It was easy to justify the double life in Sexaholism. The private things I did to feed my addiction were simply socially unacceptable. This, of course, allowed for bigger secrets to develop and left alone to my own thought processes, I continued to escalate in the addiction while justifying my actions and lies.
Why would I want to tell my wife that I was masturbating incessantly to porn back then? And why would it be important for her to know I was looking at more and more objectionable material, including animals and children, as well as pictures depicting violence and necrohilia. She didn't need to know that and it wouldn't hurt her or our marriage. Right?
How about when I escalated to chat rooms, pretending (to myself anyway) that I was going to pick up an underage girl in one of these rooms. And then there were the masturbation episodes on cam. She didn't need to know about those either. Nor did she need to know that I watched women expose their breasts on cam and one time I watched a male masturbating on cam.
I'm pretty sure she didn't need to know that I was going to adult bookstores and masturbating in booths again, nor did she need to know that I was viewing erotic dancers and masturbating to them as well. She definitiely didn't need to know about the cruising in areas where there 'may have been hookers'.
And finally, she didn't need to know that I finally crossed the boundary of picking up a hooker again--just that once. Only to do it about three times a week for the better part of a year, constantly 'quitting for good', only to start again sometimes even the same day.
The lying was meant to protect the innocent spouse from harm while I fed the addiction. It actually enabled me to escalate to a point of no return. Once I'd confided my crimes to her, our marriage was over and the damage to her seems to be permanent. Even more than 3 and a half years later.
So here I am, remarried, sober from sex addiction for all of this time and thinking recovery has been going well.
That is, apart from the food. It's the first addiction, the one that is really socially acceptable to some degree, and one that people can live with--at least initially. I'd say the damage the food addiction does to one's self esteem can lead to acting out in other areas. I've seen myself binge on food and then go act out sexually or vice versa in the past. I still have some spending problems and they've occurred around the times I've acted out with food.
So the lies I told while acting out with food have also been to protect others. I didn't want my parents, my spouse(s), or people who cared about me to see me compulsively overeating, so rarely did I do it in public.
But what happens after you binge privately over and over and over? You gain weight, making the current clothing tighter and requiring new clothes, eventually. It also leads to a more toxic personality in my case. I become bitter, sarcastic, withdrawn.
How does leading a double life help in food addiction? In sex addiction?
It doesn't. It enables acting out to continue in perpetuity. And in both cases, it leads to death and destruction of the addict, and also of those around the addict. Sooner or later...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Sex Addict and the Spiritual Solution--it works for food too!
It's amazing to me how much discipline I had with regards to ensuring I could act out and get away with it in a previous marriage. This occurred with both the sex and the food addictions. I'd allow the Ex to fall asleep and then I'd ever so quietly slip out of bed/out of the room and to the Internet to look for my favorite porn. I'd eat whole meals or gigantic sugar snacks on the way home from work and then hide the wrappers in the garbage at a store or outside my house.
So discipline plays a role in successfully acting out as an addict.
Has discipline played a role in recovery? Can their be a sex or food recovery without discipline? How about without a Spiritual connection?
And it's simlply a willingness to connect with a Power greater than ourselves.
Discipline can be your friend or it can be your enemy.
Discipline earned me a college and professional degree. It helped stay sober from sex addiction for years now. It continues to keep me out of troublesome situations with regard to the sex addiction. It's the LACK of discipline and connection with the spiritual side of my life that has led to repeated failures in food recovery.
I know it's progress not perfection, but it seems that the yo yo dieting has a distinct negative effect on my willingness to connect to that Higher Power.
So I ask G-d for the willingness to connect with Him and make the spiritual connection that may be necessary for food sobriety. This simple discipline to let go and let G-d...
So discipline plays a role in successfully acting out as an addict.
Has discipline played a role in recovery? Can their be a sex or food recovery without discipline? How about without a Spiritual connection?
And it's simlply a willingness to connect with a Power greater than ourselves.
Discipline can be your friend or it can be your enemy.
