Weight loss surgery is often described as a life-saving, life-changing intervention. And in many ways, it is.
It can dramatically improve physical health, mobility, and quality of life.
But there’s a part of the story that doesn’t get talked about enough.
For some people, when food is taken away as a coping mechanism, something else quietly takes its place.
Very often, that something is alcohol.
This is called transfer addiction, and it is not a character flaw, a lack of discipline, or a failure of surgery. It is a predictable response when the body and nervous system lose their primary source of regulation without being given a replacement.
To understand why this happens — and why alcohol is especially dangerous after weight loss surgery — we need to look at two intertwined components:

1. What happens physically
   
2. What happens emotionally and neurologically
   

After weight loss surgery (especially gastric bypass and sleeve procedures), the body processes alcohol very differently.
1. Faster AbsorptionAlcohol enters the bloodstream much more quickly after surgery.
There is less stomach surface area, altered digestion, and faster transfer into the intestines.
This means:

• Alcohol hits faster
  
• Blood alcohol levels rise higher
  
• Intoxication happens with less alcohol
  

One drink post-WLS can affect the body the way two or three drinks used to.
2. Reduced BufferingBefore surgery, food slowed alcohol absorption. After surgery, that buffer is largely gone.
Alcohol becomes:

• More potent
  
• More unpredictable
  
• Harder to pace
  

3. Increased Risk of DependencyBecause alcohol works faster and stronger, it becomes a high-efficiency coping tool.
The brain learns very quickly: this works.
That learning happens faster than most people realize — and often before they see it coming.
This isn’t about poor choices.
It’s about biology.

​Food isn’t just nourishment. For many people, food has been:

• A regulator of emotions
  
• A self-soothing tool
  
• A buffer against overwhelm
  
• A way to survive stress, trauma, loneliness, and pain
  

When weight loss surgery removes the ability to use food in the same way, the nervous system doesn’t celebrate.
It panics.
Food Was the RegulatorEven if food caused harm physically, the nervous system only knows one thing:
This worked.
When food is suddenly unavailable as a coping strategy:

• Emotions hit harder
  
• Anxiety feels louder
  
• Stress has nowhere to go
  
• The body feels unsafe
  

And the nervous system goes looking for relief.
Alcohol Slides In SeamlesslyAlcohol becomes:

• The new pause button
  
• The new buffer
  
• The new way to quiet the noise
  

It works quickly.
It numbs efficiently.
And for a while, it feels like relief.
This isn’t sabotage.
It’s adaptation.

Alcohol after weight loss surgery isn’t just stronger physically.
It’s more dangerous emotionally because of what it replaces.
Alcohol often becomes:

• A substitute for food and emotional regulation
  
• A private coping mechanism (easier to hide than food)
  
• A way to feel relaxed, confident, or “normal” again
  

But here’s the problem:
Alcohol doesn’t regulate the nervous system — it disconnects it.
Over time:

• Sleep worsens
  
• Anxiety rebounds harder
  
• Shame increases
  
• Emotional tolerance decreases
  

The relief gets shorter.
The consequences get bigger.
And because alcohol works so fast after surgery, the cycle tightens quickly.

Many people believe:
“The surgery should have fixed this.”
But surgery only changes the body.
It does not heal trauma, teach boundaries, or regulate emotions.
When alcohol shows up, shame often follows:

• I should know better
• I already fixed this
• Why am I here again?

Shame keeps people silent.
Silence keeps the cycle alive.
Transfer addiction thrives in isolation — not because people are weak, but because they are trying to survive without support.

If you’re struggling with alcohol after weight loss surgery, you are not starting over.
This is not failure.
It’s feedback.
It’s your system saying:
There’s more here that needs care.
The work now isn’t about trying harder or using more willpower.
It’s about learning new ways to feel safe inside your body.
That might include:

• Nervous system regulation
  
• Trauma-informed therapy
  
• Emotional literacy
  
• Boundaries and self-compassion
  
• Support that understands WLS specifically
  

There is nothing wrong with you for missing food.
There is nothing wrong with wanting relief.
There is nothing wrong with needing support.
The goal isn’t to remove coping mechanisms — it’s to replace them with ones that don’t hurt you.
If alcohol has become the stand-in for food after weight loss surgery, it doesn’t mean you failed.
It means your body is asking for help in the only language it knows.
And that is something you can learn to respond to — with care, not shame.

