I felt totally out of control with my eating and there was no hope. After 15 years of violent vomiting, laxatives, hospitals, therapists, and prayers, I felt there was nothing left for me... nothing to live for.
I saw my mother, who adored me, struggling to find any help she could for me and she was getting sicker than me. There was no way out but to just die!!! I remember the last time in the hospital, Becky came to see me because she was going to open a women’s recovery home. I thought, “Really!! I can’t even stop eating and throwing up... that is all I know, how can I live in a recovery home.”
My mom and dad thought it was a cult! I was f*cking scared! There were so many questions and I was terrified! I didn’t know what NORMAL was or how to live through a normal day, or even what that would feel like. “Who was I? And how do I do this life thing?” I could not take one bite without bingeing and purging, which would last the rest of the day into the night. I felt like it was a violent monster taking over my life, family, and friends.
I went into the recovery home Sept 1986. Where I was hopeless and in the dark and felt I would never eat again like a normal person, I have now, an abstinence of over 31 years. I continue to participate every day with life and enjoy eating ALL foods in moderation, 3 times a day. I honestly can say that I can now get through my days just eating one meal at a time without that violent monster in my head.
I now can look at myself with love and respect and know that everything that happens in my life today is in Divine Order with God.

My pervasive eating addiction kept me in relapse for over 20 years. It wasn’t the concomitant weight gain with my violent bingeing that caused me the greatest angst. It was the isolation emotionally and tangibly that was killing me. My life became so narrow with both my bingeing and dieting. I felt hopeless. And it’s a scary thing to not be able to trust myself. I felt too damaged and fettered with too many dark issues to ever recover from the eating addiction that had robbed me of living.
But when Becky became my mentor, all that changed. She told me that I never had to diet again, which was a big part of my disease. She said all foods were in my future. And promised me I’d stop yearning for the disease; that nothing emotionally or tangibly had to cause me to break my abstinence. And this has happened. Now with long-term abstinence, I’m free. Free of the torturous ramifications of bingeing/dieting. With my God and other amazing women that Becky has introduced me to, I am totally free. And I’d add, “You better respect this addiction, because it doesn’t respect you.”

I am alive today — happily and healthily — in very large part thanks to Becky. In 1994, I was quite literally near death from years of starving myself and using a variety of methods to get rid of what I DID eat. I had already been in two eating disorder in-patient programs, and I was desperate. It truly took the most profound desperation, fear and hopelessness for me to take the initiative to call a center and get a reference for a long-term program.
Pre-internet, I had to search pretty much blindly, and I still do not recall exactly how I got Becky’s name, but I made the call that changed my life forever, or rather saved it.
Becky’s approach, unlike most residential treatment centers, was based on TRUSTING her clients, which in turn, helped us separate from the addiction voices and begin to trust ourselves. Becky’s recovery model allowed us to become the adults that many of us, regardless of age, simply had never been before. It was a team effort, with all of us sharing responsibilities, stories, and solutions. Shame began to disappear and self-respect emerged!
Becky’s book, Dieting: A Dry Drunk, was full of stories that I could relate to so well, and it was so encouraging to see that these men and women — many who faced challenges I pray I will never have to face — remained abstinent from their disorders years and even decades after becoming abstinent.
Becky’s personal history along with her many years of teaching and sharing make her an outstanding resource.

I happened across your website and email address while searching for something else and could not pass up the opportunity to say thank you. I’m not sure if you remember but my mother came to you in 1992 regarding my eating addiction. You referred me to your first residential center and I also joined one of your support groups. We still talk about how thankful we are that you supported us both during a difficult time. When my mom was scared about the residential center, you let her know that it was something that she’d have to let me do and to trust the process. I am extremely grateful because the experience I had there was the pivotal point in my life. I don’t like to think like this or say this, but if it hadn’t been for you, I think I’d be dead or very mentally and physically ill.
I have abstained since September of 1992 — through college and graduating, through living in Europe for a year, through dating and for the first time and successive break-ups, through very minor ups and downs of life. I feel happy to have been given tools to work with and create my own way for me.
Thank you from the very bottom of my heart. Writing this is bringing tears to my eyes because I think about the way I was then and how I am now, and I can’t say that I would have it any other way. I really am a miracle and I just wanted you to know how deeply you touched my life just by sharing new ideas and pointing me in the right direction. Thank you.

Becky Jackson’s model of recovery from an eating addiction is the only one that has ever worked for me. I consider myself extremely fortunate that I found her as a young person and am now in my 30th year free from a disease that surely would have killed me, slowly enough to hijack whatever potential for joy existed in my life and affecting the lives of everyone I love.
Eating addictions are no joke and the way they are misunderstood and minimized makes it likely that most of our attempts at comprehensive recovery fail even for the most sincerely motivated person. What I have seen in my years of working with Becky personally and professionally is that recovery is possible when we take the risk to look at them in a new way. She provides this context and a clear pathway to begin, continue, and integrate a new way of living that is progressively healing. I am immensely grateful to have benefitted from her work.