This Is What Relapse Feels Like

Observations from the inside

I opened the cabinet to get a tea bag and I saw the pistachio clusters there. I’m not hungry, but I can’t stop thinking about them. I took out a serving, ate them standing up next to the cabinet. Took out some more and ate those, too. After awhile I stopped counting servings.

I was at the store earlier — the one with the long checkout line full of impulse purchases: gadgets and candy and those little hand sanitizer bottles. I didn’t have to buy the salted caramel, but I did it anyway. Along with the mini cookies.

I needed an ice pack for my wrist, achy and sore from carrying my infant son, and opened the freezer door to find a pint of my favorite ice cream staring me in the face. Despite the caramels I tore open and devoured in the car on the way home from the store, I took it out and grabbed a spoon.

I feel out of control.

But I don’t want it to stop.

Life is a lot right now

The world has taken some confusing and troubling turns lately. In addition to the general insanity of the pandemic and the dumpster fire that is the American experience, my life has chosen to throw in a few extra packets of crazy sauce. Since March we’ve dealt with two deaths in the family, a significant construction project, childbirth, adjusting to having 3 kids, and more — all while basically locked inside the same four walls day in and day out.

Also, I’m binge eating again. Which you probably know by now.

Two years ago I wouldn’t have seen the connection between the two. Today, though, there’s no ignoring it.

Relapse is no stranger to me and, after years of battling binge eating, I have learned to recognize the signs I’m falling back into my disorder.

I can’t stop thinking about it

My daughter found a box of chocolates, buried in the back of the pantry. I’d forgotten they existed, but suddenly I needed them all. “Are they expired?” she asked.

“Yep,” I lied. “I’ll throw them away.”

Not, Throw them away.

I’ll throw them away.

While the kids weren’t looking, I sneaked all of them.

Even now, as I write, I’m aware of the various triggers that sit behind closed doors in my kitchen — chips, macadamia nuts, ice cream, that one kind of crackers. I am also aware it’s nearing Halloween (in retail years, anyway), and that there are packages of candy corn and those amazingly awful sugary pumpkins just sitting there at the drugstore. Honestly, the only thing keeping me from driving to get them is the fact that the baby is sleeping in his room.

When you’re dealing with addiction or recovering from one, even the knowledge that your drug is nearby and could be procured is enough to send you into a tailspin that can quickly get out of control. The deeper you get, the greater the lengths you’re willing to go in order to get what you want (need).

Something you thought you’d conquered suddenly begins to occupy all your thoughts.

I hide my behavior

Those caramels, I didn’t need them. I knew I didn’t need them and I bought them anyway. I opened them, and I could have had one, but as I ate more and more I realized that if I’d brought them home I’d have had to answer some questions about why I’d purchased them and why there were so few left. So I finished them and disposed of the bag in our outside trash can, under some stuff, on my way inside the house.

I do this frequently. I keep things in my car or retreat to my closet. Or I wait for my kids to be outside playing and then eat standing up next to the pantry door so I can close it quickly if I want to.

I hide because I don’t want my children to see my compulsive behavior. I don’t want them to catch this awful disease from me.

I hide because I don’t want to talk about my eating disorder — to anyone, even a compassionate and loving advocate such as my husband. Talking about it makes it real, brings up all the feelings associated with it, leads to my making promises I’d rather not make and know I won’t keep.

I also hide because I want the food all to myself.

I make promises to myself and then rationalize breaking them

When I was at the drugstore the other day I saw that waxy, corn-syrupy candy I love so much. Bags and bags of it. I know it’s a trigger for me, and I made a promise to myself.

I won’t eat any candy corn this season.

Forget the fact that I’m in no position to make any promises to myself. Forget the fact that I know forbidding food (if candy corn can even be called food) is counterproductive. Forget the fact that I really love candy corn.

I was out with my daughter a couple days later and saw one of the smallish containers of candy corn. It’s really small, I told myself as I threw it in with our arts and crafts purchases. Better than one of the huge bags, I thought as I waited for her to buckle up and poured out a handful.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve made and then immediately broken promises just like this one. The rationalization is so convincing: A little won’t hurt, or I’ve already had this much; a little more won’t make a difference, or But I never get to have these, or my favorite, I can’t deprive myself forever.

It’s like the boy who cried wolf — eventually, I stop believing myself at all.

