Alcoholism is a very complex problem that is rampant in our society and has many variables that need to be addressed simultaneously. The success rate with mainstream treatment options is poor at best. The nutrition and diet components are rarely addressed and most people are unaware of their extreme significance.

If you override your natural "full" meter often enough, it tends to go into a coma. It can take years of normal eating to revive it too. Not only does the "full" meter go to sleep, but you can get used to that overstuffed, almost drugged, feeling you get from overeating. It is amazing what the human body can get used to and then begin to crave.

My hunch would be that there is a parallel between exercise addiction and how an anorexic compulsively works out.

I think in our culture men and women are equally prone to exercise addiction. It probably is about the same motive, about vanity, and health and things like that.

Exercise addiction, like other behavioral addiction is again just one manifestation of a methodology that the individual has learned that will bring about a positive effective feeling state when they engage in it.

Not long out of rehab, Pete Doherty, encouraged by drummer Adam Ficek, has become a practitioner of chi gung (also spelled qigong or chi kung) and tai chi. Chi gung is the ancient Chinese art of developing and cultivating one's chi power - variously translated as internal energy or life force.

I'm an addict/alcoholic. Pretty much everything I do reflects this part of me. Perhaps the best way to describe the nature of me in the world is to say, in a phrase from the Eagles, that I've wanted "everything, all the time." It has been a hard way to live.

What happened to make quitting booze and cigarettes possible for me after a lifetime of slavery to these addictions? There were many contributing factors, but most important were the radical changes I made to my eating and exercise habits.

There have actually been some studies that suggest that exercise can help people who struggle with addiction. For example, one study showed that men who were heavy social drinkers who began a running program decreased their use of alcohol.

One hundred years ago in the United States, obesity was a sign of plenty and leisure... The economics of obesity have changed dramatically since then.