Playing with fire

I started this as a weight loss blog and I’ve been posting about everything but losing weight for the last couple of posts and the trend continues, well at least right now. Today I woke up feeling 100% better despite all the crap I’ve been going through. For the last 3 days my eating has been off the wall. The night I found out my grandfather died, I went out at 9:30 at night brought a 12 pack of Ultra lite, and some fried chicken, and a bottle of hot sauce. I ended up eating one breast doused in hot sauce and drinking 3 beers. Speaking of emotional eating, before I even left the house I at 3 diet candy bars(they are high fiber, low sugar but taste so good). The next day featured more hot sauce, beer(2) and friend chicken for dinner, after eating fast food for lunch. Tonight hasn’t been much better, Chinese food for dinner but no alcohol. The bad thing is I have no appetite. I have just this empty feeling, that I am just mindlessly eating to fill. I thought I was over that, and beyond the emotional eating. Granted I’m not binging like I would do in the past. I haven’t crushed a whole bag of cookies, or a thing of ice cream in one sitting. I’m just eating stuff I normally wouldn’t be eating. Does it make me feel better? Nope, not at all. If anything I felt worse after eating the crap, because I know its wrong.  But each day is a new day, and a new start. So tomorrow I will do better, I will try.

This morning I woke up in a fairly good mood. I had a good breakfast, a cup of green tea and I got a lot of cleaning done. My psych clinical was canceled so I didn’t have to go to class or the hospital today. Instead we were told to find an NA meeting or an AA meeting to attend. Tonight I went to the AA meeting and tomorrow night I have to go to an NA meeting so that I can compare and contrast the two formats. So I am wondering will it be as interesting as the AA meeting. We have to do this is in an effort to gain insight into the whole process before we come into contact with addicts and such during psych rotations. The big thing with doing rotations in the psych hospital is to check your own judgements and feelings at the door. So I had no problem going to a meeting. I have come in pretty close contact with addicts and substance abusers in my life so I have a negative feeling about addiction and recovery. Honestly I don’t believe in recovery. show me a recovered addict and I will show you someone one step away from a drink and a hit. But I went to the meeting, because it’s not about how I feel about it. Its about how the patients feel about it. Well I think it’s great that people are getting help, and want change. I’ve just had too much experience with that relapsing addict. During the meeting I felt kind of weird at first because I had such negative feelings about the situation. I also kept getting stared at. When it was my turn to “share” into their discussion about pride, humility, and serenity. I talked a little about it, then I told them I’ve been through a lot lately. I told them I just had emergency surgery, I just lost my grandfather, who felt more like my father than my own dad, and that I had just started the hardest year of my nursing school. I also told them I have been dealing with my stress and emotions with alcohol. I didn’t say I was an addict or pick up those chips they were passing around or anything like that. But I didn’t want to sit there like a bump on a long, so I joined in their discussions. The stories’ the men and woman shared were very interesting. Even though a lot of them relapsed a lot  I didn’t feel the same bitterness and negativity as I did when I went in with. I found them inspiring because they were trying, even if not succeeding.

Most of the stories I could relate to personally or with my experience with dealing with addicts. But on a personal level I felt like it related to my current spiraling. I won’t say spiraling out of control but more playing with fire. Starting to drink again, and knowingly emotionally eating is a slippery slop for me. I know for a fact that I was a food addict in the past. The simple act of eating a cookie was enough to get me “high”, sometimes one would do. But most of the time I would find myself back in the kitchen no later than 10 minutes. I was that snacker in bed. Before going to sleep at night I would have my doughnut sticks as my reward for a hard day. If I felt sad, I ate. If I felt tired, I ate. I really didn’t even need an excuse to eat. I ate despite being stuffed or full, or not even hungry. It was my addiction. For me alcohol and excess food were like both cut from the same cloth. If I was having some beer then I just HAD to have my two bag of chips, pack of m&ms, beef jerky, and some other candy. You know you got it bad when you make sure you have backup snacks in the house just in case you run out and you NEED to have some more. So I’ve come a long way, but this past week I’ve found myself playing with fire, and not just craving alcohol but feeling like I NEED it. Not just craving bad for you food (I swear these diet candy bars taste just like Pay days and Snickers with just 1 gram of sugar), but feeling like I NEED it. I’ve also been so snappy, moody, and an all around b*tch. That’s why I have been limiting my time of LJ and Spark because the littlest things have been setting me off. But that is sooo not like me usually. Like in the last post I mentioned that I went to the docotor about my sutures opening up and drainng all over the place. But you should have heard the argument I got in with the docotor. I have NEVER talked to a medical professional like that before in my life. She told me she didn’t see any drainage while see was wiping the suture with some gauze. Of course all she had to do was turn it over and look at the brownish greenish crap on the other side. But before she had the chance, as soon as she said she didn’t see anything I was like, “Are you serious? Did you even finish medical school? If you can’t tell this is infected then there is something wrong with you. take a look at this suture, you see how nice and closed it is. Now look back at this one, big gaping wound with pus drainage, and it’s smelly. If you think that’s normal then you need to find a new profession” What a b*tch I was, poor lady! She said she didn’t mean it wasn’t infected she was just talking to herself while she was doing her assessment. But needless to say my little rant had her shuck. I won’t even continue with the rest of the conversation but lets just say before I left the office that day a supervisor or attending or whatever she said she was came in with an attitude just as bad as mine. She said her piece while rolling her eyes continuously at me and stormed off. Just as a side note this was not my normal Doctor or the Doctor that did the surgery. These were new people I had never seen before. Despite the pain I was in or what i was feeling at the time, my behavior was inexcusable.  I just had no patience or tolerance for nonsense that day. I guess I was so short tempered with her because I had been having such a bad experience with Doctor’s lately. So you see I’ve been really short tempered lately. I need to get that in check fast, you can’t be in this profession and not expect to have situations where you HAVE to turn the other cheek. Where you HAVE to let stuff go. So I need to take a big woos-ha now and get over it all, and just do what I have to do. So that is my confession, I confess that I have been eating bad for the last 3 days. I confess that I have been drinking for the last two days. I also confess that I have been displacing my feelings. Instead of being all sad and mopey I’ve been a B for not good reason at all. I confess that I don’t have all the answers. I also confess that I am still a work in progress. I really believe we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge so I am acknowledging my current flaws. While I’m not fully off track, I am zig zaging all over the place. All I can do is try to do that right thing each day.  I will strive to make each day better than the last.