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	Laura has battled with her weight throughout her life, but the 33-year-old was in her mid-20s before she discovered that she was actually addicted to food. Now a member of Overeaters Anonymous (OA), Laura shares her story ...</p>
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	&quot;Any sort of addiction that occupies your mind can make you pretty miserable. It doesn&#39;t really matter what the substance is and how you are abusing it.</p>
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	To be honest I always thought &#39;I&#39;m a bit fat and lazy, so I need to get myself together and take some action.&#39; I had no idea that it was really an addiction at first, even though I had tried and failed to give it up many times.</p>
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	I always had issues with food. From very early childhood, maybe age four or five, food was everything to me. I know all kids like their treats, but food was the one thing that would make life alright for me. If anything happened it would be like &#39;sure we&#39;ll sit down and we&#39;ll have a few biscuits and a chat about what is happening,&#39; but really I just wanted the biscuits. I would visit neighbours and all of that kind of stuff as the friendly neighbour, but really just wanting a bar of chocolate.</p>
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	I tried lots of diets and all sorts of different things as I got older. Then I started to struggle hugely with depression. So I went for counselling and happened to get a counsellor who was a member of AA herself and she spotted the personality of an addict in me. She said it to me and I went to an OA meeting at that stage, about 12 years ago.</p>
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	I completely identified with what they were talking about, not just with food &shy;- yes how they ate and their obsession around it - but more so the misery they experienced while in addiction.</p>
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	I identified with that loneliness and that sort of emptiness.</p>
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	I went into a treatment centre to get some help at that stage and attended OA for four years. I remained abstinent, which is the same as an alcoholic when they might use the term sober. I would stay away from foods that would cause me to binge. An alcoholic doesn&#39;t have one drink and I don&#39;t have one bar of chocolate, because once I have one, I can&#39;t stop. And when I say I can&#39;t stop, I mean for years.</p>
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	After four years of abstinence unfortunately I relapsed. I went into a shop after four years of not eating any of this food, bought two donuts and within the next nine months I put on seven stone.</p>
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	About a year-and-a-half ago then I started to struggle massively with mental health issues; depression, I was suicidal, I was really on the edge of life.</p>
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	So again I found myself going into OA and now my mental health issues are gone. I don&#39;t seem to have that depression any more. I follow the food plan and I have been abstinent for a little over a year-and-a-half now and my life is fine again.</p>
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	It was the addiction that was killing me, but I would have sworn blind that yes I had a problem with food, but that wasn&#39;t actually what was causing the depression and everything else. I would have been sure that I had just lost my mind.</p>
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	I was spending &euro;50 in Tesco on food. So you can imagine that is a lot of chocolate and cakes and junk food, because I&#39;m not talking about meat and veg, I&#39;m talking about pure junk food.</p>
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	I would put a certain amount on a plate to go into the sitting room where my housemates were, but while getting that food I might have put four donuts in my mouth. Once you start you can&#39;t stop, so it&#39;s not about enjoyment.</p>
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	It&#39;s not just in my body, it&#39;s in my mind. So I might have eaten a large amount until I felt incredibly ill last night, but this morning I will tell myself it will be different and that bar of chocolate just looks lovely and maybe I&#39;ll just have the one, but once I start I can&#39;t stop, so the same thing happens every time.</p>
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	There obviously was comfort in eating this food at some stage, but the comfort was long gone and I didn&#39;t want to continue, but I couldn&#39;t get through the cravings.</p>
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	Food is like any substance, it&#39;s used to comfort you and numb emotions and then it kind of turns against you. It can be a difficult concept to even grasp because food is not alcohol. You are not out of your mind, but when you eat that amount of food you are numbed.</p>
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	For me it was a huge time-passer as well. It wasn&#39;t just your regular boredom either, I couldn&#39;t sit with myself. I would be too restless just sitting in, so I would binge.</p>
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	The counsellor who first said it to me, she was a little on the plump side, so at first I kind of thought &#39;Well F you! Why don&#39;t you go?&#39; I was a bit insulted. I was similar to someone who maybe drinks quite heavily and claim not to be an alcoholic and that whenever they like they can stop.</p>
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	Not every overweight person is a food addict, but if you had told me that the next bar of chocolate would kill me, I would still have eaten it.</p>
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	I became very overweight, but there are many people who come into OA who are maybe an average size and some can even be underweight. Weight is not the issue. The issue is this obsession with food. Some of the symptoms could be obsession with weight or body size, overeating, eating to comfort yourself, all of these. Some people might binge and then not eat anything for days. I just ate all the time. I didn&#39;t restrict myself at all.</p>
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	I have plenty of friends who were overweight and they went to a diet club and now they go to the gym and all is fine, but for me it is not about the weight.</p>
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	By the time I arrived back into OA a little over a year-and-a-half ago I was 21 stone. I don&#39;t blame anything or anyone for my addiction. I ate because I was addicted to food.</p>
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	Life is good now. It has resumed to normal, there has obviously been some weight loss, but that is not at all for me the most relevant part of my recovery. When you are obsessed by anything, be it food or whatever, you don&#39;t see the rest of life.</p>
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	OA is fashioned after the 12 step programme of AA. Those steps are about finding a new way of living that will help you not to turn to food. You don&#39;t feel alone anymore. At the meetings I saw other people who have the same behaviours as I had and they no longer had them so that gave me hope.</p>
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	When you have an actual programme of action then it is very manageable and very possible to deal with.</p>
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	I have not eaten a bar of chocolate or a biscuit in the last year-and-a-half. Other foods like potatoes don&#39;t trigger it for me. So I can very much eat the normal foods. In a way you learn that it is not about the food.</p>
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	I don&#39;t struggle every day. I don&#39;t go into a shop and lose my life because of all the sweet things at the counter, the same as an alcoholic who is in recovery for a while won&#39;t start to shake every time they pass the pub. I don&#39;t have that obsession around food anymore.&quot;</p>
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	* Not her real name. As told to Joanna Kiernan</p>
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	For more information on Overeaters Anonymous see oa.org.</p>
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	<a href="http://www.independent.ie/life/confessions-of-a-food-addict-31046839.html">http://www.independent.ie/life/confessions-of-a-food-addict-31046839.html</a></p>
