The most common addiction replacement for drugs and alcohol is without question or hesitation, food. An average 137 lb (62Kg) adult is expected to gain 6.6% of their body weight or 9lbs (4.1Kg) during opioid detoxification (Cocores).
The great news for all you foodies is that you can drink and eat whatever is available in our well stocked residential eateries.
This is because the debate, or should I say—all-out “boxing match,” as to whether or not residential detoxification and rehabilitation facilities should have their patients detox from all drug and behavioral addictions while detoxing from their drug of choice already happened a long time ago.
Why Do Treatment Centers Offer Junk Food?
Leading-top rehabs across the country picked their corner like good orthodox healers and not as orthodox healers usually do.
In the Right Corner of the Ring
GOD stood in the orthodox recovery treatment corner of the boxing ring and was cheered on by a small number of supporting treatment centers. Not kidding. As she almost always did in public, GOD stood tall and strong in the right corner of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Policy Ring.
In the Left Corner of the Ring
The conservative/reform recovery treatment people backed their less confident boxer in the Left corner of the ring, Larry. Larry was most definitely intimidated by GOD because he and his fans knew how tough of a fighter for orthodox recovery treatment she had been in the past.
This woman was a vetted and well-known warrior for orthodox recovery treatment and famous for her TKOs. Heck, who had GOD as their license plate?
Geraldine Owen Delaney founded Alina Lodge in 1957. “Mrs. D” or “Geraldine” to her respected associates, was a legend in the field of alcoholism treatment and facilitated the treatment and sustained recovery of countless alcoholics and mixed drug abusers and their family members.
She was truly an amazing woman with a heart larger than the stunning landscape of Hardwick Township, New Jersey. She was as soft as a rose petal. But everyone who knew her personally and professionally knew to never, ever step into a ring with Geraldine. She could somehow take you out before the starting bell. I’m surprised she didn’t graduate from West Point.
Mrs. D’s position was the most orthodox path to a sustained recovery lifestyle: alcoholics and drug addicts should not be enabled to continue cigarette, pipe, cigar, gambling, sex, love, anger, hate, and processed food addiction while detoxifying from alcohol and drugs, regardless of how it affects the facilities census.
Larry’s corner timidly shouted: No one will come to treatment! We have a really hard time as it is, persuading people that the recovery lifestyle is a better path to happiness and success. It’s too fanatical. Patients and their families will think we’re nuts!
Knowing Geraldine was medically and scientifically correct, Larry and his followers, many hesitant or on-the-fence Larry supporters, told Larry to get out of the ring quickly before Geraldine knocked his sorry glutei out of the ring.
The boxing match was over before it started. Classic Geraldine.
It was not a draw that day. There were no winners or losers. There was however a mutually respected schism that day.
With love and compassion for the people we serve, the orthodox people continued to deliver top-shelf recovery treatment without undermining the conservative/reform centers.
The conservative/reform treatment facilities continued to deliver top-shelf recovery treatment without undermining the orthodox treatment programs.
Orthodox treatment programs continued referring to select conservative/reform treatment facilities. Certain conservative/reform treatment programs continued referring to certain orthodox treatment programs.
Why Are Sugary Foods Offered In Rehab?
Both sects gratefully served millions to follow the recovery lifestyle road to serenity.
It was not often without casualty for conservative/reform mentored people to later go orthodox after numerous treatments ended in relapse.
For example, one of several household names or famous patients was shocked after her last cushy conservative/reform treatment program transferred her to an orthodox treatment facility. The international star may have cleaned a bathroom or two, the hard way, after asking welcoming orthodox rehab staff to bring in her bags from her limo. By the way, her recovery has been a beacon both to her and to others for many subsequent decades.
This story says a lot about why we try and make your entry into treatment as attractive as possible.
That is why family and friends often try so hard to sell treatment and don’t succeed. Indeed, trying to stop abusing drugs in treatment doesn’t make for an easy sell.
