Bulimia and anorexia – two eating disorders that can destroy a person’s quality of life in ways similar to the destruction caused by misunderstood, untreated alcoholism or drug addiction. Thanksgiving is my bulimia-free birthday, if you will – it was 30 years ago that I made it through my first T’day feast without binging and purging. Here is a bit of my story, and the reasons for my sharing it in today’s post.

As someone who was anorexic for a year and then bulimic for eleven years back in the late 1960’s and throughout the decade of the 1970’s, I can attest to just how far treatment of eating disorders has come.

My “ah ha” moment with my own came when I read a small column piece in Newsweek magazine that talked about a woman who’d been eating huge quantities of food and then throwing it up for seven years. The column went on to call this behavior, bulimarexia. I’d never heard the term but just reading that someone else was doing what I’d been doing for the prior 11 years and that she’d stopped practically dropped me to my knees. For her, getting control of her life was learning to eat nutritious meals and exercise.

True to my nature, I tried to find out as much as I could. Back then, there wasn’t much. Not only that, but the medical community where I lived was treating it as a phobia — a fear of getting fat. I tried a few phobia therapy group meetings, but I was unable to relate to those who were afraid to leave their home, afraid of heights, afraid of spiders… And, so, I set out to conquer this on my own (another one of those “true to my nature” sorts of things). I got ahold of Jane Brody’s Guide to Nutrition and darn near memorized its many hundreds of pages. I stopped eating all sweets and fats — I ate dry salads, dry baked potatoes, egg whites, low or non-fat this or that for about two years. It took me that long to understand what food would do if kept in my body, and it helped me to circumvent the battle of the binge. It also kept me out of the kitchen because meal preparation was so simple — a handful of carrots, mound of nonfat cottage cheese, sliced apple, slice of whole grain bread, and it helped make food shopping fast and simple, as well (bag of carrots, lots of fruit, nonfat milk, whole grain bread…). All very important for me who needed to stay away from food and food handling as much as possible.

I also walked — every time I had the urge to binge, I walked — in the beginning — that was about every 2 minutes, it seemed. Oh, yea, and for a “treat,” I shopped for lipstick — red lipstick — you’d never guess just how many shades there are of red lipstick — and that was “back in the day” – I can only image what there is today!

But sadly, I did nothing for the emotional underpinnings of why I binged and purged — that would not happen for another two decades when one of my loved one’s entered a residential rehab program for alcoholism treatment, and I finally started to unravel my own story. You see, I’d had unending understanding of the desperate battle one feels when trying to stop something they just don’t understand — I knew my loved ones meant it when they promised to change. I’d promised myself that same thing after every purge. But food was necessary for survival so I could not understand how they could not learn to re-drink if I’d learned to re-eat. Thankfully, years of research and intensive therapy with an addictions specialist changed my thinking – and my life.

I’m sharing all this to raise awareness about the power of the brain (which controls everything we think, feel, say and do) and the power of exercise and nutrition to heal the brain — something now understood from a scientific, brain-research related perspective — and the power of information. Had I not read that small column about a woman who’d binged and purged, I might not have survived my eating disorders or I might have had a very, very lonely, desperate life (see poems below). And though it was deeply unfortunate this new research was not available back then, it nonetheless has been another example of what the power of information can do.

Had I not begun my research into all things addiction in 2003, I likely would not have found the help I needed to fully live my life. For although I’d learned to re-eat and didn’t use exercise in an unhealthy manner, as I said above, I’d not dealt with the underlying emotional issues that kept triggering unhealthy coping patterns (such as tolerating ongoing secondhand drinking, the negative impacts of my loved ones’ drinking behaviors on me) because that sort of understanding – let alone help – was not available back then. Instead I’d spent the subsequent 20 years being a workaholic, super mom and repeatedly trying to “fix” the various alcoholics | alcohol abusers in my life. Not until 2003 did I finally start my journey to break free of secondhand drinking (aka codependency) and find new, revolutionizing information on the brain, stress, addiction, risk factors, childhood trauma, brain developmental processes and so much more. And in that process, I was finally able to break free of the unhealthy coping skills I’d adopted during my bulimia years. It was that which gave me the tools to finally live my life. (I will share more of the details of this journey in a later post.)

I’m sharing all of this because I received a request to use my blog to raise awareness about The International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals 2012 Symposium to take place on March 22-25 at the Charleston Marriott in Charleston, South Carolina, and I am honored to do so.

I’m also sharing all of this to encourage you to learn about whatever your issue may be: eating disorders, substance abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, drug addiction, dual diagnosis, and codependency [or what I call secondhand drinking/drugging (SHD)]. There is a great deal of relevant information in other posts on this blog.

And, lastly, I’d like to share two poems of mine that express the pain and power of bulimia.

