*My book reviews are not like my other blog posts in that they are a brain-dump rather than a well-formulated essay. They are my notes [for me] from a recent book I finished. *
I read this book substituting the word "drug" for food because addiction is addiction. Some people use food to escape and others use video games, alcohol, sex, television, etc. Addiction fascinates me or rather the question: is it possible to raise children in such a way that they would not need any addictions or is the desire to escape a part of all human life? Is life tolerable without drugs? Is it really so black and white: "Either you want to wake up or go to sleep. You either want to live or you want to die."
So scary to read books like this and think the best thing for me to do with Anders when it comes to food is to have no opinion and let him love all of it. I keep reading these books and they all say the same thing yet part of me desperately wants Anders to feel great shame and fear when he sits down to eat junk (like me). At the same time it makes so much sense that if he is allowed to enjoy his junk food, he wont eat so much of it. It won't be used as a drug to escape but rather for enjoyment. That is the essential question I am trying to answer--how to deal with drugs when it comes to my children.
This book makes me believe that I don't need to worry about drugs, only about continuing to teach Anders to be present and that he is allowed to want what he wants and offering him a safe place to feel what he feels. "Awareness and compulsion cannot coexist." The struggle with addiction and desire to escape is not a struggle of will-power or lack of self-control, it's not about the drug, it's about self-love, wanting and having.
How to not need drugs: to know at a deep level that your life can finally be--and always was--for you, only you. To know that you are entitled to joy.
I read this book substituting the word "drug" for food because addiction is addiction. Some people use food to escape and others use video games, alcohol, sex, television, etc. Addiction fascinates me or rather the question: is it possible to raise children in such a way that they would not need any addictions or is the desire to escape a part of all human life? Is life tolerable without drugs? Is it really so black and white: "Either you want to wake up or go to sleep. You either want to live or you want to die."
So scary to read books like this and think the best thing for me to do with Anders when it comes to food is to have no opinion and let him love all of it. I keep reading these books and they all say the same thing yet part of me desperately wants Anders to feel great shame and fear when he sits down to eat junk (like me). At the same time it makes so much sense that if he is allowed to enjoy his junk food, he wont eat so much of it. It won't be used as a drug to escape but rather for enjoyment. That is the essential question I am trying to answer--how to deal with drugs when it comes to my children.
This book makes me believe that I don't need to worry about drugs, only about continuing to teach Anders to be present and that he is allowed to want what he wants and offering him a safe place to feel what he feels. "Awareness and compulsion cannot coexist." The struggle with addiction and desire to escape is not a struggle of will-power or lack of self-control, it's not about the drug, it's about self-love, wanting and having.
How to not need drugs: to know at a deep level that your life can finally be--and always was--for you, only you. To know that you are entitled to joy.
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