Peak: The Climb

We are living in a time where labeling seems to be a priority over support. Is it a disorder or a condition? Living with or surviving? Committing or dying by? In my opinion, there should be less focus on the labels and more support on coping and treating. Here’s one reason why: Bulimia presents as a disorder. It presents as a condition. It can be survived. It can be committed. I could go on and on. Particularly when it comes to the mind, symptoms and recovery are highly individualized and dependent on the individual being impacted.

In my previous post, I shared that I am bulimic and I am in recovery. I chose the word “recovery” purposely. That day that I sat down with my psychiatrist and made my admission was one of the hardest and worst days of my life. That statement speaks volumes because I have seen some tough days! (Haven’t we all?) After my disclosure/admission, she casually mentions the course of treatment we are going to begin immediately. At that point, I had sat across from this person on a number of occasions and had never shed a tear, until that day. As I listened, knowing this was exactly what I needed but did not want, I felt something rising up inside me. Something I cannot describe. Something I could not control. She was talking and all I could hear was my mind saying: “I told you so! I told you so! Don’t talk about it or they will take it away!” That’s exactly what was happening. She was taking away my binky! My wubbie! My lovie! The only method of soothing and comfort I knew and used. I started sobbing. My mind was racing. I was making a list of all the current stressors in my life and trying to think through coping without my binge…purge…calm ritual. She stopped (obviously) and asked what was happening. I was hysterical and terrified, but honest. Through my tears, I heard this tiny voice say: I have no other way to survive my life on a daily basis. If you take this away, I will not survive.

That was the moment we both realized that I did not have a disorder, I had an addiction.

There are many ways to treat any condition. Depending on the underlying cause, the root of the issue, Bulimia can be a disorder, an illness, a condition and as I have learned, an addiction.

I’ll spare you the details of the amount of energy this poor doctor had to put into convincing me that we were going to treat my addiction. To this point in my life, I could not really say I had been addicted to anything. I would even say, I had an opinion on addiction. Basically, if someone wanted badly enough, they could stop doing anything. Mind over Matter! Well the Universe has a way of teaching us things that we need to learn and I learned that my mind did NOT matter in this case! Or maybe it mattered entirely too much. The things going on in my head were wildly out of character, even for me to believe, and I was living in the same mind where this chaos was taking place! Who was this person? I was visibly shaking and internally frantic, filled with panic.

I was given Naltrexone. Naltrexone is typically used for treating heroine addicts and alcoholics. It works by suppressing and reducing cravings (usually for opiates and alcohol, but apparently sometimes food?!?) and binding the receptors in the brain that seek pleasure from the cravings. I was an addict. More accurately, I am an addict.

In addition to Naltrexone, I was referred to a therapist to address the root cause and to learn how to live under this New World Order. The following days, weeks, months were brutal, to say the least!

I was very sick from the medication. I was distraught trying to find positive outlets for my stress. While not easy, I was making progress! Each day, I felt a little better. Each day the compulsion weakened. Heck, I can recall a few days where my “dirty little secret” didn’t even cross my mind. Then it was weeks! Then a month! I was climbing out of the well! My energy was coming back! Food was a source of nutrition and not a binky/wubbie/lovie! Pounds were falling off. Brick by brick, I was climbing! I told myself: I can do it! Keep going! This time you finally WIN!

….and then, as life does, I was dealt an unexpected and crushing blow! It came through the mail. That very moment everything I knew was shattered and destroyed. No dosage of Naltrexone, no therapist, no coping mechanism and no self-control was going to stop the absolute flat tale spin that followed that piece of mail. Life placed it’s big ugly foot on my face and shoved me right back to the bottom of that well. Again, something new! Rage…binge…guilt…purge… no calm. Thanks to the Naltrexone, which I continued to take, NO CALM. Rage…binge…guilt…purge…no calm. Shame. Failure. Desperation. I clawed at the wall, I needed to climb. Rage…binge…purge…fail!