Discipline earned me a college and professional degree. It helped stay sober from sex addiction for years now. It continues to keep me out of troublesome situations with regard to the sex addiction. It's the LACK of discipline and connection with the spiritual side of my life that has led to repeated failures in food recovery.
I know it's progress not perfection, but it seems that the yo yo dieting has a distinct negative effect on my willingness to connect to that Higher Power.
So I ask G-d for the willingness to connect with Him and make the spiritual connection that may be necessary for food sobriety. This simple discipline to let go and let G-d...
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Sex Addict faces the merciless nature in all his addictions...
Ain't that the truth. I've met very few people in recovery--real recovery--that didn't get that addiction leads to life threatening consequences.
Acting out with prostitutes on the streets, viewing illegal porn on public computers, let alone 'private' computers, and going to strip joints, porn shops, and peep shows put me in the most dicey situations one could imagine. At any point I may have come face to face with either a cold blooded killer, life threatening disease, or with the long arm of the Law.
Ultimately it was the efforts to preserve my marriage and my brutal honesty in confession (translation--dumping my guilt in a shock wave of pain) to my Ex that resulted in my most painful consequence right now, the legal restrictions around seeing my children unsupervised.
Switch gears to the more 'socially acceptable' addiction and there are unique differences, along with startling parallels in the 'fatal nature' of food addiction.
Acting out with food has some obvious consequences. It leads to obesity, which is associated with heart disease, stroke, and death. What is not as obvious is the link to sleep apnea, which in my case led to my constant fatigue, which fueled my acting out in all areas of my life. Overeating also leads to poor self image, which leads to more acting out and need to numb. It leads to ingesting more carcinogens, which could lead to cancer. It also can lead to overspending (on food), spending on new (bigger) clothes, and more money spent on healthcare due to associated health problems.
Being obese absolutely has diminished my life experience. There are things I couldn't do because of being out of shape like certain hiking trips, climbing trips (favorite things to do for some in the Northwest) and it has led me to be more reclusive, antisocial and that leads to less fun, fulfilling life experiences. I become more introverted after acting out with food, which leads to more isolation and therefore less interaction with people and things around me. I also believe there's descrimination against overweight people. This occurs for job opportunitities, for opportunities to have friendships or romantic relationships, although gratefully I am comfortable enough in my own skin and with my marriage that the latter do not matter to me. I also believe that those who judge people 'of size' and don't want to befriend them simply for that are likely not people I'd like to befriend in the first place.
Here food was supposed to help me feel better and resolve my angst, and it has a terrible effect on the rest of my life and on relationships.
I'm grateful to be working on food recovery...
Acting out with prostitutes on the streets, viewing illegal porn on public computers, let alone 'private' computers, and going to strip joints, porn shops, and peep shows put me in the most dicey situations one could imagine. At any point I may have come face to face with either a cold blooded killer, life threatening disease, or with the long arm of the Law.
Ultimately it was the efforts to preserve my marriage and my brutal honesty in confession (translation--dumping my guilt in a shock wave of pain) to my Ex that resulted in my most painful consequence right now, the legal restrictions around seeing my children unsupervised.
Switch gears to the more 'socially acceptable' addiction and there are unique differences, along with startling parallels in the 'fatal nature' of food addiction.
Acting out with food has some obvious consequences. It leads to obesity, which is associated with heart disease, stroke, and death. What is not as obvious is the link to sleep apnea, which in my case led to my constant fatigue, which fueled my acting out in all areas of my life. Overeating also leads to poor self image, which leads to more acting out and need to numb. It leads to ingesting more carcinogens, which could lead to cancer. It also can lead to overspending (on food), spending on new (bigger) clothes, and more money spent on healthcare due to associated health problems.
