Addiction to anything is a difficult thing to recover from since there is a never ending cycle that must be broken in order to be set free. There are often underlying emotional issues that also have to be dealt with to be free from an addictive behavior since these issues are the reason why the addictive behavior was put in place to begin with. The first part of the addictive cycle is that the drugs, alcohol, food or sex is used to soothe the emotions that the person is feeling at the time. By using these things, the person is able to forget the bad emotions, stuffing them back for a later date, by feeling good for the moment through the product or behavior. Once the ‘high’ fades, however, the emotions resurface in addition to the shame and guilt of having participated in the addictive behavior. These heightened bad feelings then cause the individuals to participate in the addictive behaviors again to soothe the pain.
One type of addiction, food addiction, seems like it does not go with the other addictive categories: sex, drugs and alcohol. However, food is something that has to be faced multiple times per day for survival, which makes it different than the other three addictions. An alcoholic or drug addict can avoid bars or buying alcohol in the stores, a sex addict can avoid the areas where there are prostitutes or the bars where they can pick someone up, but a food addict has to continue eating food while breaking the addiction. And you can’t go cold turkey like going through drug addiction rehab.
Food addiction recovery, however, is like the other addictive categories since there are usually certain types of food that the person likes to binge on throughout the day. The foods might be candies, chips, ice cream, pizzas, or any number of junk foods. It is not often that a person will say that they have an addiction to salad or broccoli, but a food addiction recovery from chocolate is commonplace. Food addiction recovery takes determination from the person embarking on the process. The person must be willing to admit to others that she has a problem with food, and wants help in her food addiction recovery. This does not mean that she has to tell everyone that she meets. She needs to only tell people that are safe to her in her food addiction recovery process. That means the people she tells need to be trustworthy not to ridicule her when she messes up, will not share her problem with others without her permission, and will be available to talk to when she needs encouragement.