Book Review: The Disease of More: One Woman’s 25-Year Recovery from Alcohol and Food Addiction

Eleanor story, The Disease of More: One Woman’s 25-Year Recovery from Alcohol and Food Addiction provides a testimony to the excesses available in American society, how far a person can push those excesses and yet be redeemed to have a full and affluent life.

Eleanor begins with her past, her family’s history in the Hispanic community. She documents her father’s drink problem. In spite of not wanting to live like her parents, she found herself imitating the less desirable traits her father exhibited. Her personal story includes child-rape-molestation and incest that influenced many of her choices.

Somehow she was able to graduate college and applied for college scholarships which were available to her. She moved across the country to attend school and get away from her problems, but her problems continued as did her drinking and eating.

Eleanor came to the realization that she wasn’t going to finish school unless she got her drinking under control. She started going to AA meetings and found continuous sobriety helpful in her academic and personal life.

Once a lawyer, she obtained a fabulous job in the Bay Area, met her husband and began a great life. Still she was eating at an amazing pace. She found after many years of trying to control her weight. She found that she created issues with her family to cover her over-eating. She found that many similar issues she had with drinking were also applicable to her eating. The only difference being that total abstinence isn’t possible with food. One must eat.

Eleanor found her salvation in a 12-step program for food which helps her remain accountable for her calories. She lost the weight she wanted and now lives a pleasant life with her husband and children.

Eleanor’s story is a contemporary version of the stories found in 12-step books and literature. It shows that if we or a loved one has a problem, there is help available to get whatever the problem, alcohol or food, under control and move on to a full and happy life.

Resources:

Alcoholics Anonymous http://www.aa.org

Food Addict Anonymous http://www.foodaddictsanonymous.org/

Alanon For Family and Friends http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/

Happy Birthday Sue, wherever you are...

It is funny how the mind works sometimes… what sticks, what doesn’t. Today, is one of my childhood friend’s birthday. I haven’t seen her in years nor even heard about her, and yes, I’ve tried Facebook but she’s not online or doesn’t use her birth name.

At the silliest times we were together, at the saddest times we were together. We were in junior high school, we liked the same band and from there on we were great friends.

The 1970s in Los Angeles was a crazy time in history. There are few publications or movies that come close to the craziness that was everyday life then, there.

Surrounded by the counter-culture of the boomer generation, were we the next large group to come on the scene. In number, we were larger than the baby-boom, called originally the Second Boom, then Generation X. There were schools built to hold us, then closed as we finished the grade. The building budgets boomed. The child-focused advertisements expanded.

Pushed to the ultimate in competition, we were expected to exceed or self-destruct. All the access to unquestionably un-reasonability was at our fingertips, if not in the laboratory than certainly on the street corner. Encouraged extremism was status quo giving societal birth to everything skewed: violence personified in serial killers to reactionary fanaticism and everything excessive in between. This was the generation of speed metal and surf-bums.

In the middle of the pandemonium found in junior high school, there were those friends that understood the tornado of chaos in which we lived. And there was Sue.

I don’t think I ever laughed as hard in my youth as I laughed with her over the silliest little things. I can't ever forget the first time I drove on the freeway and the particularly ear-piercing scream that came from the passenger seat when I took the curve for the first time. I remember when she showed me how her step-dad wanted the carpet vacuumed in two different directions and that the shag had to all end up leaning the same way or she’d have to vacuum again. I recall hanging upside down on the elementary jungle gym bars & laughing so hard we drooled. I'll always appreciate the emotional refuge of sleep-overs that didn’t include much sleep. And of course, I’ll never forget how badly I hurt her feelings believing my then-husband’s story over hers. After that, our friendship just wasn’t the same. We drifted further apart but I only ever wished her well and nearly immediately wished that I had chosen differently.

It occurred to me today that it’s been more than twenty years since we spoke and that every year, on January 31st, I say out loud, “Happy Birthday Sue, wherever you are.”

Too Young to be a Hippie

Is it a message being sent when you're told more than by one? Or just dumb gone out of control?

Sticks & Stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

This saying is what those of us who suffered unmerciful teasing developed into a shield creating the mental image of water flowing off a duck's back. It was the mantra of the outcasts. It was the seed to attitudes and perceptions that become core beliefs about self, about peers, about authority, about community and about society.

Recently, and by more than one person I've been called a hippie.

The first time I just blew it off. I'm not old enough to be a hippie. I was born and was a child in the 1960s. My coming of age story is 1980. So we're not talking, even close, to being a hippie.

My older cousins were the right age had they taken the drunken, druggy way of beach bum life, they could be called hippies. But they didn't. I did see hippies in the community, they were always dirty. That's my memory of hippie.

Since I am none of the hippie things, not a bum, not a drunk, I'm baffled by the comment.

But it's happen again. I was told "You're a hippie." So I asked, what do you mean by that? The woman giggled, obviously embarassed and walked away.

So I thought, is the deodorant not working today? I went to a friend and said, "Sniff me."

"What?"

"Just sniff me, do I stink?"

"No, you smell like Gardenias."

"That's the South of France soap I'm using."

"Why did I just sniff you?"

"Because, **** just called me a hippie"

"She, what?"

"Called me a hippie"

"Why did she say that?"

"I don't know. I asked her. She giggled, blushed and walked away."

"Well, that's weird."

"That's good. I thought maybe my deodorant had failed me."

>laugh<

Still I'm puzzled.

Evidence that I'm not a hippie...

I'm too young. I love and drink Starbucks, regularly. I don't camp. I must have functional plumbing in my house. I love shopping. I love my new car. Illegal drugs are out of the question. I don't hand out flowers at the airport. I don't think Charlie Manson is misunderstood. I work hard. I'm not a flake.

I don't take stupid comments seriously, I just wonder, how did they get there? And it makes for a moment of self-reflection, smell-check and blog material.

I am that which Thou hast made.