I feel guilty and ashamed

Consciously, I know my eating disorder is not my fault. It’s not a result of a lack of willpower or an inability to control myself. It’s a trauma response based on a host of unmet needs I had as a child, which developed outside of rational thought and awareness.

But every time I finish a binge I still feel ashamed. The same thoughts circle round and round in my mind, the same feelings I’ve experienced over and over again.

Physically, I don’t feel well after I binge eat. My head is in a fog, my thoughts disorganized, my body lethargic.

But emotionally, I feel a thousand times worse. I beat myself up with shoulds. I should know better. I should be able to control my behavior. I should be over this by now. I should make better choices.

And what do other people think? I know my attempts at hiding, while they’ve improved over the years, still don’t fool the people who really know me. If I’m being totally honest, I imagine them thinking something like, “What a fatass.” And, listen. I’ve done a lot to counteract my feelings about the word fat and its accepted negativity, but it still doesn’t feel good when people are saying it as a slur. Even when it’s only in my mind.

I don’t want to use, but I don’t want to stop and I don’t want help

All these things — the physical sensations and the emotional abuse I put myself through — seem like they should be enough to deter me from bingeing. They’re not, though, and this just reinforces the cycle.

I don’t want to binge eat.

Except that I do want to binge eat.

The thing is, the binge itself is wonderful. I get to give in to all my worst impulses. I get to enjoy something I don’t get to do very often. I get to feel the textures, taste the salty and sweet, fill up on my favorite things. The high is only temporary, but it’s immense. And in that moment, I’m like a dog with a bone. If you get between me and a binge, when that part of my brain’s turned on, you’re likely to come back missing a finger or two.

I don’t want to feel the guilt, and the shame, and the anxiety. I don’t want to feel the effects of many binges over time — sore joints and muscles from the extra weight and inflammation, brain fog, the general feeling of self-loathing.

But if I fixed the disorder, where would I get my high?

Relapse doesn’t have to be forever

The rational side of my brain knows the solution to this problem. I’ve been addicted before. When I was deep in the throes of a cocaine binge, I had these exact same feelings. I couldn’t even enjoy the high because I was so worried about when and where I’d get another. And when I crashed, I felt so hopeless I didn’t know how I’d ever go on.

I felt guilty for using, guilty for wanting to use, and anxious about something getting in the way of my using.

I haven’t used cocaine in twenty years and I have no desire to use it again. I can look at this addiction from the other side and know that, even though my disordered mind tells me the world will end if I don’t go and buy some mallowcreme pumpkins right this second, I will survive just fine without them.

My disorder is not rational, but a part of my healing is. When I feel an urge I can sit with it. (I don’t want to, my brain says as I write that. Shush, you, I say back.) In the moment the need, and the discomfort, seems insurmountable. But it’s not. Like any other feeling, the urge to binge is temporary.

If I can find something that gives me peace which is not food-related, I’ll be able to move through that urge and look at it from the other side. I’ll see the world didn’t implode and, in fact, I’m happier for having moved past the urge without giving in to it. And when I walk past the caramels, or the ice cream, or the mallowcreme pumpkins, I can keep on walking, if only this one time.

Because that’s how recovery happens — one choice at a time. Each time, I get to choose. To walk on by. To drink a glass of seltzer. Not to open the freezer. To talk to someone about my urge. To share a dessert rather than getting my own. To do a craft project. To eat a portion of food on a plate rather than from the container.

Every time, I get to make a new choice. And there’s a comfort in knowing that. And, as healthy choices pile up, I’ll begin rebuilding my sober history — that catalog of all the times I made a healthy choice and how much better I felt as a result. This positive cycle can eventually replace the self-sabotage one.

No matter how long you’ve been in recovery, relapse can happen and it can quickly begin to feel completely unmanageable. Changes in life circumstances — stressors, big life changes, falling out with family or friends, feeling out of control — can all be factors in relapse. But you can mitigate the consequences of relapse by being honest with yourself, connecting with your support system, and going back to what works for you.

Invisible illnesses are so difficult to manage, in part because it’s hard for others to understand what they can’t see. It can be even more difficult to understand the debilitating effects of trauma on the developing brain, because “trauma” is not a diagnosis. Yet it still manifests itself for a lifetime, a double-invisible influence, informing the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world and guiding our behavior, especially in times of struggle. For, me everything started with childhood trauma.

Join me here every second and fourth Monday, where I explore the invisible influence of past trauma on current beliefs and behavior. Find all my past columns and subscribe for updates here.