My 600 lb. life
Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 1,111
I suppose the question for me is...when is a problem, a problem?
If someone weighs 300lbs and they are truly happy...that's their business. If their relationship with food and their weight makes them desperately unhappy...ashamed...secretive...If they don't want to be who they are but can't help it...that's a problem. I had an ex who attended overeaters anonymous...she had struggled with anorexia and bulimia for much of her life. She talked about a relationship with food that actively isolated her from other people, made her feel ashamed, made her secretive, made her do all sorts of things that made no sense at all to me in terms of food (throwing things away, pouring garbage on them so she wouldn't eat them then getting them out of the bin again...fantasizing about mixing white flour and water because it would fill her stomach but have no calorific content).
IMO Every problem drinker seems to defend and justify their drinking amd come up with similarly unusual patterns of thinking and behaviour. Sometimes to the point of losing friends, family, relationships, marriages, jobs, houses, freedom, even life...at least...they look unusual from the outside, from the perspective of someone who does not have a drinking problem. They make perfect sense from the inside...of course they do...that's addiction
If you have an emotional shock like a bereavement and you get drunk most folks would say..."that's a perfectly natural response". But if the consequences of taking that drink mean losing a job, family, relationship, starting a bout of days or months of drinking that you can't control...it doesn't seem such a natural and justifiable response anymore.
Drinking against your Will, in the face of heavy consequences, repeating the same pattern over and over again...something isn't right there is it? Something has gone wrong. That's where the concept of alcohol problems as a disorder come from.
If someone weighs 300lbs and they are truly happy...that's their business. If their relationship with food and their weight makes them desperately unhappy...ashamed...secretive...If they don't want to be who they are but can't help it...that's a problem. I had an ex who attended overeaters anonymous...she had struggled with anorexia and bulimia for much of her life. She talked about a relationship with food that actively isolated her from other people, made her feel ashamed, made her secretive, made her do all sorts of things that made no sense at all to me in terms of food (throwing things away, pouring garbage on them so she wouldn't eat them then getting them out of the bin again...fantasizing about mixing white flour and water because it would fill her stomach but have no calorific content).
IMO Every problem drinker seems to defend and justify their drinking amd come up with similarly unusual patterns of thinking and behaviour. Sometimes to the point of losing friends, family, relationships, marriages, jobs, houses, freedom, even life...at least...they look unusual from the outside, from the perspective of someone who does not have a drinking problem. They make perfect sense from the inside...of course they do...that's addiction
If you have an emotional shock like a bereavement and you get drunk most folks would say..."that's a perfectly natural response". But if the consequences of taking that drink mean losing a job, family, relationship, starting a bout of days or months of drinking that you can't control...it doesn't seem such a natural and justifiable response anymore.
Drinking against your Will, in the face of heavy consequences, repeating the same pattern over and over again...something isn't right there is it? Something has gone wrong. That's where the concept of alcohol problems as a disorder come from.
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