However, something had changed. I knew what it was like to feel better. My desire to get back on track was strong. I just didn’t know how to cope. I spent time with my therapist. I began meditation. Not the kind where you find a corner, light a candle and sit cross-legged in silence. The kind where in the middle of the work day or the grocery store parking lot, wherever you are in that moment where the addictive tendencies and cravings start to creep in, you stop and close your eyes. You breathe. You count. You quiet your mind until the urge passes. What you don’t do is walk into the kitchen and open the cupboard…

I started coloring. I started DIY projects. I fell in love with folding laundry (hilarious, I know), something I always liked but didn’t realize could be soothing. I now had a tool box of coping mechanisms. Life is not going to cut me any slack and I know that I am certainly not alone, sadly. My life is filled with people struggling to cope with something or another. There is strength in numbers. There is strength in community, even if that community is a giant ball of disorders and suffering.

I started to climb. I backslid. I climbed. I backslid. BUT, the backslide no longer sent me to the bottom of the well, just down a few bricks. As of today, I am two months clean? Sober? Compliant? What is the label for this type of addiction? That’s why labels do not work. I like to say I am two months healthy. Not a day goes by where I don’t miss that feeling. The calm. The release. However, my body is proof of the price I was paying. Last February (2018), I weighed in at 206 lbs. By October, my weight stabilized at 140 lbs. There is still another piece to the weight loss puzzle because that evaluation revealed more than my “dirty little secret.” But you already know, that’s a post for another day! It’s not just about the weight, my mind is more clear. At my most recent physical, my results were the best they have ever been. I am happier, even when life continues to throw curve balls at me! I have outlets for my stress. I am working out again, but for the right reasons!

Why did I choose the word recovery? Addiction is a road with no end. An infinite journey of recovery. I am careful not to over eat. A full belly is a trigger for the purge compulsion. I avoid the scale. It triggers the self-loathing which triggers the hate and you know the rest of the routine. Will I ever be able to stuff myself and not feel the desires? I do not know. But right now, it’s a risk I am not willing to take. Life is a series of peaks and valleys, but I never want to find myself at the bottom of the well. I never want to lie and hide. I never want to be an Imposter in my own life. I am an addict and I am in recovery.

Rant: Menopause is when your period stops, right?

Yes and no! For most of my life, I understood that I would have a period. Then, one day, I would get hot flashes and be a bit crabby, my period would stop and that, my friends, would be menopause! At the infamous physical where I discovered my hormone issue, I was speaking to my doctor and mentioned that I was basically having non-stop periods. This is, in part, what started the discussion about my symptoms and her suspicion of perimenopause. I had never heard of perimenopause and did not understand how any of that would explain my non-stop periods. That is the moment I learned this fun fact: Your period does not just stop one day. Menopause is not a light switch that gets turned off. There is a bit more to it. News to me! What happens is that your periods get heavier and closer together (during the perimenopause stage) and eventually get lighter and further apart until they stop. Periods do not stop until your hormones have dropped and the ovaries stop releasing eggs. You are not considered to be in menopause until you have had no period for 12 months. You are considered to be in perimenopause (which can be any number of years…1 or 10 or more) until this time. Did you know that? I certainly did not. So that’s the end? NOPE. There is a stage called post menopause. The previous symptoms ease, but can still exist. As a result of the diminishing hormones women are at greater risk of conditions such as osteoporosis and heart disease.

I found it to be unbelievable that I never knew how any of this worked. Even more unbelievable to me was that it never occurred to be to look into any of this. In part, it was because I really had no idea the impact that it would have on my life or my body. Women should be told exactly how hormones impact their bodies at various stages from a young age.

