The Becky L. Jackson Recovery Center

Becky's Story

Introduction

My story is not about finding the villains or events that gave me an eating problem. Although I do believe that environmental influences are a key ingredient in the unfoldment of this complex disorder, I also believe that, in addition to environmental factors, there is a biological predisposition at the root of this illness. But its driving energy is based in how we personally reacted to life and to having the illness.

I now see how I unconsciously used my dysfunctional eating to survive my younger years and how I had to let go of it to survive my adult years. As odd as it might sound, at times I have felt lucky to have had compulsive eating available to that younger Becky.

Many of the details of my early history are recounted from my mother’s memories and many I recalled as an adult looking back over my life. As I describe the memories of my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood—as I share my recollections of past events, experiences and perceptions—my purpose is to acquaint you with me, the author. To share my history, my struggle and my recovery. My recovery from compulsive overeating, diet pill induced starving and alcoholic drinking.

 

My Addiction Begins

I had an awareness of "something wrong" with my eating since I was a small child. For years my mom told a story about me as a baby. She always told it in a humorous way, none of us realizing it was a reflection of my odd relationship with food. She said that when I was still crawling, probably about ten months old, I "ran" away from home. The story goes that we lived a couple of houses away from the corner ice cream parlor and I crawled down there and said "vanilla." This is probably not an accurate version but an embellished one. Nevertheless, it was more than likely based on some truth about my driving interest in food and eating.

I was a thin, active child. Sometimes I would overeat to the point of spontaneously vomiting; other times I’d have no interest in eating at all. I didn’t understand that driving need to eat. All I knew was when it hit, I felt powerless over it.

I remember the driving need to continue eating often kicked in at dinner. At the end of dinner, I’d ask my mom what was left over. I’d tell her I was still hungry and she would always let me eat whatever food was left. If it was lima beans, I’d finish them off; if it was fried chicken, I’d finish it off; if it was liver and onions, I would eat all that was left. At times I would eat so much I’d get "sick" and vomit; I always assumed the food itself made me sick—not the quantity of food. For years I avoided chicken and lima beans because I thought they were the problem. No one seemed aware of my periodic, out-of-control eating. There didn’t seem to be any consequences; I wasn’t fat.

As a young adult, I did the same thing with my drinking—if I experienced a physical reaction to over-drinking, I’d switch substances—I’d switch from gin to vodka, from vodka to wine. For years I assumed it was a particular liquor or wine, not the quantity that caused the reactions.

 

Early History

Historically, I was born just at the end of World War II. My father, after eight years of marriage, asked for a divorce while my mother was pregnant with me. My mother, who was a housewife caring for my two-year-old sister, desperately wanted the family to stay together but my father had gotten involved with another woman and wanted a divorce so that he could marry her. Although the divorce provided my mother with property and enough income so she didn’t need to work, it also brought her great sadness and grief.

When I was about one year old, my mother decided to take her two daughters and move from Texas to Colorado, away from the heartache of watching the man she loved build a new life with a new family. When she informed my father about her plans to move away, he reacted with feelings of loss and upset. He devised a plan to "bring her to her senses." He decided not to return us at the end of the visitation day. Instead he called her from an undisclosed location and begged her to reconsider the decision to move.

Many of the details are no longer clear but within about a week he did return us to my mom and she continued with the plans to move. Only much later in life did I realize how traumatizing that one week away from my mother was. My reaction to the prolonged, engulfing terror of being motherless seemed to set up a pattern of almost complete repression of fear.

By the time I was about two years old, we had resettled in Colorado. My mom remarried when I was about three and my stepfather seemed to me like the world’s greatest dad. The thing that made him great was I felt loved and adored by him. When I looked at him, his eyes seemed to reflect unconditional acceptance and love.

My sister and I continued to visit my birth-father yearly but I don’t recall knowing him in a personal, intimate way, I only saw him and his new family from an observational position for many years. Later on I discovered that my mother’s drinking may have played an important part in my birth-father’s decision to divorce her.

When I was ten years old, I recall my mom asking me if her drinking bothered me. I told her I’d like it better if she didn’t drink. We had the conversation when she wasn’t drinking and she responded sympathetically. I was startled the next time I saw her drinking and said, "I thought you said you wouldn’t drink anymore?" She responded by saying "No, I didn’t say I’d stop, I just asked you how you felt about it." I was stunned and hurt. However, only through retrospection in sobriety could I recognize how deeply hurt I was and how I used my teenage drinking as a retaliation to return the hurt.

In my grade school years I had an out-going, optimistic style. I was well liked at school—the most popular boy in class had a crush on me. I was bright, pretty and in the gifted group. Scholastic achievement was relatively easy for me. I took dancing and acrobatics; I dearly loved the time I spent in those classes.

My mother was a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) from the South. She thought of us as "better than." She was preoccupied with "ranking" others—who was better than who. With my friends, in the neighborhood or at school, I too, constantly compared myself with others. I could almost always adjust my perspective to see myself as better-than. This attitude was impossible to hide from others, but surprisingly, I remained popular at school up until junior high. Sadly, I might add, my older sister often received the brunt of my subtle, hurtful comparisons.

My mother, step-dad and teachers seemed to reinforce my arrogance and precocious independence. To the outside world I appeared super-mature and in-control for the first 12 years of my life.

 

Teen Years

During the last few weeks of elementary school, the tide turned. My girl friends finally rebelled against my tyranny. As a group, they confronted me about my controlling, gossiping, obnoxious behavior and "dumped" me, refusing even to talk to me. I was devastated! I began my years at junior high without my supportive entourage of friends, unable to recognize fear and lacking the skills to make the necessary amends or change to re-establish those grade school relationships.

By the time I completed the seventh grade I had tried alcohol and cigarettes and had found a group of new friends I could feel better-than. I felt somewhat secure again. The first time I drank I blacked out, laughed a lot and thought it was great fun.

I began traveling down a path that caused my mom great pain. Unconsciously, I think I liked the fact that my actions and new friends caused her disappointment and pain. Those were the feelings I experienced as I helplessly watched her abusive drinking, and now she would know what it felt like to watch someone you love harm themselves and others with their drinking. I guess my unconscious thought was, if she wouldn’t stop doing what caused me such pain, at least I could cause her some similar pain. I could get even.

As the destructive life-style that goes with teenage drinking accelerated, things at home and school got worse and worse. I was painting myself into a corner with no way out.

By the time I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, things were unbearable at home. After a series of blow-ups and physical confrontations at home, I secretly packed my bags. One final confrontation brought me to the point to yelling at my mom that my bags were packed and I was prepared to leave. She said the only place she’d let me go was to live with my birth-father.

I called him that night and asked him if I cold come and live with him. I gave him no details, the request was just out of the blue, but he said yes anyway. This was my way out of the very destructive life I had built up around myself. I left for Texas, a new family and a new school in the middle of my sophomore year.

In Colorado, my grades had steadily gone down. I had even received a D on my report card. Now, I felt I had an opportunity to start afresh. I began to take high school seriously. I started to study and get good grades again. I knew that if I wanted to get out from under the control of other people, I’d better get a high school diploma.

Settling in Houston, I picked somewhat "safer" people to run around with. In Colorado, I ran around with a rock band and friends who were into drinking and drug selling. Now I picked jazz musicians to focus on and although I continued to drink and do some drug taking, it all seemed much calmer and more mature.

I was still thin and my eating was only periodically out of control. I even enjoyed the out-of-control eating—I would plan what I called "eat-a-thons" with two thin friends who ate the way I did.

My presence in my birth-father’s home wreaked havoc. My dad and step-mom made it clear that much of my behavior was unacceptable, but somehow they seemed able to accept me. They weren’t manipulative. They didn’t withhold approval, affection or my allowance.

My stay with them only lasted from February to August. I was asked to move back to my mother’s home. My mom had been devastated by my leaving and had been wanting me to come home, I got to return to Colorado on new footing with my mom, with a chance to pick different friends and with a new commitment to my education. I never slowed down on my eating or drinking but I was definitely picking a calmer crowd to do it with.

Back in Denver, I saw how the brief time I spent with my birth-father and his family had given me new information about family life. I intuitively knew they treated me in a healthier way. Although I brought a destructive influence into his home, I felt loved and accepted and wasn’t treated rudely or disrespectfully. When I acted rude and disrespectful, they attempted to communicate to me that my behavior was unacceptable, somehow always implying that I was acceptable. It was an important lesson for me to have experienced. But it was years before I looked back and consciously felt remorse for the chaos and upset I brought to my birth-father’s family.

 

On to "Adulthood"

I finished high school on the honor roll. I was smoking in the smoking area, still enjoying my out-of-control eating and drinking. I was going dancing in night clubs, with fake ID, four or five nights a week.

These early experiences and influences set up patterns that became real obstacles to happy, productive adult living. Looking back, I see that during those early years I began to establish unhealthy ways of relating to others and myself. Very early in my childhood, the pattern of almost complete repression of fear set in motion a style of high-risk behavior. As a teen, I adopted a style of appearing powerful, needless, fearless, opinionated. I used anger and charm alternately to intimidate and manipulate others. It always looked as if I were strong and they were weak, as if they were dependent on me and I was independent. I believed it, they believed it.

During my twenties my weight started to go up and down; I always used diet pills to get it down. I married and had two children. I picked a husband who was emotionally dependent on me. He had early childhood abandonment issues and drank in an obsessive, compulsive way. I felt secure—my own drinking and eating looked OK in comparison. I unconsciously used him to reinforce my denial about the severity of my own eating and drinking. I focused on him in many ways to defuse the pain of looking at me. Only much later did I discover that it’s very common for an adult child of an alcoholic to marry an alcoholic.

My husband began to show signs of chronic alcoholism in his late twenties. By his early thirties, serious physical symptoms began to appear. The heartbreak of being powerless to stop his downward cycle, combined with my abuse of diet pills, overeating and binge drinking, make coping with life next to impossible.

I lost my natural optimism about life. I was incapable of emotionally supporting my children. Even with the best of intentions, I had nevertheless become the most dreaded think I could imagine—I had become my mother. When I realized I was a woman unable to be a good parent, I hit an emotional bottom. A pit so deep I thought I might not be able to climb out.

 

A "Bottom" - Then Hope

The arrival of my twenty-ninth birthday found me overweight, riddled with feelings of failure and still struggling to present a picture of perfection to the world. Each day, through my thoughts and behaviors, I helplessly added to my self-hate, anger, resentment and hopelessness. In desperation, I made a call to an organization specializing in the education and treatment of alcoholism—for him.

A spark of hope came wrapped in the package of information about alcoholism—its genetic predisposition, its incurable, progressive and fatal nature and how it affects all the members of the family. I discovered I wasn’t alone in this experience and I didn’t need to place blame. They told me, "You didn’t cause it, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it." They explained about recovery, about arresting alcoholism. Hope, at last. Pain mixed with hope is a totally different experience from hopeless pain.

I had found direction for alcoholism recovery and the guidance to address the unhealthy relationship issues that were plaguing my life. It was suggested that I seek out local self-help groups, groups using the 12-Step solution.

I intuitively knew that this information about the addictive disease process could also apply to my eating problem. Recovery from an addictive disease, I learned, had to happen on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. My excitement grew as I began to see how to apply this information to both my eating and drinking.

I also began to see how my relationship and control issues got enmeshed with the eating disorder compulsion and obsessions. I saw how I used my body shape and weight to sometimes push people away and other times pull them closer. I became aware of my history of using my body image to define and manipulate my self-esteem.

 

The Struggle to Stabilize

Now, not only was I willing to go to any length to stay sober and to abstain from random, compulsive overeating/undereating, I was willing to look at all the old beliefs that had kept me tied to unhealthy relationships.

Even though I was beginning to feel better than I ever had, things got worse. I watched my husband and my children struggle with the changes in the family and the changes in me. When I had 21 days of abstinence from eating in between moderate meals, my husband was hospitalized because of his drinking problem and almost died. The children were just six and three, and although I wasn’t able to offer an abundance of support and understanding in our home, I continued to abstain from my eating addiction, no matter what.

When I had 30 days of abstinence, my step-father had a stroke. Again, I didn’t use my eating addiction to deal with life’s stress. I didn’t break my abstinence. I knew that random, compulsive overeating/undereating would make any situation worse and I didn’t have the strength to live through "worse."

While I had chosen recovery, my husband struggled with his own life and death issues. I came to the conclusions that a separation would offer me the drug and alcohol free home that the children and I deserved. In my heart, I felt my husband was choosing death when he began to drink again, and I believed that the kids and I had the right to not watch him slowly die at close range any longer.

I remember watching him pack up the last of his things and as he drove away, I thought it might be the last time I would see him alive. I knew he had the right to choose to live or die and I knew I had the right to choose to not watch, but the sadness was engulfing! Sadness for those two young lovers who had lost their dreams and their way; sadness for our children who lost out on a healthy, stable, supportive home that had both a mother and a father.

To my surprise, within 60 days of moving out of the house, he made a commitment to sobriety—to live. Although the marriage was over, we both have continued to honor our commitment to recovery.

