Free Brain Over Binge by Kathryn Hansen Page B

books on eating disorders, books about finding happiness, developing self-esteem, relieving stress, finding spirituality, and overcoming depression. Although some of them helped me with other problems, none of the books stopped my binge eating.
    This particular day, I also wandered into the addiction/recovery section, thinking that I might find something more useful there. I felt as though my behavior was indeed an addiction, not so unlike alcoholism or drug addiction. I looked over the titles and came across Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction by Jack Trimpey, which claimed to be an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous. I picked it up out of curiosity, because I had experienced Overeaters Anonymous (OA)—a spin-off of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)—about six months before.
    I'd attended a few OA meetings and read some of the OA literature. But OA hadn't felt right to me, mainly because the group advocated a very strict diet that excluded all white flour and sugar. I knew that restricting food groups, like fats and sweets, had helped develop my problem in the first place, so more restriction wasn't the answer for me. Certainly, I wanted to stop bingeing on sugar, white flour, and many other things, but I didn't want to stop eating them altogether.
    OA, as I understood it, asserted that eliminating those food groups was necessary because overeating was a disease that caused one to lose control when eating white flour and sugar. OA's position seemed to be that the disease could never be fully cured, only managed by eliminating the problem foods. I already disliked being on a meal plan—which I thought was necessary for my recovery—and I especially didn't like the idea of a meal plan that excluded foods I really liked. I found the OA members to be very nice, but the meetings were discouraging to me. No one in the group, except the moderator, seemed to have had much success with remaining abstinent from problem foods or giving up overeating.
    OA was also unappealing to me because of what I thought was a religious overtone. OA does not claim to be religious, but I interpreted the "Higher Power" to mean God—the Judeo-Christian God that I learned about as a child. I had turned to God for help with my bulimia in my freshman year of college, but it didn't help. I had naively expected God to take away my desire to binge, but eventually, I came to believe that God does not do favors; and although people can derive strength from spirituality and prayer, we ultimately have to help ourselves. By the time college ended, I struggled to have any belief at all and saw religion as primarily an academic pursuit. OA, then, seemed like the wrong fit for me.
    Because of my lack of interest in OA, I was very interested when I found Rational Recovery (RR). Since the book claimed to be an alternative to AA, maybe it could be an alternative to OA as well, I thought. One sentence on the back cover caught my attention. It explained that RR disagreed with the idea of alcoholism as a disease and could give hope to those whom traditional treatment fails. This simple synopsis was enough to make me want to buy the book. Even if it turned out to be useless, at least it would distract me during the many hours on the treadmill, stair climber, and stationary bike. I purchased the book and drove to the gym.
    RR did much more than distract me from my workout. In fact, it did more to help me than anything else I'd tried before over the years. RR finally made me take full responsibility for my binge eating, then taught me how to do something about it—something specific and targeted to my real problem. I didn't know it at the time, but the ideas in that book would lead me to complete recovery from bulimia.

10 : My Two Brains
    W ithin five minutes of starting my workout, Rational Recovery in hand, I learned the book's central tenet: anyone can recover from alcoholism or another addiction whenever they want, without treatment. The author,