Withdrawal

My goodness, this gluten free thing is a roller coaster, isn't it?

I hit my 2 week gluten free mark yesterday. Awesome, right? Well, not if you're addicted to gluten!

About a week and a half in, I started noticing some of my symptoms were coming back at random times. WHHHAAAATTTTT???? I freaked out and wondered if this whole gluten free experiment was doomed to fail and if I should just stuff my face with yummy gluten filled treats again.

Turns out, there's such a thing as gluten withdrawal. Yes, I'm serious! It sounds silly but according to my research gluten can sometimes act as an opiate as far as how it affects your mind, and can be as strong as heroin or morphine! Whoa! So naturally, when you eliminate the gluten from your diet, you take away the opiate effect it has on your brain and withdrawal symptoms begin.

An article I found about withdrawal symptoms says, "Withdrawal after stopping wheat or milk products can be painful, exhausting, and depressing, with weakness, anger, and brain fog."

Dangerous Grain by Ron Hoggan says, "The addictive nature of gluten is often overlooked. For some, the first days and weeks of following a gluten-free diet are characterized by food cravings, disorientation, irritability, sleepiness, depression, mental fogginess, fatigue, and/or shortness of breath."

Isn't this what I was trying to avoid in the first place by going gluten free? lol

The conclusion I've come to is that if this gluten stuff is bad enough to cause such crazy withdrawal symptoms, it sure as heck can't be good for you, celiac or not. So while I'm glad I'm getting this out of my system, this still sucks in the meantime!