For this reason, we understand that it would be even more difficult for you to pick up the phone if you were also expected to stop all nicotine and behavioral addictions at the same time. For that reason, we are both honored and delighted when you get up the courage to pick up your phone, even if you need to continue smoking.
Healthy vs. Unhealthy Foods
When people eat excessive amounts of healthy, minimally oxidized foods, they don’t lose cognitive and physical functioning because of it. This is because healthy food doesn’t contain the same chemicals that release dopamine throughout the brain.
Examples of healthy foods:
- Fresh cucumbers
- Fresh tomatoes
- Fresh kale
- Frozen lima beans (contains all 9 essential amino acids)
- Fresh okra
- Frozen glandules (contains all 9 essential amino acids) (pigeon peas sound disgusting)
- Fresh bananas
- Fresh apples
- Steak Tartar
- Sashimi
- Organic first press olive oil in frosted glass (FP)
These are all non-addictive foods essentially incapable of a large buffet of life-threatening diseases in the face of regular and frequent consumption. These and countless other minimally-oxidized foods
On the contrary, the above are much more congruent with much less systemic oxidative stress (SOS). SOS is easily visualized by knowing that oxidized food consumption causes countless numbers of electrons, like the ones in the wall outlet and your vehicle battery, to take laser-bullet shots of your body’s cell contents, including DNA.
Therefore, “food addiction” is the wrong term. Instead, people actually suffer from oxidized food addiction. This is a much more descriptive term and it provides clarity for those who struggle with food addiction. By knowing exactly what food is to blame, people can hopefully begin to reverse their poor eating habits to avoid the life-threatening consequences of binging oxidized foods.
Common unhealthy oxidized foods include:
- Cheeseburgers
- Fries
- Macaroni and cheese
- Steak
- Wings
- Ribs
- Fried chicken
- Fried fish
- Vegetable oil other than FP
- Apple pie
- Banana cream pie
- Creamed kale
- Sautéed tomatoes
- Canned lima beans
How To Know if Your Eating Habits Are Healthy?
Most experts and people follow the mesmerizing parade of “healthy lifestyle” beacons. Not a single one of them has a single piece of centenarian stats to back their claims. That’s right: eat this, don’t eat that; keto-the new Atkins; Paleo; the eroded Mediterranean Diet; cardiologist recommendations; nutritionist recommendations; and countless other so-called longevity experts and entities do not provide proof that their longevity plan’s promises work.
How Can Anyone Prove Their Longevity-Friendly Lifestyle Diets Work?
Leading experts in oxidized food addiction base their research on studying the lifestyles of countries and regions of the world with the highest number of centenarians, the number of people over 100 years of age that can still briskly walk up a mountain! We don’t count the unhappy ones on respirators and in wheelchairs.
A medical nutrition classmate of Atkins founded the original orthodox Mediterranean Diet (a far cry from the knockoff of today) and is still alive. Ketone diet originator, Dr. Atkins, died many years ago after a long history of heart attack, congestive heart failure, and hypertension.
Eating Disorders vs Oxidized Food Addiction
Body dysmorphia is associated with bulimics and some weight lifters. That is, many bulimics are temporarily out of touch with reality when their scale reads “ideal weight” as they scream: I feel and look fat! Many ripped weight lifters are temporarily out of touch with reality when they disappointingly say to themselves: I’m not big enough.
When you are mainly in touch with reality, and/or over in touch with reality (neurotic), and sometimes out of touch with reality, you are likely to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality and protest that any shrink had the nerve to call you that.
We believe bulimia and anorexia, so-called eating disorders, are people who have lost control of their lives and find comfort in controlling things or people in their lives. It could be cleaning out a closet and straightening it out every day, not letting your spouse do anything without your prior authorization, or controlling what you don’t eat or regurgitate.