Being obese absolutely has diminished my life experience. There are things I couldn't do because of being out of shape like certain hiking trips, climbing trips (favorite things to do for some in the Northwest) and it has led me to be more reclusive, antisocial and that leads to less fun, fulfilling life experiences. I become more introverted after acting out with food, which leads to more isolation and therefore less interaction with people and things around me. I also believe there's descrimination against overweight people. This occurs for job opportunitities, for opportunities to have friendships or romantic relationships, although gratefully I am comfortable enough in my own skin and with my marriage that the latter do not matter to me. I also believe that those who judge people 'of size' and don't want to befriend them simply for that are likely not people I'd like to befriend in the first place.
Here food was supposed to help me feel better and resolve my angst, and it has a terrible effect on the rest of my life and on relationships.
I'm grateful to be working on food recovery...
Friday, November 13, 2009
Quick Food Fixes are Sexy for the Sex Addict
Until I have completely hit a rock bottom, I'm not sure that any addiction I have can enter the recovery phase.
That's why, as it says in the AA 12 and 12 book, we have to find a way to raise the bottom. I cannot control and enjoy sexual acting out at this point. The consequences were too painful for me with losing my kids, losing my marriage, and nearly losing my career and freedom.
Food addiction is different, without a doubt. And it's as or more deadly than any other addiction, but it is much more pernicious and tenacious than the others. I have to 'walk the tiger three times a day' with food. No other addiction that I know of has that kind of power. I didn't have any sexual activity for 2 and a half years in my SA recovery and I didn't die. I couldn't go 2 and a half weeks without eating, much less 2 and a half days--at least without severe physical consequences.
Food addiction can have direct and indirect consequences on my life, some quick and others slow. The slow ones are obvious. Being overweight and consuming poor foods leads to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, sleep apnea, and a host of other maladies.
Immediate consequences are not as obvious, but very significant. The effects on my psychological state are profound. Acting out with eating has high highs and low lows. The low lows affect my self confidence which can lead me to worsening of all areas of my life. The same way alcohol and pot were considered 'gateway drugs' to worse problems, so is acting out with food. It's a gateway to all other addictions for me.
And like all other addictions, it's progressive. I've always found new ways of acting out and escalating the ways I 'mainline' my drug. This also leads to more escalation of the mental and physical problems that accompany this problem.
Ironically, we must admit we are powerless over the addiction(s) to gain any power over them. No one can be pushed into recovery unless they've hit their own bottom of sorts.
Old Les Brown ( http://www.lesbrown.com/ ) says 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'.
Thankfully, I'm making progress with the food addiction today...
That's why, as it says in the AA 12 and 12 book, we have to find a way to raise the bottom. I cannot control and enjoy sexual acting out at this point. The consequences were too painful for me with losing my kids, losing my marriage, and nearly losing my career and freedom.
Food addiction is different, without a doubt. And it's as or more deadly than any other addiction, but it is much more pernicious and tenacious than the others. I have to 'walk the tiger three times a day' with food. No other addiction that I know of has that kind of power. I didn't have any sexual activity for 2 and a half years in my SA recovery and I didn't die. I couldn't go 2 and a half weeks without eating, much less 2 and a half days--at least without severe physical consequences.
Food addiction can have direct and indirect consequences on my life, some quick and others slow. The slow ones are obvious. Being overweight and consuming poor foods leads to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, sleep apnea, and a host of other maladies.
Immediate consequences are not as obvious, but very significant. The effects on my psychological state are profound. Acting out with eating has high highs and low lows. The low lows affect my self confidence which can lead me to worsening of all areas of my life. The same way alcohol and pot were considered 'gateway drugs' to worse problems, so is acting out with food. It's a gateway to all other addictions for me.
And like all other addictions, it's progressive. I've always found new ways of acting out and escalating the ways I 'mainline' my drug. This also leads to more escalation of the mental and physical problems that accompany this problem.
Ironically, we must admit we are powerless over the addiction(s) to gain any power over them. No one can be pushed into recovery unless they've hit their own bottom of sorts.
Old Les Brown ( http://www.lesbrown.com/ ) says 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'.
Thankfully, I'm making progress with the food addiction today...
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Sex Addict Noshes on the 12 and 12: Am I TRULY a Complulsive Overeater?
I'd like to say no. Where's the evidence for it?
