I got abstinent in a college town, where every other door was a food outfit. Many of the doors were very familiar, as this was the town where I had gone to college and had frequented many of the local eateries. As I walked down the street, the soundtrack in my head went something like this, Maybe I’ll have a …, no. Maybe I’ll go to …, no. Maybe I’ll get a…, no, not today. The food thoughts came fast and furious.
On one particular day, as I heard the barrage of thoughts flying through my head, I thought, Man! I wasn’t this obsessed with food before I got abstinent! Almost the instant I had that thought, I realized that the reality was that before I got abstinent, every time I thought about food, I ate food. I never had to sit with the thought in my head and ride it out. I could not even have told you that I had a thought of food that led me to eat.
It was exhausting having to constantly derail the food thoughts, but I did what my sponsor said and continued to ask G-d to remove them, one food thought at a time. I heard people sharing hope about the fact that food thoughts get better. I heard someone say once that one day they realized they had not thought about food all morning when they sat down to lunch. I thought, How do you know you’re not thinking about food if you’re not thinking about food? The whole thing was baffling, and I wasn’t sure it would ever change for me. I was happy to be abstinent. At least I no longer had to eat, just because I felt like eating. That was enough for me in the beginning.
I’ve always cherished Dr. Bob’s story in the Big Book. In particular, I cherish his admission that he had cravings for well over two years after he got sober. That helped me feel okay with the fact that I was just riddled with food thoughts. I wasn’t necessarily doing something wrong; it was just the pace of that particular aspect of my recovery.
Happily for me, it did start to get better, as promised. I began to have the experience of sitting down to a meal and realizing that I had not been having food thoughts for the several hours between this meal and the previous one. Oh, I get it! It is possible to realize you’re not thinking about food if you’re not thinking about food! That was a very exciting moment. The action of making the decision to think about something else actually worked. I generally turned my thoughts to G-d and asked for help, then came back to whatever I was supposed to be focusing on. My mind learned to spend more time on here-and-now activities than on food.
It came to me once that food thoughts and cravings are like neighborhood bullies. They knock and knock at the door. In disease, I always answered the door, went out to play with the bullies, and got hurt again and again. When I came into recovery, they kept knocking! Only now it was different. Now I had G-d in my life, who could act as my protective mother and tell the bullies, “No, she can’t come out to play. She’s busy.” They kept knocking, insisting that this time they would be nice, and “my mother” kept sending them away. She knew better. If you send someone away enough times, they start to get discouraged. The bullies kept knocking, but less frequently, and with less enthusiasm. It started to happen that I would realize they hadn’t knocked at all between breakfast and lunch, or between lunch and dinner. The knocks grew fewer and farther between over time. I worked the program, asking G-d to intercede for me. Every once in a while there comes a half-hearted knock (I am not cured), and it tells me there is something I need. Perhaps I need to take a break, or I haven’t registered the impact of a difficult situation in my life. Mostly, they don’t knock. Today I can feel my feelings in real time and the first thoughts that come to my mind are prayers or I need a phone call!
My first sponsor told me the hunger and the food thoughts would get better. I’m so grateful I decided to trust her. I am blessed that I can now promise someone else, who may be getting constant knocks at the door, that the knocks will stop someday, as long as we keep working our program.