Relapse

Someone in the program who’s been there only a week longer than I have had a lapse on Monday. I worried about her a bit on Saturday, knowing she was going to a wedding. On Sunday she didn’t turn up to the OA meeting we had talked about going to, and with no explanation, either. This morning I heard from her: They hadn’t been allowed phones at the wedding, so she didn’t get my text. She felt exhausted from the party – too exhausted to make it to the meeting – and then binged on Monday. I’ve been there so many time – getting through the worrisome event, only to fall down in the next 48 to 72 hours.

I confess I felt a little scared at the power of this problem – the sheer enormity of it. Usually I don’t binge when I’m being watched quite like this, and certainly not in the first couple of weeks. (And not when I’ve moved my life and spent an awful lot of money for treatment.) But there but for the grace of God go I, right?

I’m starting to think about extending my stay here until at least the six month mark, because that’s a point of freedom from bingeing I’ve never reached. I’ve made it to 100 days; I think maybe even four months. But then it all has fallen apart. There was a lecture at treatment today – more of which, shortly – about relapse. One of the things that struck me was that it’s not considered relapse if you do it after 90 days of abstinence – because relapse starts four to six weeks before the actual episode (in terms of thoughts, feelings and behaviors), you haven’t actually been in recovery long enough to call it relapse. It’s just that you didn’t recover.

Our homework this week is to come up with a list of quite-specific-to-us thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are signs we’re in the relapse zone. I know mine will be things like not cleaning the flat, eating while walking, isolating, staying up too late, and thinking I’m too busy to get to meetings or do recovery-type-stuff. Red flags, if you will. So far this lecture was by far the most useful and interesting, and certainly the most practical.

We also had the first (at least for me) life story, which went on for over an hour. It was a moving story – given by an alcoholic – that I don’t think is right for me to share here, even anonymously. What was terrifying (and fitting for today) about it was that she had 8 years of sobriety before her relapse. One thing she said that is a warning for me is that one of the treatment programs she did was in Arizona, and when she came back to London, she didn’t have any recovery friends.

Finally, I bought the Victoria sponge. Tesco sells them as two mini ones, so I’ve had one tonight and will have another tomorrow. Is this the best version I could have bought? No, but it was pretty good and didn’t require a lot of going into various bakeries and looking at things and wanting them all. Baby steps.

Ten Days

I’m feeling more like myself today than I have since I left New York. I went and worked in a coffee shop this morning (well, technically the lounge at Equinox) and it helped a lot to be out and about instead of stuck in this tiny flat. I had convinced myself I’m not good at working in coffee shops, but maybe that’s just a story I tell myself. (That said, I wasn’t really writing – just doing other types of work. And I certainly couldn’t do an interview there.)

Then it was on to an individual therapy session, and finally to beading, which struck me as the perfect group therapy for Brits, because everyone can focus on slipping beads onto strings (it’s jewelry-making) and not have to make eye contact with each other while revealing deeply personal things. Though there wasn’t actually much revealed. I wonder if it’s intentional to the therapy that beading is a deeply difficult activity for perfectionists, of which most people with eating disorders are? (I like to say I’m a perfectionist but bad at it, but that’s because I like to make light of my flaws.) We all struggled to make choices, struggled whether ours were “good enough,” and agreed about the need for perfect symmetry. One of the women was fussy even about beads that were all supposed to be the same – she wanted the ones that were the most exactly the same. Can’t say I really rated the person running the session, and the whole thing just felt more like a summer camp arts and crafts session, except for the smoking breaks (I might be the only person in treatment who is not a smoker.)

Did a couple more hours of work in another coffee shop, and probably should have gone to a meeting, but I had a several-thousand page deposition I was lugging around, the weather was terrible, and I just couldn’t face it, in part because it was located in such a way that it would take me 45 minutes on the bus but only about 55 to walk, and neither sounded appealing.

Today marks 10 days of neither bingeing or restricting. If I’m honest I’m resentful about the amount of time I spent thinking about and dealing with food – it seems like for all that I should get to lose weight, though I know that’s not the name of the game here. I still haven’t quite surrendered to it yet – I’m ok with 500 or 600 and in some cases 700 calorie ready meals, but I can’t go above that, and so there are a couple of things I haven’t allowed myself to eat. And today I wanted Victoria sponge (anyone got any thoughts on who in London does the best?) and stood in Tesco, holding a box with two small servings in my hand. I paused. Was I allowed to eat dessert and still have my nightly yogurt? I wasn’t sure. I know the idea is that nothing terrible would happen if I had both, but still I couldn’t do it. Nor did I feel like I could buy it and wait until tomorrow to have it, and so I put it back. It will be there tomorrow, along, I hope, with the ability to stop worrying about it all so damn much. I know, I know; it’s only Day 10. It will come.