Chronic Oxidized Food Addiction has the following signs and symptoms:
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Stroke or atrial fibrillation
- Diabetes type 2
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Mood disorders
- Attention Deficit
- Intimacy disorders
- And countless others
Epidemiologists, Healthcare Professionals & Others Got their Statistics Wrong.
The Top Killers Worldwide are:
- Oxidized Food Addiction
- Nicotine Dependence
- Drug and Alcohol Addiction
By the way, Circa 2005, the American Cancer Society put oxidized food abuse and sedentary lifestyle as causing more cancer than tobacco use
Why is the oxidized food addiction symptom of heart disease still the leading cause of death worldwide with all these cardiologists writing billions of dollars worth of heart prescription and non-prescription medicine?
These so-called scientists assumed that if:
-
- Finfish contains 0.55 mg/g of cholesterol
- Chicken contains 0.88 mg/g of cholesterol
- Cheese contains 1.04 mg/g of cholesterol
- Eggs contain 0.55 mg/g of cholesterol
It has been said by a top psyche-physicist: Don’t ever think that the scientific community is scientific.
Indeed, trendsetters in cholesterol-longevity matters assumed that eating more fish and chicken and eating less cheese and eggs would decrease the risk of heart disease. How has that worked for the millions of people who suffer horrible deaths well before their potential expiration date, while taking prescription medicine? Many centenarian-dense countries and regions eat way more eggs and cheese than chicken and fish, and they get to joyfully savor great-great-grandchildren and the like.
Negative Impact of Poor Nutrition Research
What did the medical and health experts get wrong? They followed the blind unscientific cholesterol leader(s) without checking if he did absorption dynamic and absorption kinetics studies. Anyone in the pharmaceutical industry knows that x mg of exogenous substance does not usually translate into x mg endogenously. Likewise, each food type has never been tested to see how much of the cholesterol is absorbed and turned into the two types of bad cholesterol and what percentage is eliminated as waste.
No one conducted cholesterol absorption dynamics studies on all common foods before medically advising the world to eat this, don’t eat that. That’s why some researchers have been conducting small anecdotal studies based on the paradoxical high-density centenarian consumption of cheese and eggs.
One uncontrolled anecdotal found that fin fish and chicken turned into higher levels of bad LDL than red meat and eggs and cheese raise LDL by zero. This was just a single case study and does not necessarily translate to the general public.
However, regardless of whether we had anecdotal evidence, or more importantly, centuries of centenarian data, don’t you think it would have been a good idea to conduct absorption dynamics and absorption kinetics studies first, before spouting out longevity-friendly medical advice and leading countless millions to an early tortuous death?
Misunderstanding Omega Fatty Acids
There are two types of omega 3, 6 and 9. Longevity super-friendly cis-omega 3, cis-omega 6, and cis-omega 9. Then there are the widow makers, trans-omega 3, trans-omega 6, and trans-omega 9.
There is a laboratory instrument that tells us what percentage of cis and trans double bond isomer is in a particular vegetable oil. The Australian Government carefully monitors their almost exclusively cis omegas first press olive oil with essential zero trans-fat.
Their studies confirm that sunlight or heating above 212 F (think: FP does not oxidize to trans in tomato sauce but will if you sauté or fry with it) will increase the percentage of trans omegas, hence it comes in dark frosted glass and stays cis friendly for up to a year.
The Damaging Effects of Vegetable Oil
Vegetable oils are substantially processed and oxidized. First, they are put under enormous pressure, generating heat and converting cis omegas to trans omegas. The mush is also heated to crazy high temperatures and if there were any cis omegas left before, there are essentially none left over after. If that is not enough rapeseed (the seed used to make Canadian “canola” oil) brutality and oxidative torment, the stuff is bleached to tone it down from not see-through dark to transparent yellow.
If vegetable oil manufacturers ever ran their toxic, over-processed oil through the cis/trans laboratory analyzer, they sure haven’t told us about the results.
