For many people, there is a connotation between food,
drink and some of the most special occasions in our lives. Holidays, birthdays,
get-togethers-they are almost always centered around a good restaurant, steak
on the BBQ, or a stocked liquor cabinet. Ever get a Facebook invite from a
friend that says, "Hey, we're all getting together at my place on Saturday night to watch me water my plants and fill out online surveys. Hope you can make it!" Right, me neither.

This can be a serious problem for people with
addiction issues. It is unfortunate that more research isn't done on why people eat the way they do, and why there is a prevalence for replacing that 'drive' to eat with another vice after bariatric surgery. Having grown up with an active alcoholic and been married to a recovering one, I can truly say in my expert opinion...I have no clue. But it was not impossible to see the correlation between my relationship with food, and an alcoholic's relationship with the bottle. The main difference? An alcoholic can and must avoid alcohol. A food addict doesn't have that option. Food is pretty much mandatory, as far as I know. So what happens when somebody makes the life altering decision (and it is, that I DO know from personal experience) to have weight loss surgery? When the ability to use food to cope with life's problems is taken away, permanently?
Sometimes the result is a taking up a different vice: alcohol, shopping, sex, gambling, drugs. This is not to say that using food, or any of these other things, is an ideal choice for dealing with problems of any kind. For me, food wasn't just for dealing with stress. It was also for celebrating, consoling, rewarding, or just generally passing the time. When I could no longer take in
large quantities of food, I was fortunate to have a healthier outlet-I wrote a novel. Part of what inspired me to focus on this as a subject was this episode of Oprah that I saw even before my own surgery:


http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Suddenly-Skinny
There is another link on her site regarding teens having bariatric surgery that also discusses this issue. I recommend that as well.

I felt compelled to post this, as I do get quite a few questions about what addiction transfer is, and why I wrote about it. I'm hoping to share more information about it over the coming months, both to make more sense of Trading Poisons (for my loyal fans, of course), and also to bring more awareness to the issue itself. I hope you find this useful, and that you share with friends and family. It might not be as much fun as sharing a huge chocolate cake and a bottle of wine, but maybe it will save some pain for somebody you love!

For more information, here is another link I found. It's very short, but it's a start:
 
http://www.addictionacademy.com/2012/08/the-dangers-of-addiction-transfer/