David McElroy

It was late at night when I got the emailed threat about five years ago. A suicidal friend sent me a dramatic picture — an obvious cry for help — with a knife poised against her wrist. She lives hundreds of miles away, so there was little that I could do to help, but I wondered where her husband was.

After I sent a reply trying to talk her into ending the threat — at least for that night — she sent back a sarcastic reply to my attempt to help her deal with this existential crisis.

“It’s not your job,” she wrote. “It’s the man-child’s who’s off playing computer games.”

I knew this was a continuing issue in her marriage. Her husband — about 30 years old — spent pretty much all of his non-work time playing computer games. As a result, they had fallen into living parallel lives. Although he knew she was depressed and suicidal, he chose to live in a fantasy world with gaming buddies instead of in the real world he had chosen for himself.

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I was getting frustrated with the interview Sunday afternoon, but I wanted to keep things civil and polite.

I was a guest on an Internet radio show and I’d been brought in for a political discussion about Donald Trump. One of the hosts is a woman who lives in England and isn’t fond of Trump. The other host is a man in Ohio who’s a big Trump supporter.

As we got started, I first tried to find out why the man supports Trump, so I asked him to outline what he likes about Trump’s performance as president so far. It seemed like a reasonable place to start, but things went downhill from there.

The man has a lot of opinions, but when I tried to narrow down why he believed those things, he frequently had to admit that he didn’t know the facts about the subjects. He was opposed to “illegal immigration,” for instance — and insisted he wasn’t opposed to immigration overall — but he finally admitted he didn’t have any idea how U.S. laws determine who’s allowed to immigrate legally.

On subject after subject today, most modern Americans have opinions which are not based on any reality. This man had firm opinions, but his opinions weighed his mind down so much that facts weren’t necessary. He hadn’t thought through the things he believed — and it seemed to surprise him to have someone pointing this out.

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It happened again this week. Like a never-ending nightmare, I made the same horrible choice I’ve made before — with the same results.

For most people, the idea that eating could be an addiction sounds silly. For those who have experienced the patterns I have, though, it’s something that can feel both inexplicable and inevitable.

It wasn’t until I had a political friend who was a recovering alcoholic that I realized the patterns I go through with food are very similar to what any addict experiences. That shocked me at the time and it’s led me to think and read quite a bit about it over the years. The knowledge and insight haven’t stopped me from doing things, though — more often than I’d like to admit — that I know are unhealthy for me.

It’s never about the food. It’s always about the feelings that the food can mask.

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