What people don’t understand about addiction, and when I say people, I mean anyone that doesn’t suffer from addiction, is the addiction is the addiction.
It’s not drugs, love, alcohol, sex, or food friendly. Addiction is not about a single source, it’s something else altogether that even addicts try to wrap their heads around. It’s not a substance or a behavior that defines an addict.
The addiction is an addiction. The mind doesn’t wander to an addictive level. It lives in it. It’s a constant moment-to-moment battle within the mind that gets a label: Addiction.
Fighting addiction is a combination of self-reliance to a self that fights the addictive self. It’s a practice that demands a constant conversation with the voice of addiction. It is hard, but possible, and doable. Each moment of everyday. And it will always be a moment-to-moment choice, or situation to make you choose and mark yourself. Don’t mark yourself as an addict. Like any human being, you’re a constant work in progress that gets shaped and developed with each addictive moment. And you get stronger and stronger, even when you feel weak, there’s strength in that moment.
PsychCentral, What People Don’t Understand About Addiction by Erica Loberg
As well as relapse and other health issues, addictions also become a mine field for eating disorder sufferers. I found the above post and it rang true. You don’t want the substance you are addicted to, nor does it bring happiness or fulfillment It is the addiction itself that brings the rush and high feeling. You are addicted to that feeling. Addictions arrive in our lives for many reasons. Genetic disposition, how we cope with life, our way to survive. Eating disorders of course develop for similar reasons. However, sometimes the eating disorder is not enough to protect from strong feelings or the sense of complete worthlessness. The eating disorder may not be strong enough in itself. Sometimes the gap the eating disorder leaves in recovery is too much to cope with, so an addiction to another substance or external source becomes the focus. The addiction is to cover, numb and displace the insecurities and pain we feel. Anorexia itself has been named as an addictive illness for it achieves the same purpose – numb, disconnected, void, displaced from reality – with the same addictive focus.
I don’t have answers. It is part of your recovery journey to work through the addictions if they come and how to find a better way to live and go through life, to move on from the past. It is a warning that ditching the eating disorder too quickly can leave you vulnerable and open. That’s why it is important you do recovery your way and in your time.
One thing I am glad about is that Sophie is frightened of drink, drugs etc. Her personality is such that addiction would be a solution for her. Japan is definitely not just an obsession but an addiction for her. It provides her with an escape from reality when needed.