It is with much regret that I announce that I have been a very bad boy.

Over the last 8 or so days I have, what is commonly known here in the UK, been on a bender. That is not to say that I urinated on someone of a less than heterosexual persuasion, but I have overdone it on the booze. Every day I have frequented my old stomping ground, Froggies, and have drank myself to a stupor. The itch of needing to drink heavily came back with a vengeance and I scratched that itch very hard indeed. I now feel very bad and in need of a good hard slap.

My excuses will be common place to those who have listened to the wretched before: I am unable to operate life alone; I need to drink in order to talk to people; I prefer looking at life through a bottom of a glass; I'm not drunk, I'm just sleepy - it must be my medication; pish offff...i'mmm fiiine...I ludge you soooo mush!

I have always been a big drinker throughout my entire adult life (and some of my less than adult life) and it has always been part of my persona. People know me as either someone to avoid of a Friday evening or someone who to call when they want to entertain themselves with outlandish human behaviour from a stumbling silver back gorilla. Those that have remained friends with me to date all know it is me. What concerns me is that I thought that this behaviour would stop when I was banded.

How very stupid of me.

The last time I ventured forth, my concerns (and dare I say the concerns of some of my closer friends) turned into fear. I abused the band!

As I stumbled from the dark and dingy pub behind Winchester railway station, named...The Railway, I felt a small pang of hunger. As I marched in my zig-zagging pattern through town my course veered sharply into the local kebab shop. All memories of my band were clearly washed with spirit laced fruit juiced away from my mind. I needed a kebab...because it was habitual.

What a fool was I! I said goodbye to the friends I met in the take away with my usual mix of affection and bad breath and headed out into the night and my 40 minute coiling walk home. This usually takes 25 minutes in a straight line.

Oh the kebab was going to be a treat - I mean it looked so horrible. I wasn't hungry. But it was a habit that needed satisfying. I managed to wipe out half of it before the feeling most lap banders have experienced in the early days of their new life. The iron fist. My eagerness to completely ignore my lack of hunger and need to fulfil the habit made me swallow each of the few mouthfuls pretty much whole. And they all got stuck.

It's not a nice feeling to walk through a cathedral city as lovely as Winchester, clutching onto your chest and trailing a slight vomit path behind you - especially when it is caused by eating like a moron after a major procedure like the gastric band. If I was seen by anyone, they would have caused an ambulance or the police. I was pretty sober after 5 minutes of retching as adrenaline watered down all alcohol in my system and a lovely feeling of drunkenness was replace with terror that I was breaking the band with foolishness.

For those who have yet to experience the fist of fury and its associated side effect of clenched regurgitation, I will briefly expand on it - stop reading if you feel this isn't your kind of thing.

The feeling is almost indescribable - not because of the pain, but because I had never felt it before the operation. It is quite uncomfortable, but I would say it is very far from pain. All I can imagine it is like is the sensation of swallowing a large unchewed bit of tough steak and having it get stuck. Usually (unless you are very unlucky) this stuck feeling disappears quite rapidly to unbanded "users" of food as your stomach and esophagus muscles do their stuff and pull it down or help you cough it up. However, with the band, it's not so straight forward. The peristaltic waves that would have carried the food up or down are pretty much useless in the area where the blockage is. Your band slows natures effectiveness dramatically. As you do start to "flush" (the body is such an amazing piece of work in danger situations) things happen slightly differently than you have been used to also. Whereas the body was once able to rapidly expel all danger in a few swift waves of disgustig material, you are now only able to expel unacidic spittle and recently eaten food. As an experience, it is far more time consuming and very much more uncomfortable - but infinitely more tasty! No bile whatsoever. So, swings and roundabouts there I guess.

So - I woke up in the morning with a huge feel of embarrassment and stupidity. I was able to feel the band was doing its job and that my fears of internal rupture had been unfounded, but I was also left very aware that the risk of damaging the placement and reducing its effectiveness are far too high for me to risk doing that again.

Having done so well to date, I am really quite unsure as to why I when on my drinking binge. Perhaps it was the confidence issues I spoke about last time. Perhaps I am finding that with an obese man's confidence, being chatted to as an almost normal sized man needs a hell of a lot more Dutch courage. Realistically, I think I was feeling very low and went for the easiest "happy maker". Whatever the reason is, it must stop - I can't afford to do that again.

The lap band has been a god send to my will power with food, but it is only that. An aid to beat an addiction with the munchies. It does not cure your hang ups, it does not rid you of any other kind of substance abuse and it certainly does not give you any more common sense than you had before the operation.

I'm putting this one down to a learning experience and hope that the lessons taken away from it are taken heed of by my over-complicated mind.

Needless to say - weight loss for that week was a non-starter.

Originally posted at: Lap Band Blog

Wow. Thank you for being so blunt and open about this.

jeez are you sure you are not from Newcastle upon tyne lol

We all now the experience of which you speak. Having suffered an unpleasant incident with a rollmop herring only last week, you have my full sympathy.