Yesterday I started out by going to the gym and then shopping. Before I realized it it was already 10:30 and I was very thirsty. I stopped and bought a 32 oz iced tea to drink on my way home.

Well, let me tell you! That caffein worked overtime in this deprived body. I got home and started cleaning and didn't stop more than to prepare dinner and eat it. I had to move the vaccum out of the hallway so my DH wouldn't trip over it when he went to bed. Finally I gave in and went to bed too.

This morning I got up and went to Fitday only to realize that I had hardly eaten anything yesterday. The calories totaled less than 1400. Now I know why drug users are usually so thin. Never even thought about eating! This is not a good thing on this woe.

Wow, what a great learning experience!

I think, too, that as we clean out our systems, we start getting more sensitive to OTC and legal drugs like iced tea or chocolate.

Stimulants (like amphetamines, fen-phen, stacking, even coffee and tobacco) do assist weight loss...but at a huge cost. One cost I've been reading a lot about is the damage to the serotonin-production system. So in the long term, stimulants leave us unhappy, craving sugar (or our addictive substance of choice), and keep us enslaved in that cycle of depleted serotonin.

Months of healing can, according to Dr. Schwarzbein and some others, allow the brain chemistry to heal itself. Aren't we all lucky that healing is possible?

Right on, Razzle. And if you haven't had any alcohol for quite a while on LC, then that first drink is a doozy!