“This Is What Food Addiciton Feels Like”
Ink and watercolor editorial illustration
I have this memory from when I was a kid spending many summer days with friends at the pool. A gradual awareness started arising inside me. I started to see two things very clearly. First: I thought about the snack bar A LOT. Second: My friends did not.

That was probably the beginning of knowing that something was broken in me with regard to food. Of course, this being the 70s, and public attitudes being what they were, people with this sort of problem tended to spend decades thinking the broken thing was their character.

Fortunately, science has figured a lot out with regard to what makes food — primarily processed, highly palatable food — become an addictive substance for a part of the population. Surprise! A lot of it is brain chemistry. That's not really great news, though, because it's COMPLICATED brain chemistry, along with gut chemistry along with other factors.

While science and medicine have made strides over the decades, highly processed, hyper-palatable foods have become an enormous part of the American diet, and the obesity problem has become a true epidemic. Meanwhile, there's still lots of quibbling among the scientists over whether processed-food addiction is really "addiction" because they have not yet identified the offending substance.

As for public sentiment? It might as well be the 1970s. The general public still thinks people who struggle with food and weight have a character problem. Sadly, polls have shown that your family doctor is likely to be among them.

I started to make this piece with non-food-addicted people in mind. I know lots of good, smart fun, funny people who have sketchy relationships with one substance or another and yet who just cannot wrap their heads around another person's experience of food feeling like a drug addiction. Some of those people have never entertained the idea. Some of them have tried, on my behalf, but remain puzzled. That is human nature, I suppose. On a good day, I am a person with about 150 different kinds of anxiety, and I can still feel annoyed when someone tells me they're afraid of some insect or woodland creature. Because, you know — my fears are real, and yours are dumb.

In any case, as I did these drawings, I realized that the person I really wanted to talk to was the person who might be where I was as a kid: feeling broken and bewildered with regard to food, who hasn't yet grasped that they are not the only ones. They are not aliens.

It needs to be said that not all overweight people are addicts, and not all food addicts are overweight. But the one thing everyone with food issues needs — immediately! STAT! Today! — is greater understanding among fellow humans.