Evaluating our Worldview of Addiction and Eating Disorders
What do you think of when you hear the word addiction?
A person experiencing homelessness on the street asking you for money - Are you assuming that they will use that money to support their drinking habit? A drug addict who beats their spouse to gain control of their relationship because everything else is out of control in their life? Maybe a gambler who can’t leave the table after losing their entire savings account on the last hand of blackjack? Are you thinking of a man? A woman?
Our general worldview sheds light on the lens through which we view addiction. Typically, addiction is seen as a substance use “problem,” and our worldview often tells us that those addicts are labeled as “bad.”
But what if we started to view the addict differently?
Let’s look at the general definition of addiction, as defined by Merriam-Webster. Addiction is “a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence.”
At first glance, addiction seems to include not just substances but also behaviors and activities. Those behaviors and activities are what psychologists call process addictions.
Process addictions appear harmless, and they involve behaviors and activities that most humans participate in every day. Process addictions can include food (under-eating or overeating), exercise, sex and love, social media consumption, television, video games, people-pleasing, religious obsession, overworking, and shopping, just to name a few.
At first glance, there seems to be nothing that looks dangerous on this list.
And yes, most people can admit to “binge” watching a season on Netflix over a long weekend. Don’t we all eat more than we should over the holidays? There’s always time to check Amazon for the latest sale. The first thing we do in the morning is to check our phones. We want to make sure that we’ve not missed some communication from our work or a friend’s overnight Instagram post that we need to like. So how can we tell a normal “relationship” with these behaviors from an abnormal one?
The key is in the process.
Addiction is more than just acting out. When I refer to acting out, I mean the part of the process that involves the behavior. The drink of alcohol, the swipe of the credit card after purchasing something new, or the first bite of a freshly baked cookie can all be a form of acting out. The addiction process usually involves mood changes, dopamine transfers in the brain, rituals, feelings, fantasies, obsessions, and events.
The drink of alcohol, the swipe of the credit card after purchasing something new, or the first bite of a freshly baked cookie can all be a form of acting out.
I’m not planning to dive deep into the cycle itself, but I want to specify that addictions are insidious and sneaky. Rather than trying to find yourself in one of these processes, think of the relief you get when you act out. Suppose the first thing that happens when you get home after a long day of work is to open the cupboard and get that sweet relief of chocolate, making sure that your husband or kids didn’t notice your behavior. In that case, you might have some addictive behaviors to consider.
In my own story, the struggle I found myself into was primarily food. Now every process addiction is not the same, but the process looks similar in all addictions. Food, like any addiction, is cunning and, at times, difficult to pinpoint. Unlike alcohol or other drugs, someone with an eating disorder has to eat.
How many times I heard the logical solution prescribed to me…
“Matt, just stop eating so much... Have you ever heard of Nutrisystem?” Or how about, “I knew this guy who started doing yoga and lost all this weight, have you considered that?”
I want to tell you that all those prescriptions work… at treating a weight problem.
The problem with the disordered eater is not just the weight but also the emotional sobriety that comes with the physical recovery. At 320 pounds, it is easy to feel guilty about the food choices and to feel shame about one’s body image. But at 182 pounds, why should that same person be critical about their body image after losing over 100 pounds.
They’re also angry because they ate all of their allotted Weight Watchers points for the day, and it’s only 10 AM. And to add insult to injury, they’re only allowed to eat that powdered peanut butter because regular peanut butter has too much fat in it.
These are all thoughts that I have had at one time.
For the disordered eater, the problem is not the weight or the food. The solution is food. The problem is life, and the dysfunctional coping mechanism that they knew best was food. Using food to cope is something that even normal eaters do. We are conditioned at a young age to associate comfort with food. When infants drink milk or formula, they’re held close to their caregiver, associating the soothing qualities of eating and nurturing touch.
When we win our sports league, the coach takes the team out for pizza and ice cream. We celebrate the new year of our life with cake. Each holiday we gather around a table that is overflowing with food. We add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, and in turn, we begin to associate eating with soothing.
Even though disordered eating and process addictions are common, that is not an excuse to neglect healing that relationship in the process. Awareness is only the beginning. For those suffering from these addictive behaviors and tendencies, there is a path to begin to heal.
It starts with confronting the fear.
Where do I begin?
Who can help with these things?
How do I go about recovering from something that I don’t understand?
Those are all great places to start. I hope to be a source of help and healing to those who need it.
Check out Matt’s interview regarding food and process addictions!