Poor Paula Deen (The Addict?)

It is always sad to me when smart people make stupid mistakes. Believe me, I get it, I’ve made several myself but I’ve learned from them and they have made me a better person. Fortunately the mistakes I chose did not have life threatening issues.

I consider Paula Deen an addict. Like an alcoholic she cannot help herself and she continues to abuse herself by engaging in her addiction. Like Charlie Sheen, she even flaunts her addiction and tries to get everyone around her to indulge in this addiction. She preaches the value of high cholesterol, trans fats, and obesity. And, like the smart woman she is, she capitalizes off the misery she is creating. Unfortunately for her she has been caught in her own web of destruction.

A few years back Paula was diagnosed with diabetes, now the 15th cause of death in the United States, and it is most likely due to the lifestyle that Paula so proudly flaunts regularly on her television show. A life of little exercise and lots of processed foods full of butter…oh, did I say butter? Well, add another stick of that creamy death wish to your heart and smear some on your thighs while you are at it.

An addict does not know when to stop, they often recognize that their behavior and choices are a problem, but they feel powerless to do anything about it. This appears to be the case with Mrs. Deen. Paula is taking a very classic stance in our “fix me” society. She not only is looking for others to heal her, as demonstrated by her taking a $500 a month diabetes drug AND becoming the spokeswoman for the pharmaceutical, but she is also apparently indulging her addiction even more…another pattern of an alcoholic most often referred to as denial. Instead of looking at her life and taking responsibility for her health and then doing something to improve it, she is leaning on a band-aid fix with terrible side effects and killer possibilities (the side effect may include pancreatitis, thyroid cancer, and more). The first step towards true healing is taking responsibility for yourself exactly as you are; no blaming anyone for what happened to you or what was done to you. Once you can step into this and let go of the victim you can move forward and start making decisions for yourself that move you into a state of health.

In Paula’s case she is still actively in the dis-ease and looking for outside sources to heal her. Her strategy is management, not healing, and she is not doing anything to look at herself from a Body, Mind, Spirit perspective. If she did she would most likely see a wounded little girl who uses food to medicate her feelings and who has a deep association of feeling wanted, loved, and needed by those donuts and deep-fried butterballs she loads into herself. In addition she would see a body that has been unloved and neglected, that is full of toxins, free radicals, and trans-fats, and that is also highly acidic – the perfect condition for growing dis-ease. Dare I say that she also does not appear to have much of a Spiritual life, and I do not mean God. A spiritual person has awareness for life, an awareness of how they treat and respect their body (and the body/person of others), and they are tuned in to the cause and effect of the Universe. Such as the behavior that, “If I eat fatty, processed, greasy, fried, chemical laden food I am not going to be healthy and strong.”…oh, Paula, it is so simple to see.

Too bad Paula is not waking up to how she can make the world a better place. Instead she promotes a world full of sickness and unhealthy habits/food all sugar coated with a pretty confectionary buttered frosting. If she truly wanted to make the world (and her life) better she would show people how to make tasty meals that are whole body healthy. She would use her celebrity to inspire people to lose weight and firm up…not gain more fat and rely on pharmaceutical drugs to help them stay alive. Maybe she would actually even save someone’s life by being an example of someone who found the “gold in the garbage” and turned their pain towards health and stopped eating themselves to death. The garbage being all the food she eats, and teaches others to eat, and the gold being the lesson she is refusing to learn about self-responsibility and self-love.

Like all addicts, Paula will hit her bottom one day (soon maybe). Hopefully, she crashes before it is too late and something can still be done to help her heal. I hope she does not lose that beautiful smile and flashing eyes to diabetes. Did someone say, “Intervention”?