I am 50 years old and I am a food addict. I really don’t know for sure when my food addiction took off, because early on in my life, I was an addict of various substances, first alcohol, and then various forms of drugs.

I got clean and sober about 19 years ago, and when I did, I picked up sugar, which became my drug of choice until I realized, in my late forties, that I had a problem with the way I ate sugar. I justified eating sugar because it would keep me from drinking and getting high.

Within a couple of years of getting clean and sober, I started noticing that my weight was fluctuating dramatically.  Like so many food addicts, I started what I like to call the “dieting merry-go-round,” with success on some plans and not so much on others. The main thing all these diets had in common was that once I stopped the diet, the weight came right back on, and sometimes more weight came on than I had lost.

Frustrated, angry, and falling into deep depression, I had nowhere to turn, and I felt like I was going insane with the constant thought of food in my head. How much would I eat that day? How much could I hide so my husband wouldn’t see how much sugar I was consuming? I would make promises to myself each night that I would not binge on sugar again the next day, only to be face down in the sugar by 10 a.m. the next morning, unable to stop, and feeling so totally ashamed of myself.

Then one day, I had had enough. I was given the gift of desperation, thank you God! I weighed 202 pounds at 5’5,” tall and I knew I would go higher if I did not do something. My sister has been a member of FA for almost 10 years, and I called her and asked if she would take me to a meeting. I had attended an FA meeting with her once a few years prior, but it seemed too stringent for me, so I had dismissed it as another diet I would fail at.

The next day, my sister took me to a meeting. I approached a wonderful young lady who had a normal sized body, a confident and clear vision of her path in the program, a higher power guiding her through her days, and a willingness to lend a hand.  She became my sponsor that very night.

I won’t say I got it right away, because it took eight months and two breaks to get 90 days of abstinence. I am happy to say that the crazy thinking around food is subsiding, one day at a time. I am not insane, I am a food addict, and today I work the tools of the program gratefully to keep the peace in my mind, heart, and body by following the suggestions of FA. I start my day with quiet time, I call my sponsor, I call other food addicts on a daily basis, and I have a higher power with me at all times during the day. I am proud to say that I am 60-plus pounds lighter and so very grateful to those who have come before me in this life-saving program.