We are back to April 2020.  It’s 6 weeks into covid.  I am sitting on the couch with my phone and my cousin Clint is cooking dinner.

Me:  I’m going to order pizza.

Clint: Why? I’m making dinner?

Me:  Because I want pizza.

Clint:  Why not eat what I’m making so it doesn’t go to waste?

Me:  Because I want pizza!

Clint: But I planned to make this meal, shopped for the ingredients, you don’t have to do a thing except eat it, why not have this meal?

Me:  Because I feel like eating pizza.  I don’t want what you’re making.  You eat that and I’ll eat pizza.

Backstory:  Clint is the most calm, reasonable person I have met in my life.  He has never yelled, raised his voice, showed frustration.  Nothing.  At this point, he had lived with us for a few years.

Clint takes a breath.  He pauses.  Then he unloads.

Clint (incredulous):  That is so rude!  Here I am making the effort to cook YOUR dinner and you aren’t going to eat it?!

Me (unphased):  Correct.

Clint:  Do you think that I want to eat pizza for the 6^th night in a row?  I’m sick of eating fucking’ pizza!!!  We’ve been eating pizza for like 6 weeks straight.  Do you think I want to eat pizza so often?!  When we order pizza then lunch the next day is more pizza.  I’m sick of pizza!  I’m sick of feeling like shit and I’m sick and tired of watching YOU in a shame spiral!  I’m so sick of this!!!

Me:  Stares blankly.  Heart racing.  Legit terrified.  I can hardly move.  I feel awful.

In that moment I immediately, like not minutes after or the next day, I IMMEDIATELY saw that my pizza addiction was affecting someone else.  I was the alcoholic.  My dad was an alcoholic, I know what it’s like to live with an alcoholic and the impacts it had on me.  I hated that part of my dad and for all of the yelling and neglect and anger.  I was my dad?!  Clint is telling me that I am my dad?!  I am the alcoholic!?  Whoa.  I am impacting someone else with my decision to eat pizza?  I mostly felt shocked, terrified and horrible, I felt so horrible for impacting Clint in this way. 

You see, covid struck in March.  I would say at an absolute minimum we started ordering pizza for takeout 3 nights a week and I always ordered leftovers for lunch the next day.  Because of the covid shutdowns, I was unable to divvy up my pizza addiction via a variety of sources. I did eat pizza this often, but I would sometimes eat at the Pizza Hut lunch buffet solo or with someone, I might order take out for our home, bring pizza to my brother’s, meet a friend at a restaurant, bring take out to a friends, go out for pizza at work – it was SPREAD OUT – everywhere. 

Covid really highlighted my pizza addiction.  With restaurants closed down for dine in and protocols not allowing me to hang out with friends and work from home protocols, I had no choice but to eat pizza exclusively at home.  One place.  Clint had hit his breaking point after 6 weeks of this.  He had had enough. 

I was so terrified and solemn that I contacted a counsellor.  I called our Employee Assistance Program through work and was assigned a free counsellor.  This counsellor suggested I go to an Overeater’s Anonymous (“OA”) meeting which I promptly attended.

I sat in on a few OA online meetings and even attended an OA online retreat where we had a fun filled weekend of special speakers and journalling activities.

I did take OA seriously.  On one hand, I immediately felt at home with everyone in the group.  I SO related to everything they said.  On the other, I didn’t want to be these people.  If I admitted I had a problem, then I had to give up pizza.  I didn’t want to do that. 

After my first OA meeting someone in the group offered their assistance to be a temporary sponsor.  She had a massive list of rules – report to her daily what I ate, all these mandatory check ins and if I didn’t follow protocol, she would give me the boot as her sponsee.  I was overwhelmed.  I hadn’t even solemnly declared to myself or anyone that I had a problem with food.  I had not taken step one.  I had not passed go and I definitely didn’t collect $200.  Sorry, I used to play Monopoly a lot as a kid which oddly reminds me of our fondue days as a family.

Side story:  A big deal family night for us in my childhood was fondue (FUNdue anyone) and board games. We would stick cubes of dead cow on skewers and fry them in oil until cooked.  I would always cook up a bunch and keep them on a napkin until I had just the right amount to eat all at once.