BULGING EYES

The clerk knows her by name and
makes small talk as she rings up
$14.98 of candy, cream puffs, a 32-oz.
Slurpee and those to-die-for barbeque chips.

The girl is at the conversation and misses the
clerk’s double-take, her cue that her
answer’s not jiving with the question.
But she can’t hear very well;

the Voice has started its volley with SELF—
“You said it was the last time!” |  “It’s not that much.”
“Paper or plastic?” the clerk asks.
“Plastic,” she says, as she drops the two pennies into the cup by the register.

Robotically, she scoops up the bag,
glances over her shoulder with the haunted
look of someone prodded at gunpoint, and
tears the wrapper off the ice cream sandwich.

The Voice is now venomous    |   “You weren’t going to do it, again, dammit!
The girl jerks her car door open, looking like the
bride after the groom feeds her the cake,
cream puffs now smeared around the edges of her mouth.

She tosses the bag onto the passenger’s seat and
paws through the food wrappers.
It feels like Christmas when she finds her
brother’s old sweatshirt.

Quickly, she pulls it over her head and unzips her skirt,
minutes before the choice is no longer her own.
Rote reactions leave no memory of the route traveled
until she’s startled by the squawk, “That’ll be $4.99

at the second window.” She registers a pleasant feeling
as the smell of the #2 special fills her car.
She heads to her last stop and parks her car around back.
Deadman walking, she enters the restroom—

no key dangling from a
tin can, guarded by a salesclerk, needed here.
She rams her hip into the door just below the
cockeyed doorknob—attention to its proper fit long overdue—and stumbles inside.

A graffiti-filled mirror, slashes of reflection missing, adorns one wall
facing an empty feminine napkin dispenser and stench-soaked urinal.
She glances at the toilet and inventories what she sees
in the detached manner of a policewoman recording a crime scene—

Rust-ringed toilet bowl. Urine-stained rim. Streaks of dried unknowns
snaking down the sides. Missing toilet seat. The Voice unleashes
a string of expletives about the weak, pathetic, spineless,
worthless piece of shit she is.

She knows. She’s heard it thousands of times before.
Methodically, she ties her hair back and takes a center
lineman’s position facing the toilet.
She stuffs three fingers down her throat

as far as the connective webbing allows, her teeth
scrapping the calluses on the backs of her knuckles.
The retching commences and continues until
the mound of regurgitated food is topped by a pool of yellow bile.

Trance-like, she washes her hands and ventures a look in the
Mirror – bulging eyes stare back.
Protruding veins worm their way along her temples and down her neck.
Puke streaks her chin; a strand of hair is stuck in the vomit.

She still can’t zip her skirt. Defiantly, she unties her hair, instead.
Moving towards the door, she hears her mother’s voice and
pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her hand,
“Don’t touch the door knob, dear. Nasty germs. Nasty, nasty germs.”

©Lisa Frederiksen. Excerpt from her collection of poems, “Breathe Out.” 

RUNNING ON EMPTY

The shell looks remarkable, though expressions
choreographed by rote give others pause
from time to time. Still, no one suspects
the anguish, despair and loathsome yesterdays that
have absconded the soul.

No one suspects the past eleven years,
the 12,045 times the mind lost its battle
to pry open just one of the doors lining
its every corridor, nook and cranny;
just one of the doors

that protected the soul from
the secrets thought to be too
painful to look at; hermitically sealed
with shame and guilt and fear;
the secrets that if freed would have

vanquished the pounding anxiety that
laid waste the endless, futile attempts to
bolster the Voice;
the Voice that in battle after battle had cried,
pleaded, proclaimed,

declared and begged,
“No, you’re not going to do it, again!!”
but was rendered helpless, time after time, up
to two, three, even four times a day, helpless to stave off
the anxiety that craved the calm

the calm that was possible when the mind
allowed the switch to flip because of a
split second bargain with self;
a bargain that condoned the binge
with a promise that

“This really is the last time!”
a bargain sealed with a desperate plea to
God, to the universe,
and at times to the devil, her self,
“Please let this be the last time,”

a bargain that came wrapped
in guilt and shame and fear,
adding another nail to the already
hermitically sealed doors; the doors
that lined the mind’s every corridor, nook and cranny;

The doors that kept the secrets locked
safely away; the secrets
that if freed would have vanquished the
the pounding anxiety that surged forth at the slightest
threat of a crack

and emptied the soul of all joy, all hope,
today and all tomorrows;
running on empty.
The soul that no longer knew
where to find the key

so exacted retribution for the broken promise
with another purge;
craving the temporary peace that came
with believing—“This really is the last time.”

©Lisa Frederiksen. Excerpt from her collection of poems, “Breathe Out.” 

For more information about bulimia, anorexia and other types of eatings disorders, visit The International Association of Eating Disorders.

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Lisa Frederiksen

Author | Speaker | Consultant | Founder at BreakingTheCycles.com

Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, "10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and "Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.

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