From a young age, I had been told that I shouldn't overeat and that I need to lose weight. As a result of the shaming and damning that my parents did at home, including putting me on a diet while the rest of the family, friends, kids at camp, ate what they wanted to. I was urged to diet and count calories while I was still in grade school.
And what did I do when I came home from grade school? I'd sit and watch the boob tube while munching on leftovers or junkfood or something that would be helping me numb out.
I began hiding what I ate at age 8 or younger. I didn't want family, friends, fellow campers to see what I was actually consuming.
Later in life, in middle school on up, I'd enjoyed bingeing with certain friends, another sign of my compulsive eating behaviors.
Since college, I've frequently yo yo 'd with my weight.
To be con'd...
From a young age, I had been told that I shouldn't overeat and that I need to lose weight. As a result of the shaming and damning that my parents did at home, including putting me on a diet while the rest of the family, friends, kids at camp, ate what they wanted to. I was urged to diet and count calories while I was still in grade school.
And what did I do when I came home from grade school? I'd sit and watch the boob tube while munching on leftovers or junkfood or something that would be helping me numb out.
I began hiding what I ate at age 8 or younger. I didn't want family, friends, fellow campers to see what I was actually consuming.
Later in life, in middle school on up, I'd enjoyed bingeing with certain friends, another sign of my compulsive eating behaviors.
Since college, I've frequently yo yo 'd with my weight.
To be con'd...
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Juggling Cobras versus Juggling Bowling Balls: the Sex Addict compares life sports
I think living the double life that I lived as an acting out sex addict was like juggling cobras. Imagine that for a moment: the long flexible, poisonous snakes, being thrown into the air one by one as the other one or two are in your hands. Keep moving, keep shucking and jiving, don't get bit.
It took tremendous amounts of energy to craft my lies, maintain them, and then more acting out would add to them. Carrying them around was very difficult as it was a poison to my system. It made me feel worse about myself which would lead me to want to escape--back to the numbing medicine of choice, sex.
Nowadays, my problems are not nearly as energy draining, but it doesn't diminish the stress they create. This stress, if not handled appropriately, will lead me right back the low bottoms I'd reached as a sex addict around 3 and 1/2 years ago.
How time flies...
Most recent top plate issues are work, finances, and home environment.
Work takes up too much time as it is and yet I'm not even able to finish the responsibilities expected of me. I've got a whole mess of documentation that I'm over a month behind on and my boss won't let me get help either with a secretary or a hired service, which is expensive. I've suggested to my wife that we hire a friend with some background in my field and, due to our tight finances, she says she'll learn how to help me.
While I would love to have her help, she's already complained of the light officework I've had her do and has not accomplished what she said she would in helping organize our home. Not that she hasn't helped out--she's gotten our finances back in balance and has a watchful eye on income/outgo. She also makes the condo presentable for my kids when they visit, but we both have to take some time and get rid of/organize a ton of stuff, particularly if we want family/friends to visit, and very significantly, if we have kids of our own.
Speaking of, the final assessment of my sperm count during a recent test--not conducted with the use of porn--showed I have about a 1% lifetime chance of conceiving a child with my 'poor quality sperm'.
Pretty emasculating and very expensive. This is going to cost us $10k that we don't have, which Motown Girl is borrowing from her parents on an open timeline, no interest loan.
Finances are going to be better month by month, as I'm now working on a more lucrative contract.
That leaves work, a perpetual difficulty. I'm working at 10 (that's ten) sites for my job each week. I've been on call 24/7 since March 2009, apart from the week I got married, and now I'm way behind on this paperwork. You'd think the company would throw me another frickin' bone to help me out, but it's looking like they're holding out for life getting better when we get our new associates up and running--perhaps 6 months away.
Gotta go sleep. Need to wake up and do it again tomorrow, with G-d's help....
It took tremendous amounts of energy to craft my lies, maintain them, and then more acting out would add to them. Carrying them around was very difficult as it was a poison to my system. It made me feel worse about myself which would lead me to want to escape--back to the numbing medicine of choice, sex.
