It's not apples and oranges

My father was an alcoholic.  Although I loved my father, I hated is habitual drinking.  For one thing it was embarrassing to me.  Do you remember the old Andy Griffith television shows, where Andy played the sheriff and Don Knotts played his deputy, Barney?  Every weekend Otis the town drunk stumbled into the jailhouse; locked himself up in one of the cells, and slept it off.  In later years, the television show Good Times had a similar character they referred to as Ned the wino.  These characters were always good for a laugh but I secretly despised them.  To me, their image represented all alcoholics, which included my father.  I didn’t take on the habit of consuming alcohol.  Don’t get me wrong, I drink and have been drunk on occasion, but I’m no alcoholic.  I have been proud of that fact for years.  However, ACOA material has opened my eyes to my addiction, which is food.  I learned that common addictions include unhealthy and repeated over-use of alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking, and yes eating.  Food addiction is, quite simply, being addicted to junk food in the same way as drug addicts are addicted to drugs.  It involves the same areas in the brain, the same neurotransmitters and many of the symptoms are identical.  I have a bowl in my office that I used to fill with peppermint candy.  I had to stop filling that bowl because by the end of the day, the candy would all be gone.  I would compulsively eat the peppermint when I was stressed and anxious working on a project.  As I write this blog post, it’s important to note that I just finished off a huge slice of carrot cake because getting my blog post completed on deadline is stressful to me.  I realize that my junk food addiction is as serious as alcoholism and drug abuse.  Compulsive eating can lead to type 2 diabetes and obesity.  So here’s another eye-opening revelation in my quest to understand the effects of being ACOA.



Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins, and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic