Lore of addiction

The lore of addiction implies addicts are in denial if they are not abstaining from their intoxicant. This 'denial' increases the right of others to describe their inner experience, to take it over in order to put them back on the right track.

Not really the case, but I don't want to get sidetracked.

People ignore that addicts accept they are addicted. However long it takes, it's relatively rare for someone to deny forever that they have a problem -that will only tend to increasing till it becomes overwhelming and speaks for itself. And though addiction affects/distorts behaviour and responses, it doesn't in and of itself remove sanity.

Fat people have travelled in the other direction from the narrative of an addict becoming aware of a change of state from using to needing. Fatz have never resisted other people's diagnosis of 'problem with food' it's the whole shape of calorie restriction. Any of us who've dieted or thought we should have by doing that accepted what they are now trying to call our 'addiction'.

That fits our accusers better as they are totally in denial about the reality of their beliefs. It's called delusion, wilful in this case.

It is our experience of this inner witch hunt that eventually gave way to our moment of clarity. Even if your hunger and appetite are out of balanced dieting is itself an imbalance so you either create or increase inner havoc.

Creating the problem we are already supposed to have, the former would therefore be hidden by the latter too.

It is now recognised by at least a few experts that this is even more the case if you have actual disorder, you simply must not diet. So the only purpose of dieting turns out to be to create the original diagnosis, the reverse of abstinence which seeks to imitate a pre addicted state.

Which of course is almost (though not quite) as bad as lifestyle anorexia.

In truth abstinence doesn't particularly 'work' much for addicts either. It is basically a religious mindset a form of faith healing, that if you believe in wellness you by that belief create it, i.e. placebo.

It's like a depressed person making a singular conscious effort to reverse their symptoms. To act cheerful and energetic, to fake it. If this somehow triggers the body to restore its balance then bingo, it seems like a result.

But how likely is that to work? In a sense if you have reached that state it's far more likely that fake it till you make it has already failed to catch numerous times along the way. It's more likely there is more than one dimension to the condition.

In the case of fatness what is being attacked is hunger and because of that creating or furthering imbalance because the body is design to overcome obstacles to what it needs to continue, whereas in addiction the resistance is the shortfall (that is the addiction itself).

I'm not trying to be snobby here I know addicts often object to to fatz rejecting the tag 'addict',

In the case of fatz and other ex-dieters it is stopping weight loss dieting that actually feels like stopping an addiction. Look at all the trigger warnings regarding weight loss dieting. Dieting actually sensitises your nervous system to the point where everything hurts more and things that wouldn't do, especially in terms of emotions, levels of anxiety and so forth.

Similar to that aspect in addiction or depression.

The addiction scenario of self harming behaviour (which I don't accept as a useful or correct way of looking at it) then piles up and eventually messes up your life, is exactly what happens with dieting, the pursuit of it increasingly takes over your life and messes it up. The more you put into it the greater the mess.

The dieters 'strung out' i.e. dieted/burnt out is when your body can no longer tolerate another effort to impose what is a form of anorexia on it, or what addiction lore calls 'rock bottom' the free dictionary's words;

 b. Physically or emotionally exhausted.

That is when you have to stop and recover the part of yourself that has been steamrollered by your increasingly narrowed focus (obsession).

Understand, I'm not trying any rotty thinking about labelling sub anorexia an addiction, that would be the exact mis-use I can't stand, I'm merely stating that it fits the model far better than merely being fat.

Ditto drug addicts, the addiction takes them over squeezing the energy out of their personality by recruiting that energy to its ends so you  become an entity that exists purely to facilitate drug use. From being a person with an addiction, you become an addiction with a person as an engine for that.

I know also that addiction is being used for the stigma that has been invested in it and this makes addicts angry at fatz who reject the tag thinking that its out of snobbery, this ends up being the same objection smokers have, we've accepted the place assigned to us therefore fatz must too.

If you accept what you clearly don't like that is no reason for anyone else to accept it. If you look at fatz and think "who are you to refuse this? Don't you know how low you are?" and that gives you pause for thought about the things you've accepted, that's a good thing.

But we [Some of us] are not swayed one iota by addicts or smokers as to what we should and shouldn't accept, we make up our own minds same as you.

Arguments have raged about the true nature of addiction, counter arguments have been put and the loose thinking of today where anything can be an addiction (nonsense) won. People who do not grasp it at all feel they can bandy it around.
 
If contempt for fatz and our rejection of it is the catalyst for a rethink, be our guest, the status accorded to addiction is evident in the fact that eating can be compared to it at all with it as a starting premise-that is status indeed. Sorry if it upsets you that [if] we aren't impressed by that status, like you, we feel perfectly capable of knowing who and what we are.

And you of all people should know how tiresome it is when the ignorant/ scared mentality impinges on your lives. This whole self abuse/self harm is their view. As we see from pursuing the sanctioned self abuse of dieting society and authority does not object to this because they feel its right.
Yet when judging you, they do not ascribe that same humanity to you, they switch to you take drugs because you feel it will do you good and harm is a side effect of that, to putting forth self harm as motive.

Drug addicts know those who are endlessly seeking vicarious thrills by hearing your stories. They get off on them, always wanting to know all the scrapes you've been in and what you've been reduced to, then they tsk, tsk and then go onto their wages of sin weariness act.

When they talk about self harm as a motive rather than an effect or consequence they put first what is stopping them from turning vicarious into action, fear of harm to their precious selves. They stoke their contempt of you, at the same time by this reiterate their self valuation.

The self harm analysis puts them first just as the stigmatisation of addicts does too, its all for them all to discourage other from taking drugs. Sacrificing you to their need in the process.

When one thinks of the sanctimonious way people go on about addicts they are endlessly punked into doing things normals don't have to. Any prescription addicts-now there's people with airs and graces- will be told above all else, never stop taking your drugs without medical advice and support.

If illegal drug users are to receive the time of day, they must stop now no matter what. I actually didn't know till quite recently that people die due to having to stop drugs this abruptly especially if that has been long term. I saw a documentary about an addict who died of a brain aneurysm because of this. Although the damage done to his body leading up to that may have assisted, the question remains if he'd been allowed staged withdrawal, would he have survived?

Presumably the clinical trials indicating illegal drug users should do what legal one are advised strongly against will give an indication. I'm sure there are plenty.

That's another thing missing from fatness or even overeating as addiction-intoxication. In order to be in a state of addiction you must have an intoxicant, it is the side effects of this that cause the effects or highs you are seeking.

Many of us are aware of these things and more, but it doesn't feel like our place to interfere in what drug addicts choose to use to represent their experiences. But when it comes to defining our experience that is for us and drug addicts have no more expertise than anyone, even ex-addicts who have now become fat.

Nonsense such as I feel my eating/body is like my addiction, do not impress me one iota and that should be borne in mind when these statements are issued in order to avoid the shock of having addiction spiel taken with a pinch of salt.

Anyone who calls themselves an addict, calls it themselves for themselves, not me or any other fatz. Whatever hierarchy you think exists does not exist for me and my consciousness. So any authority endorsed sensibility you find sufficient compensation for the punking you've been given is not for me to cash. Take it up with those doing the stigmatising.

Mere satiety the soothing of an excess of appetite or even mood support from foodstuffs doesn't cut it as a poison, unless that food has gone off and ferments turning into a drug, like alcohol!