Our family dog was a Beagle named Sophie (side note: Beagles are a wonderfully friendly breed of dog who are sadly a top choice to exploit in laboratories for testing purposes). Inevitably, Sophie would grab hold of my paper towel full of dead cow cubes and would pull it down and eat it all as fast as she could.  All of my efforts gone.

I always considered myself an animal lover, it never once occurred to me that here I was loving my dog like a sister while eating cows, pigs and chickens.  My school even called my mom to ask why Michelle’s older sister was not in school.  Shocked, my mom said I didn’t have an older sister and I was her only daughter.  The school pushed and said Michelle talks about her ‘older sister Sophie’ ALL THE TIME, why wasn’t she in school?  The school was genuinely concerned.  As I perceived Sophie to BE my actual sister, I see why the school was wondering where this Sophie child was. I’m surprised they didn’t send child services to the house, but my mom simply said that Sophie was the family dog and they had a good chuckle.

I mean most children are more connected to animals.  I thought I was too. Most children would be horrified if they knew what we fed them and in fact, many children DO make the connection.  We are naturally compassionate towards animals.  Put a child in a room with a piglet and an apple and she’ll hug the piglet and eat the apple.  We are conditioned by society to lose our innate compassion for animals – we are desensitized through marketing, false advertising, incorrect nutritional information and are taught a cow is different than a dog and a pig is different than a cat. In essence, animals we share our homes with are considered somehow different than the ones we eat.  In reality, all animals are the same in all the ways that matter and no animal deserves to be exploited.

My friend’s daughter recently made the connection that chickens are chickens.  She played with chickens on her grandpa’s farm and then came home to chicken nuggets and asked – are these the same chickens on grandpa’s farm?  When she heard the answer was yes, she proclaimed she does not eat dead chickens!  I even brought her vegan chicken nuggets and showed her the boxes, but she didn’t believe it and she firmly told me she doesn’t eat dead chickens!!  The rest of the children at the house that day happily indulged in the vegan chicken nuggets and naturally voted on their favourite kinds (SO CUTE).

I so admire that girl and the profound connection she made, but even with my connection with our family dog Sophie, I never did make that connection myself as a child.

Back to OA, with all my temporary sponsor’s rules, I felt so overwhelmed.  I knew I couldn’t meet her rules.  I knew I would fail and so I may as well give up before I fail right?  I called my counsellor and told her OA wasn’t for me.  I shared with her the temporary sponsors rules and that I felt like I had no say, no choice and I didn’t want to proceed like this.   I didn’t want to sign up to fail. I could not meet the temporary sponsor’s rules.

My counsellor asked me to go to 3-5 meetings before making any decisions and she said I didn’t have to go with this sponsor, that I could find another one that I had a connection with and that not all sponsors do things the same.  I went back to a few more meetings.

It took me a long time to speak at an OA meeting, I just listened in the shadows.  Not sure if I belonged but also it was covid and there wasn’t much else to do.

Funny enough, I already HAD all the OA books as I had previously suspected I had an issue with food and attended one OA meeting years prior.  The meeting wasn’t well attended, and I simultaneously thought I am both like these people and nothing like them.  After one meeting all those years prior, I decided it would be no point in attending YET I did purchase the books.  Interesting. 🙂

I ultimately decided that I did have a problem with pizza in April 2020.  It took me a significant amount of pondering, reflecting, attending meetings, reading from the OA book, listening to podcasts, attending the online retreat and talking to my counsellor to come to this conclusion. 

This was my first epic mindset shift.  Admitting I had a problem was a massive step and then deciding to not consume pizza was another epic shift.

I have never been so thankful in my entire life to be yelled at.  I still thank Clint regularly for yelling at me, I am unimaginatively blessed that he came into our lives, that I got a counsellor who told me exactly what I needed to hear – for convincing me to give OA another chance. 

This story is another pivotal seed to my journey to becoming a vegan animal advocate. Without giving up my number one addictive food, there is no chance I would be where I am today.

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂

p.s. Are there any animal foods you feel addicted to or that you would have a hard time giving up or that you feel you cannot live without? Have you considered some of the amazing vegan alternatives that are out there or making a vegan recipe at home? I’ll list two of my fav blogs below and both people have cookbooks as well. The internet has a plethora of free resources.

https://riseshinecook.ca/

https://plantyou.com/recipes/