A SOBERING MENU
CAROLINE GRANNAN Los Angeles Times SyndicateSUN-SENTINEL
It was Jim J.'s second conviction for driving under the influence, and the judge offered to reduce his fine if he would enter a new program. All he had to do was eat better.
He had plenty to learn, Jim admits. "I basically didn't eat. I'd start in the morning with coffee, cigarettes and sodas. Even if I hadn't been drinking, I'd wake up in the morning feeling hung over."
So four months ago Jim entered the "DUI Diet" program financed by San Mateo County, Calif. Eating right _ not to mention eating at all _ has transformed him, he says.
On the program, which has been offered to about 250 multiple DUI offenders, Jim stopped drinking and started eating three meals a day: whole grains, protein, fruit and vegetables.
"I'm very busy and I do a lot of things, and I never had time for this stuff," says Jim, a professional in his late 40s. "I now find that time. I had learned to live with feeling bad all the time. After a week and a half, it was like _ boom. When I get up in the morning, I'm ready to go, and I'm not tired all day. Not every day is perfect, but even when I have problems at work or problems at home, my outlook is a heck of a lot better."
It doesn't take a dietitian to see the extreme eating habits of many recovering alcoholics. Coffee and sweets consumption at the typical Alcoholics Anonymous meeting ranges from major to out-of-control. People in recovery are prone to skip meals and ignore sound nutrition, much as they did when they were drinking.
When sobriety is the overriding priority, many people find fretting about whether a carbohydrate is simple or complex petty by comparison.
"I've never seen anybody lose a driver's license as a result of too much sugar," wryly remarks Mike Neustadt, director of Serenity Knolls, a residential alcohol-drug treatment program in Marin County, Calif.
But a growing philosophy in the recovery field contends that just saying no is not enough. That theory holds that it's biochemical imbalances, not moral weakness, that cause some people to ravage their bodies and destroy their lives with the same substance most of us can savor harmlessly over a fine meal.
"People who are subject to addiction are born with a specific body chemistry that sets them up to respond addictively," says Kathleen DesMaisons, who runs San Mateo County's DUI Diet program and a Burlingame, Calif., organization called Radiant Recovery. "In their blood sugar they get bigger spikes and lower drops, and lower levels of serotonin [a brain-cell chemical linked with moods). That's associated with depression, poor impulse control and carbohydrate cravings."
The DUI Diet has shown promising results. In 1994, a test group of 29 multiple offenders was started on the program, which stresses regular meals, healthy portions of protein and plenty of complex carbohydrates and vegetables.
The group was compared with 29 offenders who didn't participate in the DUI Diet. An evaluation completed in June found that the DUI Diet group racked up half the repeat offenses and one-tenth the probation violations of the comparison group.
Whole grains and protein shakes are easy to embrace compared to the truly terrifying part: kicking sugar and caffeine. Recovery specialists Julia Ross, director of Recovery Systems in Mill Valley, Calif., and Joan Mathews Larson, author of Seven Weeks to Sobriety (Fawcett Columbine, 1997), agree firmly with DesMaisons that it's essential.
Many in the field believe that sugar and caffeine consumption keeps alcohol cravings alive even after years of abstinence. Those specialists paint dire consequences for the "dry but not sober" alcoholic and insist that giving up foods that trigger blood-sugar swings is vital to a healthy recovery.
The dietetic establishment casts a skeptical eye on the theory of a biochemical defect that triggers interrelated alcohol, sugar and caffeine cravings, and the notion that nutrition can cure it.
"We certainly have nothing to justify that," says Jo Ann Hattner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and dietitian at Stanford University Medical Center in California. "If people don't have discipline in the area of drinking, who's to say it's not a behavioral characteristic of their lifestyle?"
But, she allows, adopting healthier eating habits is always a fine idea. "If it betters your nutritional state, then it has to have a good effect."