Me, a food addict? Are you kidding? If you had told me just five years ago that I would soon be addicted to food just like an alcoholic is to alcohol, I would have thought at the very least you had a few screws loose. First of all, I wasn’t fat! Far from it, I was a skinny teenager and had even tried to gain weight for several years. How could someone like me be a food addict?

By the age 19, I could no longer ignore my frightening loss of control over my eating. Why did I eat so much that I was sick and bloated, often stealing other people’s food and eating in secret? My eating habits had always been a bit strange, but now I was out of control. Day after day I would repeat this desperate behavior. I could not seem to control myself. As my binge eating and isolation got worse, so did the depression I’d been struggling with throughout my adolescence.

No matter what I tried – youth-empowerment workshops, therapy, anti-depressant drugs, health food, meditation (to name a few) – I had always slipped back into hopelessness, depression, and uncontrollable eating. It was getting harder and harder to take care of myself and to show up for work.

I was scared and miserable when I walked into my first FA meeting, but that first meeting gave me hope.

I learned that food addiction is a life-threatening illness just like alcoholism; and that there is a solution.

Coming to FA at 19 years old, I know I have been spared decades of the hell that I hear about in older members’ stories. I no longer eat to blog out an unbearable existence. I have a wonderful, simple life; and I look forward to each new day.

One day at a time, FA gives me freedom from the insanity I used to live in and the chance to live a normal life. I know in my heart that FA has saved my life.