A time to breathe and reflect

The house is so quiet. The almost subliminal tick-tocking of the kitchen clock. The distant oceanic rumble of semi-trucks on the interstate. The self-adjusting creaks and thumps of the 48-year-old home settling into its footprint. So rare, such a quiet house.

It looks like this practicing of conscious awareness, of changing habits, is going to take some, well, practice. Mornings are easiest -- all my anxieties seems to be set back to zero by a night's sleep. It seems I need at least three hours, maybe that first deepest dream period, to wake up feeling rested enough to have a more positive outlook on things than what I might have been feeling the night before. Then the habit of focusing on food and eating, dwelling on it, starts sometimes as early as noon. Gets worse as the day goes on, particularly if I don't just give in and pig out at some restaurant. Evenings, no matter what had happened during the day, no matter what I'd eaten already, and even if I'm already stuffed from a big dinner or whatever, I start to think of snacking. And the later I stay up, the stronger, more dire, the need becomes.

My going to restaurants and my snacking habits are my way of zoning out, or deadening, or distracting myself from the stress and anxiety that increases gradually throughout the day. Even good days. Feeling the need to eat later in the day is such a habit that the quality of the day doesn't matter anymore. As soon as it gets to be mid-afternoon, thoughts of food start interfering with whatever I'm doing. I was a member of SMART Recovery a couple of years ago, for food addiction, and from what I heard from other members, mostly alcoholics, my issues with food are so similar to their issues with alcohol that it doesn't surprise me at all that the new studies are saying that large amounts of sugar, fat, and salt are addictive.

Some of them would mention how they would have to stop at a bar or restaurant on their way home from work and drink. Well, I also would not be able to stop myself from going to a restaurant, not to drink alcohol, but to eat fries or nachos. My mouth would so crave the stuffing and chewing that a couple of times, when I was trying to stop myself, I almost starting chewing on my own tongue. Why some people use alcohol and some use food, I don't know.

For a while, I not only snacked to ease anxiety, I smoked cigarettes as well. I was a two-pack-a-day smoker. I could change the strength of the cigarettes (anything from Mores to Barclays with all the holes in the filter) but not the number, always two packs a day. So I was using two very unhealthy coping mechanisms.

About seven years ago, as the evening came on, I realized I only had $5 to spend (why I only had $5 available to me is another story). With that, I could either get one pack of cigarettes or some snacks at 7-11. I'm one of those people who have to have both salty and sweet snacks at the same time, so I was thinking of a Big Grab of chips and Hostess cupcakes. Either the smokes or the snacks.

I had successfully quit smoking twice before -- one time using nicotine gum, and another time quitting cold turkey for 'love' -- whatever works, right? But, like many people, I picked it back up and had been smoking again for several years. I struggled with this $5 dilemma for at least an hour, at one point holding my almost empty cigarette pack in one hand and my $5 bill in the other trying to decide between smoking and eating.

It was excrutiating! Both activities felt necessary, like some horrible thing would happen if I couldn't smoke, if I couldn't pig out. I would die! Back and forth, and back and forth, I went between the two. I was also trying desperately to figure out how to have both, but I couldn't. It was one or the other. The intensity of the struggle was shocking to me. Why was this so hard?

Well, even though smoking cigarettes is considered one of the hardest addictions to quit, so much so that some people smoke while fighting lung cancer or through the holes in their necks, I chose the snacks. That's how important it is for me to eat fat, salt, and sugar. When I finally made that decision, I swore to myself that I would never put myself through that hell again. I even crushed my last two cigarettes because I wanted to go get my snacks right away, and I knew that if I smoked after I ate, I would need to keep smoking.

So I quit smoking cold turkey for the second time. Didn't smoke for years. Now I occasionally bum a cigarette in rare situations, but it doesn't grab me like it used to. Like Spencer referencing Millman in The Craft of the Warrior, an action can be indulged in once in a while if it's done with conscious awareness; It's the habit of actions, the mindlessness, that cause us trouble.

Sometimes when I start to beat up on myself for not being able to stop snacking, I remember that night and the choice I made. Keeping in mind just how strong my compulsion is to snack, stronger than smoking, helps me treat myself with gentleness, compassion, and patience.