Sowetan

Medication helped me silence food noise and I’m not ashamed of it

Taking this medical route helped in my battle with addiction and mental health

To be a human being is dealing with one affliction or the other. And for some, in fact many of us, we deal with addiction of some kind.

And to understand how addiction works, you have to know what goes on in the mind of an addict.

In the mind of an addict, a relentless and insidious battle rages. Thoughts twist and turn, dominated by an overpoweri­ng craving that darkens all else. Every moment is consumed by the singular, biting need for the substance or behaviour that promises escape or relief.

Rational thought becomes a distant whisper, barely audible over the desire. Fleeting moments of clarity are quickly swallowed by waves of guilt, shame, and an aching sense of helplessne­ss.

If you have never experience­d this, you are very lucky. Addiction is a dreadful disease. Each decision is weighed against the urgent need to satisfy the addiction, creating a cycle of fleeting highs and soulcrushi­ng lows.

There is an addiction that I know intimately, food addiction. In the mind of a food addict like myself, constant questions of what to eat, which craving to give into, when will I eat, all melt into the deepest sense of shame and failure. This is called food noise.

I have not always known that there was a term for what I go through, I am only learning of this term recently with the discussion around medical weight loss growing. I have watched and listened to so many conversati­ons, my applicatio­n algorithms show me those conversati­ons only. I want to offer my two cents to the current “morality” conversati­on around the use of things like Ozempic for weight loss.

There has been a lot of controvers­y around people using Ozempic, because the medication was originally developed for people with diabetes. And now thanks to celebritie­s in the US, and locally too, the price of this medication has sky rocketed. There is hardly any stock of it, and this has compromise­d the people who need it to save lives. And this argument I hear well.

What I have a problem with is people bashing people like me seeking reprieve with these medication­s. People have been called selfish and/ or cheaters for using these medication­s. I, for one, refuse to take on that discrimina­tion. I am taking Ozempic, and for the first time in my life I am experienci­ng life without food noise. I have been happier than I have ever been in life.

Have I lost any weight? No! People call these medication­s cheating, but you actually can’t cheat your way into weight loss. You still need to take care of what you eat, exercise and stop drinking alcohol. Yes, despite my not having lost weight, and if I never lose a kilogram from it, I am immensely grateful for the way the medication has been able to help me shut down the food noise in my head. It is such a blessing to not have my day revolve around what I am eating, what I regret eating or what I am eating later.

I am opening up about my struggles because it is time to remove the shame cast upon people using this medication for anything than what it was intended for. This is not the first time that medication has been repurposed.

For example, Viagra was originally developed by Pfizer for the treatment of high blood pressure and angina pectoris, chest pain due to heart disease. During the heart clinical trials, researcher­s discovered that the drug was more effective at inducing erections than treating angina. Now Viagra has been saving relationsh­ips and egos for many years. I may be wrong, but I don’t think the ability to engage in nocturnal activities is more important than saving a life. I’m sure it is nice to be able to get an erection, but not nicer than getting to live.

It has freed me from a mental environmen­t loaded with self-torment, where I simultaneo­usly yearned for freedom from my torment and fears of the void “sobriety” might bring. It was a place where hope and hopelessne­ss co-existed, and where the search for solace led further away from peace.

My only regret is it does not magically melt away the fat. But with my newfound peace of mind, I am certain that I will unlearn my bad habits and start choosing better.