Something else I did not know, which would have been great information during my child bearing years, is that estrogen is responsible for creating an environment in the uterus for the fertilized egg to embed. However, progesterone is what actually retains the embedded egg to the uterine wall. I almost miscarried my first born child. When I went to the doctor, they immediately began progesterone injections. Guess what they did not do? Explain any of this to me. I went on to have a couple other miscarriages (and also a beautiful daughter). When I had my hormone panel, my progesterone was so extremely low that it was conceivable that I may have had lower than common progesterone for sometime given my pregnancy history. No one thought to check into that after a pattern of miscarriages seemed to be emerging or immediately following the scare with my son? Maybe a quick blood draw “just to be safe” would have spared me the heartbreak that comes with miscarriage. Perhaps, at my first OB/GYN at 18, they could have just done a hormone panel to set a baseline so that we could preemptively address any issues BEFORE I got to the point where I was on the verge of losing a pregnancy.

No matter how you slice it, women need more information early in life. As a tribe, we need to get active in informing ourselves and those around us and demanding change. I know, I know, with everything happening in the world this may seem insignificant. Let me tell you, until I experienced that madness that had become my perimenopausal life, I would have thought the same. Not anymore! It’s time to educate and change!

Rant: Do you know about your hormones?

A couple of years ago, I became a shell of who I had previously been. I went from being driven and active, balanced and controlled with the memory of an elephant. Over time, I found myself lethargic, unmotivated, wildly insane and I couldn’t retain a thought long enough to write it down. I gained weight because I was having severe cravings and eating nonstop. I became depressed and the harder I tried to return to “normal” the worse my situation became. By sheer coincidence, I mentioned some of this to my doctor and she referred me to a hormone specialist. I was barely 40 but they wanted to exclude perimenopause?!?! Guess what? It wasn’t excluded. I was experiencing early onset menopause. When my bloodwork came back, I was producing virtually none of the hormones that women need to function properly. I am not a doctor but I have done a TON of research to learn about female hormones and I was shocked at how little I knew. It took over a year to get the right formula to balance my hormones and I was back to feeling like my self. As I began to share my story with friends and peers I learned a few things. 1. Most women do not truly understand their hormones and the impact they have on their mind and body. 2. Women are not really educated on menopause and what happens within the body in the time leading up to this stage. 3. Doctors discount the symptoms women have and actually refuse to test hormones even when requested. So here is my rant: Why? Why are we not taught about hormones and menopause during the “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” class in fourth grade or in our high school health class? Why are we told that menopause is just the stage when your period ends? Why wouldn’t a doctor test hormones or outright refuse to test them when asked? Every year, at my physical my cholesterol is checked. I have never even been close to having a high cholesterol result. Same with blood sugar, etc. Why aren’t our hormones baselined and at a minimum tested ever few years? How many women are suffering because their hormones are out of balance and the symptoms are written off as PMS or female crazy or exhaustion, etc. We are not taken seriously when we go to a doctor and ask for testing because something is WRONG and we cannot explain it. I had been working out like a maniac and couldn’t lose a pound, which I mentioned to several doctors. The response I received was “….metabolism slows down when you get older, keep at it…”. No! That was not the issue. The issue was that my body had prematurely stopped generating hormones but no one bothered to check because of my age. As soon as my hormones were balanced, I began to lose weight. There is a great deal more to that part of the story, but I’ll save that for another post. My point here is that we, as women, need to take control of learning and educating ourselves and our sisters on this topic. We need to make it part of our health routines. We need doctors to baseline our hormones and track changes. The hormones I take (and I take 4 and counting) are all natural. There is no downside to testing hormones. It’s one vial of blood which can be drawn at your physical. I encourage you to research what I am saying and speak to your doctor and speak to your friends. There has not been a single time that I shared this experience and the person I was speaking with did not respond with a resounding: “Wow, that’s how I feel…”. It’s time to make our minds and bodies a priority and change the mindset that we are “just crazy women PMSing!” Please feel free to contact me with questions. This topic has become a passion for me and helping to educate others is quickly becoming my mission!