​I’ve been sober for 29 years.
That sentence still gives me pause—not because it isn’t true, but because of how much life, struggle, and growth live inside it.
When I was younger, I struggled with alcoholism. Sobriety quite literally saved my life. It gave me stability, clarity, and the opportunity to build a future I couldn’t see at the time. What I didn’t understand then was that stopping drinking didn’t mean I was finished with coping—it just meant one coping strategy was removed.
Over time, food quietly stepped in.

For many years, eating wasn’t simply about nourishment. It became comfort. Relief. Regulation. A way to manage emotions I didn’t yet have the tools to sit with. Food helped me survive when I didn’t know how else to take care of myself.
Eventually, I made the decision to have gastric bypass surgery.
At my highest weight, I was 275 pounds. After surgery, my weight dropped to 164 pounds. I’m still not at my goal weight, and I’ll be honest—some days that’s discouraging. Old expectations and self-judgments can still surface, especially in a world that tells us healing should be linear and measurable.
But there’s another truth that matters just as much.
I feel better in my body than I ever have before.
I move through the world differently now. I carry myself with more confidence and self-assurance. I feel more present, more connected, and less at war with myself. Even on the days when food and body struggles show up, they no longer define me or control my life in the same way they once did.
This blog—and my work more broadly—is where I speak honestly about the parts of recovery that aren’t always talked about.
Not just sobriety.
Not just weight loss.
But the in-between work: what happens when one coping strategy is removed and another tries to take its place. The emotional, nervous-system-level healing that’s required to truly feel safe inside yourself.
I write about recovery, transfer addictions, emotional eating, boundaries, and the slow, meaningful process of reconnecting with yourself. I write from lived experience—not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve walked this path and continue to learn from it.
If you’ve ever stopped one behaviour only to find another emerge…
If you’ve ever felt better and discouraged at the same time…
If you’ve ever wondered why doing “everything right” didn’t automatically bring peace…
You’re not broken. And you’re not alone.
I’m glad you’re here.
​

​People go in and out of trance many times every day.  All those times you've found yourself daydreaming or "lost in thought," you were actually in trance.  Remember those times you pull into work and don't remember the drive?  You were in a trance.  Hypnosis happens when the conscious mind is bypassed, and you access the subconscious mind.
 
Hypnotherapy uses trance to access the subconscious mind and explore the  

underlying causes of why you do or feel the things you do.  By not engaging with the conscious mind, you are able to bypass the analytical and critical mind and find your perception and belief of an event, from intuition and deep understanding of yourself.
 
You all have things you have used as ways of coping from when you were a child or adolescent.  Sometimes those ways of coping stop working for you as you grow and start to get in the way of what you want.  When in hypnosis, you can access these "parts" of you and shift how they help you or let go of what no longer serves you. 
 
Hypnotherapy allows you to move around the conscious mind and access the subconscious mind.  The conscious mind is where the critical thoughts, false beliefs and irrational fears come from.  This analytical part of the mind that stops us from doing the things we know in our gut is the right thing.  When that part of the mind is softer, we can access the part of the mind that holds all our secrets, information, memories, and everything else about us.  Through the subconscious mind, you can see things more clearly and connect the dots and see where your patterns started.  From this new understanding, you then shift the perspective to create a different way of dealing with your struggles, your environment and the people around you.  
 ​

The reality of a “Families Do Recover” Intervention is very different.  The actual intervention is a very small part of the three day process.  Much of the time is spent with the family deconstructing the family dynamics, educating family members about substance use disorder or addiction, and uncovering the role each family member plays in the family disease.  It can be a challenging process for everyone because it is difficult to see how each person is affected by and contributes to the family system that encourages and feeds the addict, especially when they don’t see themselves as part of the addiction cycle. It has become a way of coping for everyone and as a family member, when you are “in it” it is difficult to find your way back to life and emotional health.  ​