Nowadays, my problems are not nearly as energy draining, but it doesn't diminish the stress they create. This stress, if not handled appropriately, will lead me right back the low bottoms I'd reached as a sex addict around 3 and 1/2 years ago.
How time flies...
Most recent top plate issues are work, finances, and home environment.
Work takes up too much time as it is and yet I'm not even able to finish the responsibilities expected of me. I've got a whole mess of documentation that I'm over a month behind on and my boss won't let me get help either with a secretary or a hired service, which is expensive. I've suggested to my wife that we hire a friend with some background in my field and, due to our tight finances, she says she'll learn how to help me.
While I would love to have her help, she's already complained of the light officework I've had her do and has not accomplished what she said she would in helping organize our home. Not that she hasn't helped out--she's gotten our finances back in balance and has a watchful eye on income/outgo. She also makes the condo presentable for my kids when they visit, but we both have to take some time and get rid of/organize a ton of stuff, particularly if we want family/friends to visit, and very significantly, if we have kids of our own.
Speaking of, the final assessment of my sperm count during a recent test--not conducted with the use of porn--showed I have about a 1% lifetime chance of conceiving a child with my 'poor quality sperm'.
Pretty emasculating and very expensive. This is going to cost us $10k that we don't have, which Motown Girl is borrowing from her parents on an open timeline, no interest loan.
Finances are going to be better month by month, as I'm now working on a more lucrative contract.
That leaves work, a perpetual difficulty. I'm working at 10 (that's ten) sites for my job each week. I've been on call 24/7 since March 2009, apart from the week I got married, and now I'm way behind on this paperwork. You'd think the company would throw me another frickin' bone to help me out, but it's looking like they're holding out for life getting better when we get our new associates up and running--perhaps 6 months away.
Gotta go sleep. Need to wake up and do it again tomorrow, with G-d's help....
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Sex Addict on his Food Addiction-III
I recall going to summer camp for the first time. I had just turned 8--it was 1978--and I was one of three children in the cabin for eight weeks. I remember the camp director's wife was prompted by my mother to 'work on' me to improve my athleticism and decrease my food intake. I know she didn't do much apart from cut me off from the desserts that the other kids had. This really just set me apart as the fat kid who was still fat but wasn't allowed to have the goodies that the 'normal' kids could have. It was another opportunity for those kids to make fun of me.
Camp had a few bullies, one of whom was a year older, and he used to pick on me about being fat as well as phyiscially assault me from time to time. I think this reinforced my isolation and also prompted me to start eating food privately.
When my parents came up to visit that summer, we went out to some big meals 'in town' and also bought some 'treats' including the most wonderfully sweet peanut brittle, fudge and candies from the local candy store. Naturally, I didn't want to be seen eating this stuff, so I would eat it in secret, throwing away the wrappers so no one would be the wiser.
Sick, when I think about it. It was the first time, as an eight year old for G-d sakes, that I was hiding what I was eating from others.
It was 1980 when I met 'Charlz Eye'. He and I didn't get along at first. He was a bully as well, and would make fun of me for being a fat kid. In the ensuing summers, he gained quite a bit of weight and ultimately he exceeded my weight, which is still true today. I'm about 290 and he's around 390.
Charlz and I would later become best of friends in middle school and remain so to this day. Through the years, he and I went through our 'growth spurt' together, experimented with drinking, drugs, and porn together, and we became 'eating buddies'. It became kind of a joke at camp. Who could eat more? Who was larger?
Our parents quickly realized that we enabled each other and used to warn us 'He's a bad influence on you', and in the meantime we would clean our respective family's refrigerator of any edible food.
I'm not sure if being pudgy or the object of people's jokes as 'the fat kid' made me more vulnerable to be abused, but I strongly suspect this. Essentially, my self esteem sucked, which led me to be the 'funny kid', always telling jokes and being the class clown. Anything for a laugh. I also wanted to be liked by any kid that I thought was 'cool'.