Ask vegetable oil manufacturers to post the lab results for why their Nutrition Facts:
Say “0 Trans fat”? Ha! Contains “such and such” mg of omega 3. Well, is it all cis omega 3, or trans omega 3 (We’re betting on this)? Or is it an x%/y% blend? Show us your cis/trans test results for omega 6 & 9, please. Also, where are the warnings that foods fried in vegetable oil oxidize the foods much more which changes a once longevity-friendly food into a powerful toxin?
Can You Develop Food Addiction In Rehab For Drugs and Alcohol?
“Food addiction” is not the problem those who overeat are truly battling. It’s not particularly believable and a little silly if you think about it for a few minutes. When people struggle with food addiction, they typically binge on foods such as processed snacks and sugary drinks. These foods are not particularly good for health, but they don’t cause the same physical withdrawal symptoms as drugs or alcohol do. In essence, these people have a habit that is difficult to break by conventional means such as willpower or dieting.
Additionally, what makes it difficult to overcome food addiction is how readily available and accessible these foods are in our lives. From convenience stores to grocery stores, these unhealthy snacks can be found everywhere, making it hard to avoid them altogether. Moreover, many of us tend to consume these types of foods without even thinking about them – something that has become an automatic reaction for many people over time.
During treatment for a substance use disorder, developing unhealthy eating habits can also occur due to the changes in brain chemistry. Following detox, the brain lacks dopamine, the “feel good” hormone, and seeks out ways to replace its supply. Foods with high sugar content, such as candy and cakes, can falsely elevate dopamine levels – causing a person to experience temporary pleasure. This is why poor eating habits can result in weight gain during rehab.
Advice On Avoiding Weight Gain In Rehab
Once you arrive, listen to your body and mind regarding what to eat and how often to eat. Don’t concern yourself with the nutrition facts of each rehab food or beverage you ingest, unless that is your nature, of course.
Prepare for weight gain because processed, heated, and otherwise altered and adulterated food, oxidized food is dopaminergic just like your drug of choice. Raise your white flag of surrender for now, and eat whatever and whenever you wish.
Food can become your best substitute friend until you substitute oxidized food abuse with the recovery lifestyle, complete with its abundance of cognitive, behavioral, mindful, and/or spiritual dopaminergic fountains. Pleasure center fountains that promise sustained joy and contentment without emotionally painful drug withdrawal symptoms.
Know that oxidized food abuse must eventually be curtailed or your next addiction, oxidized food addiction, will more certainly get you an early grave than your drug of choice. So let’s begin by letting you in on some secrets that health experts don’t know about so that when the future arrives, your sustained recovery will remain better insured.
How Rehab Centers Can Help You Maintain Your Health
If you’re trying to prevent weight gain, constant fatigue, and an overarching lack of wellness, we suggest you trash your oxidized, fried foods.
At Royal Life Centers we are way ahead of the pack when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of addiction and nutrient deficiency. For now, focus on your recovery from drugs and alcohol, and we hope you enjoy our food and snacks. Don’t concern yourself with fried or oxidized this and that. One addiction at a time. Eat as much of whatever you wish; it’s all great dopamine replacement. Bon appetite.
Once you transition into residential treatment, we provide nutrition counseling and education along with three chef-cooked meals to help you truly begin to regain your strength.
Reach Out
At Spokane Heights Detox, we strive to create a holistic approach to recovery that includes proper nutrition and dietary support. We design plans that recognize the unique needs of each guest and provide treatments that cater to every aspect of their overall well-being. Our experts work with our patients to create healthy eating habits through behavioral modification techniques and nutritional education, helping them break the cycle of food addiction for good. With our help, you can experience true healing from your condition and get back on track toward living a life free from addictive behaviors.
If you or someone you know is struggling with a substance abuse problem, please reach out to our addiction specialists for guidance and support, at (888) 907-0898. Our addiction specialists make themselves available to take your call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you or a loved one overcome substance abuse and begin the journey to a healthier future. Because We Care.
