What it is to be Addicted

I will always purport that I do not have an addictive personality.  My Crohn's, however, has a different grasp of physiological priority.

We all know the taste of sweet freedom that comes with the alleviation of a flare.  The opportunity to stuff ourselves with forbidden sweets, meats, fiber and alcohol is oddly new every time it occurs.  Be it a week of starvation or six months, the gustatory ambition that surfaces at the first sight of a pain-free day is unstoppable.  This is celebration (and, perhaps, weakness), but not addiction.

No, the phenomenon of which I speak is of a chronic and somewhat masochistic nature: a beast that hibernates during the most turbulent parts of Flare Season and soon overwhelms the first glimpses of attenuated agony that might suggest the ingestion of food without consequence.

I speak, of course, of The Compulsion.  Normally, The Compulsion takes the form of the homunculus in my brain who demands that I constantly have something constructive for it to do.  Lately, after eight months of excruciatingly limited diet, The Compulsion is more concerned with food.

Primarily when we have guests staying for weeks at a time in our home (which is more often than you would suppose), The Compulsion wants to be a good host and assumes the responsibility of eating and drinking those forbidden sweets, meats fibers and alcohols that our friends appreciate in our cooking.

And so, Dear Friends, the last week has once again been especially filled with pleasant dining and indulgence in my favorite wines (in the tragic way that only an oenophile can treasure good wine after eight months prohibition).  This, while keeping The Compulsion happy and contented, has been accompanied by nightly sits with the hot pad; teaearlgreyhot; the toilet and, occasionally, our loving companion, Percocet.

This is the plight of an addict -- to lack the composure to say no to food and drink in social scenarios, even when the pain is immediate.  Seriously; if you've ever tried to quell alcoholism or quit chain smoking, this is the mental state I am in right now.