I met JM in kindergarten, but became closer friends with him in fifth grade. I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. His parents were divorced. He had an older brother that was at least 13 or 14, and the two of them introduced me to their 'fort' which was essentially a tree house in the field behind their house where they hid out and smoked cigarettes and looked at porn magazines.
Here was a couple of guys who would make fun of me, but would laugh at my jokes and when I did risky things like drink alchohol with them and smoke 'to be cool', I was considered more acceptable to them, at least so I thought.
These are the boys who introduced me to heavy drinking and smoking pot at age 12, and it was JM's brother's teenaged friend who forced me to perform oral sex on him.
So food addiction and being overweight ultimately led to one of the most traumatic experiences in my childhood, one my parents didn't know how to handle, and one that would go on to shape my sex addiction later in life.
Once I began puberty, I did drop some weight and get to be more of a 'chubby' physique, but I had such an awful self image and I'd become so addicted to my father's porn collections for comfort, I never developed normal relationships with others in middle school and high school. My circle of friends included other kids from broken homes, more 'food buddies', and buddies that engaged in consumption of porn, teen sex, and substance abuse.
After graduating high school, I decided I was going to dedicate my life to working out and losing weight 'no matter what'. I began to swim daily, sometimes twice a day, and I began eating a nearly vegan diet. I also would binge on smoking pot, which always led to food and sex binges, and then I 'quit forever' and complulsively exercise away any weight gain.
From my freshman year of college, when I weighed over 300 or so, I dropped over120 pounds, down to the 170's, a weight I hadn't seen since grade school. It was then that I met my first girlfriends and had my first sexual experiences as a teen, including losing my virginity to a 17 year old when I was 18--a crime, I'm now told.
What would later become a pattern throughout my adult life, I met my first wife when I was around 19 and at my thinnest, most muscular. After she and I dated for several months and I felt like my secret double life of porn and masturbation which was ramping up was getting more difficult to keep secret, I stopped exercising and began to compulsively overeat again.
In the last two years of college, I easily gained about 50 pounds back. After getting married and starting professional school, I ballooned out to nearly 300 pounds again. It was during those most stressful periods that I also abused my then fiance's roommate's cat physically, and ultimately severely tortured her cat that we bought when we got married. This displaced rage brought me incredible shame, leading me to compulsively overeat more.
I also recall that the enormous burden of trying to get into professional school, starting professional school, and ramping up my responsibilities financially, taking out giganto school loans, all put me into a more stressed state of mind.
How did I handle stress then? I tortured a defenseless cat, I masturbated in porn booths, and I compulsively overate, all while isolating more and more from my wife, friends and family. My fuse was very short and I became scary to those around me, particularly my wife. She would rarely say anything about my weight, but when she did, she'd do it in the most docile way. Nevertheless, I'd freak out and take it as if she called me a 'fat slob' and would be very verbally abusive to her.
After eight months of marriage under then same roof and about a year and a half after we officially moved to another city with each other, we separated.
I used that as my springboard into the 'big leagues' of sex addiction. I picked up my first prostitutes, continued to compulsively overeat, and moved in my my food addicted parents, including the sex addicted father who had also sexually assaulted me a few times as a child.
In my third year of professional school, I began to drink heavily again, going to bars alone, looking for 'legitimate' women to pick up and have sex with. It never happened, until I met MG.
She was a model, rapidly approaching 30, who liked the idea that I was this solo drinker doing my own thing in the bar where she was a barmaid. We had sex on our first date--something I'd never done before or since--and we became drinking buddies together. The relationship is documented elsewhere in the blog, but suffice it to say that this new found regular sex partner prompted me to lose about 100 pounds, once again exercising compulsively to get to the leanest weight of around 175 pounds.
Gratefully, this relationship ended on my graduation day from professional school and I had a backslide in my food until I met the Ex, who was a professional student when I was an apprentice. That kicked me back into high gear of diminished eating and compulsive exercising again.