On Day Two, after digesting all the information from Day One, we take what we learned and relate it to the current family dynamic.  We spend the day constructing family letters to the addicted loved one.  We explore how each family member reacted and responded to the addicted loved one and decide what behaviours he or she will withdraw or change to entice the addicted loved one to go to treatment.  We work together to write each letter in a clear and concise manner, being careful not to shame or degrade the addicted loved one.  It is important the addicted loved one understands how much each individual family member love him or her and how painful and all-consuming his or her addiction is to everyone. ​

Being prepared is one of the keys to a successful intervention.  The second part of Day Two is constructing Plan A and Plan B.  ​

​Families Do Recover will have a set treatment plan with a highly regarded treatment centre.  This Recovery Plan is shared with the family so everyone understands where and for how long their loved one will be in treatment.
​
We will create a recovery plan for the family as well.  It is critical that family members learn about their own patterns and work towards their own emotional recovery.  This is the only way the addicted loved one can be supported and the whole family heal.  It is challenging for an addicted loved one to enter recovery without the family members doing their work to change their behaviours.  If the dynamic doesn’t change and the addicted loved one will get sucked back into the unhealthy family dynamics.

Day three is when the family delivers their letters.  It is important the letters are read as written.  The family member won’t get lost in the emotion of the addiction and their loved one’s predicament.  Sometimes the loved one will agree to go to treatment immediately and sometimes everyone has to read their letters.  It depends how ready the loved one is to give up.  If the loved one accepts help, we move into action and get explain the treatment plan to him or her.  Someone goes with the loved one to pack a bag if that hasn’t already been done.  The Interventionist will take the loved one to treatment that day. 
​
The family must be emotionally prepared for the loved one to decline help.  It is heart breaking, and we have Plan B.  The family must follow through with the consequences they shared in their letters and move forward.  The Interventionist is available to help the family with After Care, education and support.  It is important the family learns how to not enable the addicted loved one and allow them to find their bottom.  ​

​Have you ever had a discussion with someone that leaves you feeling dumbfounded and rattled? I spent a lot of my childhood feeling like I was crazy because my Dad would always want me to change my thoughts and opinions. It was to the point where I just stopped having any ideas or thoughts of my own. I felt like everything I did and thought was wrong. This pattern repeated again in my marriage. It was very familiar and I didn’t like it. I would walk away from arguments not knowing what had just happened. I only knew I had given in again.

​Enabling is one of those things we do and we don’t even know we are doing it.  It is a behaviour that we learned, probably as a child, that is motivated by a craving to be loved.   Enabling is often associated with growing up in a home with an addicted or alcoholic parent, but it can also be associated with growing up in a family where there was one or several traumas; a death of a parent, sibling or love one, emotional, physical or sexual abuse, an absent parent, divorce or any other situation that could impact a child in a negative manner.

​The definition of enabling that I have adopted is doing for others what they can and need to do for themselves.  This can apply to addicted family members, friends, love relationships, children and just about anyone else you meet. Enabling can be difficult to recognize.  It is challenging to separate enabling from helping and supporting.  The difference between the 3 is helping is doing things for others that they are unable to do for themselves.  Supporting is collaborative, meaning doing a task together without taking it over.

​Enablers have an innate desire to be needed and feel that the only way to get people to like or love them is to become indispensable.  Enablers often get self-worth and self-esteem from their acts of kindness.  They feel important and relevant.  They get a sense of belonging and feel like a priority.  They get the attention they crave.  Enabling allows the enabler to avoid conflict and disagreement.  They unconsciously believe relationships can only be preserved by doing good deeds and placating others.  This means doing things for others that makes people dependent.  Enablers appear to be accommodating and agreeable.  Kindness oozes from their pores and they go out of their way to conform to their loved ones’ needs.
​
Enabling in a relationship where addiction is present can look a little different.  Enabling is also protecting the addicted loved one from the consequences of their behaviour that are a fallout from their addiction.  Saving the loved ones, calling in sick for them, giving money or paying bills or not demanding that they adhere to the house rules, are all forms of enabling.