Corri

Thank you everyone for the welcomes and the support! Wow!! Does that ever mean a lot to me!!

I'm replying to you, specifically, yukon, because something you said really stood out to me.... you've never had a craving for alcohol. And it was like a lightning bolt struck me. I've never craved alcohol either.

I'm not one to down anything I can get my hands on. I have two bottles of Sherry I keep on my counter for cooking. I love it in meals... I cannot STAND the taste of it to sip. And I thought to myself... OMG... I DO have booze in the house... but I won't touch that stuff.

I also have a bottle of Old Dan Tucker in my pantry. It's been sitting there for almost two years... my mother was up once long ago and needed it for some recipe she made. I hate, loathe and despise whiskey. Had a really bad experience with it once when I was in college, and to this day, I cannot smell whiskey without my stomach doing a flip. Can't do Dan, Jack, or Johnny. LOL.

Beer and wine are my downfalls. Most especially red wine. I really like the taste of both. So I wondered... do I miss alcohol, or the taste of something I really enjoy? Now, don't get me wrong... if I have either, I can abuse the heck out of them... especially when I am by myself. So I am making no excuses here whatsoever.

Then you made mention of eating sugar when a craving hit, and it was like God reached down and smacked me on the back of my little head. I got online and read for hours.

I have become a sugar addict, and one addiction is feeding another... beer and wine are nearly pure sugar, at least as far as the body is concerned. Over consumption of either is the alcoholic equivalent to a bulimic in a manic stage, gulping, as quickly as possible, twinkies, ding dongs, ice cream... without the purge stage (purge stage, for an alcoholic, is either passing out or vomiting).

The underlying causes of addiction, no matter the specific addiction, are the same. But the best way to attack a sugar addiction, in terms of dealing with it, include a major shift in diet. Reducing the 'sugar-high/sugar-crash' syndrome is paramount. By no means easy... evening out and keeping blood sugar as level as one can is what eventually returns sanity to the body. In some sense, the actual physical addiction to sugar is about the worst I can fathom because it is so prevalent in all our foods, is so readily accessible, it's cheap, it's legal, and knowledge of it is not mainstream. It's just considered a glossed sales pitch to plug yet another 'guru diet' for that multi-million dollar industry.

Make no mistake, the emotional/mental part of the addiction is still present, and effectively dealing with that requires the same strategies as alcoholism.

But long way of saying... God bless you for bringing up the sweets. While I do not believe that altering my diet to deal with the sugar addiction will CURE the addiction or the binge drinking problem... I am entirely certain that if I do not deal with both at the same time, I will continue to fall off the wagon on both counts.

As far as last night went... I made it through. I was a complete and utter beotch and thank God no one was at home to experience me... but I made it. What helped me the most was when I made the link to both physical dependencies, and I completely and utterly distracted myself with all that research and reading.

So today I have started altering my diet. Let me stress that I am not on a diet to lose weight. What I eat, when I eat, how much I eat... is all about keeping blood sugars level. NOT eating, or skipping meals, is the worst thing one can do in treating this particular dependency.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.

Corri