I look at that same pattern of meeting a woman, getting close with her, and then, once we moved in with each other and life became difficult in terms of maintaining my secret sex addiction, I began to drink heavily and gain weight again.
With the Ex, it occurred a few times. Once when we got married, which was a stressful period and was associated with about a 40 pound weight gain. The next was when we moved from the Midwest to the Northwest and were pregnant with our petri dish kids. That was associated with another 40 pounds, bringing me to about 250.
Finally, I went full blown back into my sex addiction after my kids were born, and that was associated with an unclear large weight gain that I believe brought me up to about 330 pounds, which if I'm right, was about an 80 pound weight gain between 2004 and 2006.
By the grace of G-d, I was able to get into sex addiction recovery and concommitantly began to eat more sensibly, which helped me drop 30 pounds immediately.
Since that time, I've yo-yo'd between 274 and 300 for the past few years.
Since joining OA, I've been as low as 274 about two months ago and now I'm around 290.
I admit that I'm absolutely powerless over food. If you put sweets or a good entree into my possession, it's fortuitous if I don't overeat.
Time to turn it in. I'm grateful to be in some sort of food recovery. I plan to share the above with my sponsor and I'm supposing I've much more to uncover and discover about my food history in future posts.
Till then, sleep tight and eat well....
Camp had a few bullies, one of whom was a year older, and he used to pick on me about being fat as well as phyiscially assault me from time to time. I think this reinforced my isolation and also prompted me to start eating food privately.
When my parents came up to visit that summer, we went out to some big meals 'in town' and also bought some 'treats' including the most wonderfully sweet peanut brittle, fudge and candies from the local candy store. Naturally, I didn't want to be seen eating this stuff, so I would eat it in secret, throwing away the wrappers so no one would be the wiser.
Sick, when I think about it. It was the first time, as an eight year old for G-d sakes, that I was hiding what I was eating from others.
It was 1980 when I met 'Charlz Eye'. He and I didn't get along at first. He was a bully as well, and would make fun of me for being a fat kid. In the ensuing summers, he gained quite a bit of weight and ultimately he exceeded my weight, which is still true today. I'm about 290 and he's around 390.
Charlz and I would later become best of friends in middle school and remain so to this day. Through the years, he and I went through our 'growth spurt' together, experimented with drinking, drugs, and porn together, and we became 'eating buddies'. It became kind of a joke at camp. Who could eat more? Who was larger?
Our parents quickly realized that we enabled each other and used to warn us 'He's a bad influence on you', and in the meantime we would clean our respective family's refrigerator of any edible food.
I'm not sure if being pudgy or the object of people's jokes as 'the fat kid' made me more vulnerable to be abused, but I strongly suspect this. Essentially, my self esteem sucked, which led me to be the 'funny kid', always telling jokes and being the class clown. Anything for a laugh. I also wanted to be liked by any kid that I thought was 'cool'.
I met JM in kindergarten, but became closer friends with him in fifth grade. I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. His parents were divorced. He had an older brother that was at least 13 or 14, and the two of them introduced me to their 'fort' which was essentially a tree house in the field behind their house where they hid out and smoked cigarettes and looked at porn magazines.
Here was a couple of guys who would make fun of me, but would laugh at my jokes and when I did risky things like drink alchohol with them and smoke 'to be cool', I was considered more acceptable to them, at least so I thought.
These are the boys who introduced me to heavy drinking and smoking pot at age 12, and it was JM's brother's teenaged friend who forced me to perform oral sex on him.
So food addiction and being overweight ultimately led to one of the most traumatic experiences in my childhood, one my parents didn't know how to handle, and one that would go on to shape my sex addiction later in life.
Once I began puberty, I did drop some weight and get to be more of a 'chubby' physique, but I had such an awful self image and I'd become so addicted to my father's porn collections for comfort, I never developed normal relationships with others in middle school and high school. My circle of friends included other kids from broken homes, more 'food buddies', and buddies that engaged in consumption of porn, teen sex, and substance abuse.
After graduating high school, I decided I was going to dedicate my life to working out and losing weight 'no matter what'. I began to swim daily, sometimes twice a day, and I began eating a nearly vegan diet. I also would binge on smoking pot, which always led to food and sex binges, and then I 'quit forever' and complulsively exercise away any weight gain.
From my freshman year of college, when I weighed over 300 or so, I dropped over120 pounds, down to the 170's, a weight I hadn't seen since grade school. It was then that I met my first girlfriends and had my first sexual experiences as a teen, including losing my virginity to a 17 year old when I was 18--a crime, I'm now told.
What would later become a pattern throughout my adult life, I met my first wife when I was around 19 and at my thinnest, most muscular. After she and I dated for several months and I felt like my secret double life of porn and masturbation which was ramping up was getting more difficult to keep secret, I stopped exercising and began to compulsively overeat again.
In the last two years of college, I easily gained about 50 pounds back. After getting married and starting professional school, I ballooned out to nearly 300 pounds again. It was during those most stressful periods that I also abused my then fiance's roommate's cat physically, and ultimately severely tortured her cat that we bought when we got married. This displaced rage brought me incredible shame, leading me to compulsively overeat more.
I also recall that the enormous burden of trying to get into professional school, starting professional school, and ramping up my responsibilities financially, taking out giganto school loans, all put me into a more stressed state of mind.
How did I handle stress then? I tortured a defenseless cat, I masturbated in porn booths, and I compulsively overate, all while isolating more and more from my wife, friends and family. My fuse was very short and I became scary to those around me, particularly my wife. She would rarely say anything about my weight, but when she did, she'd do it in the most docile way. Nevertheless, I'd freak out and take it as if she called me a 'fat slob' and would be very verbally abusive to her.
After eight months of marriage under then same roof and about a year and a half after we officially moved to another city with each other, we separated.
I used that as my springboard into the 'big leagues' of sex addiction. I picked up my first prostitutes, continued to compulsively overeat, and moved in my my food addicted parents, including the sex addicted father who had also sexually assaulted me a few times as a child.
In my third year of professional school, I began to drink heavily again, going to bars alone, looking for 'legitimate' women to pick up and have sex with. It never happened, until I met MG.
She was a model, rapidly approaching 30, who liked the idea that I was this solo drinker doing my own thing in the bar where she was a barmaid. We had sex on our first date--something I'd never done before or since--and we became drinking buddies together. The relationship is documented elsewhere in the blog, but suffice it to say that this new found regular sex partner prompted me to lose about 100 pounds, once again exercising compulsively to get to the leanest weight of around 175 pounds.
Gratefully, this relationship ended on my graduation day from professional school and I had a backslide in my food until I met the Ex, who was a professional student when I was an apprentice. That kicked me back into high gear of diminished eating and compulsive exercising again.
I look at that same pattern of meeting a woman, getting close with her, and then, once we moved in with each other and life became difficult in terms of maintaining my secret sex addiction, I began to drink heavily and gain weight again.
With the Ex, it occurred a few times. Once when we got married, which was a stressful period and was associated with about a 40 pound weight gain. The next was when we moved from the Midwest to the Northwest and were pregnant with our petri dish kids. That was associated with another 40 pounds, bringing me to about 250.
Finally, I went full blown back into my sex addiction after my kids were born, and that was associated with an unclear large weight gain that I believe brought me up to about 330 pounds, which if I'm right, was about an 80 pound weight gain between 2004 and 2006.
By the grace of G-d, I was able to get into sex addiction recovery and concommitantly began to eat more sensibly, which helped me drop 30 pounds immediately.
Since that time, I've yo-yo'd between 274 and 300 for the past few years.
Since joining OA, I've been as low as 274 about two months ago and now I'm around 290.
I admit that I'm absolutely powerless over food. If you put sweets or a good entree into my possession, it's fortuitous if I don't overeat.
Time to turn it in. I'm grateful to be in some sort of food recovery. I plan to share the above with my sponsor and I'm supposing I've much more to uncover and discover about my food history in future posts.
Till then, sleep tight and eat well....
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