Natalie Gold - Binge Crazy: A Psychotherapists Memoir of Food Addiction, Mental Illness, Obesity and Recovery

Neediness. Its a word Ive had a lot of trouble with over the years. A word Ive used to judge and evaluate people, especially myself, in a less-than-flattering way. Youre not enough if you need to the point of neediness. It's a state, a gimme-gimme state that oozes out through the pores and asks others for their souls.

When I was a kid, I had two parents who were needy. Very needy, emotionally. They couldnt help it. It wasnt conscious. But they fed off me, because they needed me so much. They needed me to fill them up and give them a reason to go to work and to clean and shop and cook and manage. And somehow in all this, I got lost. And it has taken a very long time to get un-lost. Un-lost and found in the big city.

So when I sensed that someone was too needy the way my parents were, I made a run for it, buckled up and sped away as fast as I could. Afraid Id have the life sucked out of me. Very sad. No wonder I turned to a substance like food to fill myself up. I was a kid then and didnt know how to look after myself. Didnt fully realize what was happening to me. But I did keep trying to get away. Id hide in the back room, pretending to do my homework. But Id really be daydreaming, listening to music or reading a book, and mostly trying to figure out the world.

But it didn't matter how much I figured things out. By the time I was twenty-one, I needed a mental hospital to help me get away. And to stop the life from being sucked out of me.

This is the story of how that came to be. And what happened during and after. This is also the story of a pernicious and chronic affliction binge eating disorder , or BED and how it develops and progresses over time, how it can contribute to obesity, how it can influence and affect every aspect of your life until you get the appropriate treatment and start on the long, often gruelling path to healing.

I began writing this book in 2000, more than thirty years after my stay in a mental hospital, and stopped shortly after I bumped into Vivian at the discount grocery store. I'd first met her at Toronto's Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, where we were both inpatients. She told me she'd been back there recently, as had happened to her from time to time over the years. After some chit-chat in the produce section, we parted company once again. Afterwards, I realized my good fortune. All my personal growth work had paid off. Despite the various ups and downs, I'd managed to avoid returning to the Clarke. Except that the sticky cobwebs from my time there were still woven into my dreams and fears.

I didn't resume writing until 2005, when some pieces were added and a coherent form began to take shape. By then, I'd returned to the Gestalt Institute of Toronto to train as a psychotherapist (I'd spent two years there in the mid-1980s, but never dealt with being crazy. Too much else going on). Gestalt requires self-awareness and completing unfinished business from the past. I suspect this is what made me return to the story. I worked at it for a few months, but put it aside again when life interfered.

In May 2006, almost forty years after my time at the Clarke, I acquired a photocopy of my medical records, at the prompting of a colleague. Despite the passage of time, I'd become keenly aware of the shame I still carried, and decided it was time to cough up this hairball from my past. Confront the stigma. Not surprisingly, I couldn't wait to skim through the hospital records, fascinated to learn how the Clarke staff perceived my parents and me. After highlighting particular passages in bright yellow, I put them away for later, when I could give them the attention they deserved. Later came after I spent five years as a full-time university and grad student.

Since 2013, I've been back at it. But this time is different. This time I feel the need to finish telling the story. This time I'm writing because I want to help others and share some of what Ive learned over the years, especially about binge eating disorder and how to cope with being crazy. Because I want to warn mothers of overweight teens to take note and avoid following my own mothers path. And to warn people about family secrets and the havoc they can wreak. I want to encourage people to become more conscious and self-aware, especially those in the medical profession and the mental health field. And to underline the value and importance of finding a spiritual path to follow.

On a more personal level, Im writing because I can't not write. Because I can't put it off anymore. Because I want to acknowledge how much resistance and difficulty Ive had with change from formerly obese, formerly crazy, formerly undisciplined and formerly lazy to who I am today. Unlike others who overcome enormous obstacles in a relatively short time, I've taken so very long to get my act together. And I'm still not finished.

Because I want to honour all the people who've helped me along the way, and they are legion. From the famous authors and celebrities I've never met, who showed me that a woman could be brave and live differently than societys limited female roles. To personal therapists and guides, whose patience and wisdom helped me see what I didn't want to see. To my friends, who've hung in there with me over the years. And to my fellow addicts who trudged with me through the program I joined in June 1981. Because reclaiming a soul and getting a life onto a hopeful and positive track is not a solitary journey.

This time I need to put the past, finally, into the past. To own it, acknowledge it, honour it, process it, let it go, finish with the residual shame and move on with my life. Or, as author and teacher Carolyn Myss would say, to call my spirit back. To gather up all the missing fragments from other time zones and reclaim them, bring them into the present, so that my energies arent scattered, and so I can live more fully in the here and now.