use of a substance rather than stopping using it altogether.
I don't know if it is genetic or not. I know I can very easily get obsessed or drawn into things. I've tried gambling with cards once in a casino - I was 18, my dad (who enjoyed gambling) was with me. He gave me a stake to have a go with, I went through that, bought a load more chips and blew all of it. Before I ran out of chips I'd more than trebled my original stake. Could have walked away from the table with equiv to a week's wages. Afterwards, Dad asked me what I thought of it and I told him it was fun but far too addictive and I didn't think I'd play cards for money again. He was really relieved because he could see I was almost instantly addicted. Me too, it was quite terrifying.
The thought of playing cards for money scares me to this day.
Yeah, I do very little gambling for money other than a Euromillions ticket and a punt on the Grand National or something big like the Olympics. Even things like the penny falls at the seaside (although they're 10p falls now, bloody hell) suck me in and I can easily stand there all day and feed money into things. So I limit myself to a couple of quid and then leave. I've never been in a casino and I have no interest in going - my brother's a croupier and he's made it pretty clear how poor the odds are!
I think there is such a thing as an addictive personality, a genetic predisposition towards addiction which underlies most of the stories on here. The fact that this exists and the way we all interpret addiction according to our own understanding makes for a huge problem when trying to comprehend another individual somewhere else on the spectrum. In my view there are also two components to the issue: addiction and won't power, although they cross over in some ways, they are distinct. Let me try to explain.
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So, in addiction the addict has a different relationship with the object of the addiction from the non-addict, and you can never actually define an addict simply by observing their behaviour. So, while the observer would have looked at me smoking and said I was an addict, I wasn't. And the proof I wasn't was my ability to stop in the way I did. I suspect that the addictive personality actually needs somewhere to hang that desire, the trick is to replace harmful addictions with harmless ones.
One of the things we've been talking about at Shrinking Thinking is "towards goals" and "away goals." It's much easier to stay motivated if your goal is a towards goal than an away goal. Towards goals are the things where as you progress along whatever your activity to reach your goal is, you get closer to your goal rather than further away from it. So say if your goal was about, I dunno, getting stronger so you can lift more weights, it's easier to stay motivated if your goal is "I want to be strong enough to lift Andy Gates over my head 5 times a minute" rather than "I don't want to be weak." It's easier to stay motivated if your goal is "I want to be under 11 stone" than "I don't want to be fat." "I want to be a non-smoker" is easier than "I don't want to be a smoker." Because if your goal is "I don't want to be fat" the thinner you get, the further away being fat is and you lose motivation, but if your goal is "I want to be thin" then the thinner you get, the nearer your goal is so you keep motivated. I'm not explaining that very well, but I know what I mean.
My goals are not "to lose weight" or "to be not fat" - they're to get to a certain weight by the end of this year, to get to between 10.5 and 11 stone by the end of next year (I'm not going any lower than 10 stone because when I do, my hip and shoulder bones get too sticky out and it hurts me to lie down), to keep exercising regularly, and to stay in control of my eating and make good choices about what and how I eat, and not eat because of emotions. They're a mixture of towards and away really, but they need to be mostly towards to really be achievable.
So - to sum up. People are different, their lives and experiences are different, what works for one might not work for another, and it would be great if we could all respect that and be nice to each other.