Now with new tools for living, I deepened my commitment to being the type of parent I could admire. I stayed abstinent and sober. I took classes, read books and regularly went to an open forum at the local university that offered counseling and advice for families in need of help.

In those first few years, I stumbled along, discovering many realities about me and my world. I took workshops, seminars and immersed myself in self-help groups. They offered me insight into the rhyme and rhythm of how I got to be who I was and the key to understanding how to change and grow into the person I’d like to be.

I developed a style of meditating that opened the door to a wonderful internal world. Through visualizations, I discovered an inner family of "past Beckys" who needed re-parenting, acceptance, guidance and forgiveness. I began building loving, functional relationships with this inner family. I also discovered older, wiser inner selves who brought experience and more recovery to this magical inner family. Working with this new found "family" provided healing of my past experiences, past interpretations and attitudes—a healing of my past.

In those first few years, there were many days when I had to walk through difficult, fearful experiences, but I had finally grown to the point where the pain of not walking through a difficult situation was greater than the pain of putting one foot in front of the other and just trudging through them. There were tears of sadness, tears of anger and rage, and tears of joy. There was fun and lightness in my living I never would have imagined. I went back to school and acquired a healthy ambition to learn and an interest in adding to life. I was becoming a woman I liked.

 

Stabilized Serenity

After a few years of recovery, I discovered a lump in my breast. After the shock, I sat still and evaluated my life from yet another perspective. I asked myself some important questions: Do the people I love know I love them? Do I have any amends to others that haven’t been made? If I had only 18 months to live, is there anything I would want to do or accomplish? Attempting to answer these questions brought my life to a new level of living. The quality of my life increased as I began to live each day as if it were one of my last.

Because of the lump in my breast, I began to change the way I nourished myself, and my family. I realized that even though I was abstaining, meaning I didn’t eat in between meals, I didn’t eat very healthy at those meals. I changed majors at school and made nutrition my graduate level focus. I drastically reduced the fats and oils in my diet. I read labels and didn’t purchase chemical-laden foods. I did a daily meditation that included amends to my body. I apologized to my body for not knowing how to take better care of it. I re-committed myself to developing a better understanding and communication with my body.

I gathered a supportive team of health professionals. After a while the lump became cyclical and gradually disappeared. The lump, which initially seemed like a tragedy, became one of the best things to ever happen to me. It initiated incredible changes.

 

The Joy of Living

After about six years of recovery, I was given the opportunity to work in the field of recovery, first, with recovery from alcoholism, then with children of alcoholics and finally with recovery from eating disorders.

I always knew my problem was with eating, not weight, so when the phrase "eating disorders" started appearing in every day society, I identified. I wasn’t a vomiter, I didn’t relate to the starving to be underweight and I didn’t relate to chronic dieting. My uncontrollable eating created a pattern of gradual weight gain followed by severe restricting through the magic of diet pills. My eating disorder was the classic yo-yo weight syndrome—out of control eating equaled weight gain and temporary control measures meant weight loss. The cycle meant insanity.

I knew I had an eating disorder/eating addiction even though my all-too-common pattern wasn’t being labeled as an eating disorder. I knew that I’d found a permanent solution. The constant, mind-nagging chatter about weight, weight loss, body judging, body rejection—the obsessive, compulsive relationship with food, eating, weight, shape and size—was gone. I hadn’t just "gotten better," I was experiencing recovery.

One of the most rewarding projects, both professionally and personally, was being part of a committee that started a residential center for people with eating addictions. I became the executive director and designed and implemented an exciting program. I lectured at universities, hospitals and clinics. The medical and clinical communities are uniformly a committed group and were always supportive and excited about the information I presented.

Getting to see residents who were on the verge of death or insanity begin to recover was an experience I can’t adequately describe. The experience gave me an opportunity to re-honor my own recovery and cherish that special kind of love that heals.

With the arrival of my forties, I looked back and saw the changes that happened as I stumbled along. One of the most enjoyable successes has been that since 1974, I have abstained from compulsive eating and maintained a stable, healthy body weight. I have achieved a charmed attitude, although not a charmed life.

My purpose for this book is to help provide you with a way to live without the dominating insanity of any and all expressions of eating disorders/eating addictions, to offer you tools and insights that can bring increased self-acceptance and self-love. My hope is to ignite in you a "knowing" that the freedom to live and dream can be yours, again.

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from Dieting: A Dry Drunk. All rights reserved • BLJ Nautilus Publications
B.L. Jackson Recovery Center • 1-800-278-8050

copyright B. L. Jackson Recovery Enterprises