SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Michelle thought herself crazy, couldn't stand to look in mirrors, felt all alone.

She was suicidal.

"To deal with the pain of life, I started to eat compulsively, to binge," remembered Michelle, who used an alias for this interview. "I didn't know how to deal with feelings or conflict and food helped me deal with it because it numbs me out."

She'd binge on food "beyond reason or comfort," then diet, then binge again.

The loneliness seeped in - Michelle had heard of alcohol and drug addictions, but being addicted to food?

She passed from a teenager to a young adult and then a married woman. Her relationships with friends suffered, she was miserable and she largely attributes her addiction and consequent emotional instability to ruining her first marriage.

Desperate, she turned to Overeaters Anonymous.

"I walked in lonely and suicidal, thinking there was no one in the world like me," said Michelle. "I walked into a room and it was full of people just like me. They said to me that I wasn't crazy, they said 'there is a way out.'"

That was 25 years ago.

Dr. Maureen Mayhew recognizes the symptoms of addiction. As Michelle learned, Mayhew said addiction can involve any number of things and is usually a coping mechanism.

"It's often done in response to an acute situation and then it becomes a coping mechanism, to cope with the stresses of daily life," said Mayhew. "Some hypothesize that fulfilling that addiction provides the serotonin affect that helps us combat depression."

Beyond the emotional roller-coaster which works as both cause and effect with addictions, there's a host of physical health issues specific to eating disorders. For the bulimic, who binge then purge, their stomach lining is eroded from too much vomiting, along with their teeth.

For anorexics - people addicted to starving themselves - their bodies are weakened for lack of proper fat and vitamin balance.

For people like Michelle, who just binge, there are all the consequences of obesity - hypertension, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and sleep apnea.

"The first step towards treatment is for a person to recognize it is a problem for them," said Mayhew. "We believe in treating the underlying condition of anxiety or depression in getting people to stop the addictive behaviour. Medication in itself is usually insufficient, they need counselling and peer support."

Overeaters Anonymous uses the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step method - takings its members on a spiritual journey, beginning with admitting their addiction, understanding its causes, seeking forgiveness of those they've harmed and seeking a closer relationship with God (as understood by each participant).

"The 12 steps aren't something you finish," said Michelle.

As life and work took her to new homes across Canada, Michelle sought out Overeaters Anonymous groups wherever she went. Eventually she landed in Yellowknife, where she has a full time job, a healthy weight and marriage and attends two meetings a week.

"It's hard work. I have to have structure around my eating - schedule my meals," said Michelle. "But it's been a wonderful journey and I'm basically a contented person."

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