Eating Demons: An Ode to EDs

The resurgence is upon us

I’ve been in recovery since I turned eleven, since my first stint with food restriction right before Halloween 2008. The date is permanently lodged in my memory, I had chosen a costume that matched my friend's, who I believed was much thinner than me. A minor inconvenience to most, to me it marked the beginning of a long, uphill battle. Examining the photos taken that day, I look like a shriveled up bird, hollow-eyed with a sharply pointed nose on which the juncture between bone and cartilage was visible. How I thought I looked at the time? Short, fat and bulging at the ankles. How strange perception is, and how flawed.

What I didn’t know at eleven is that once you go down the path of disordered eating, in whatever form, you will live like an addict for the rest of your life trying to recover. Why? Because any attempt at returning to the life led before your disorder requires the very apparatus that got you there in the first place: your brain. In the same way an alcoholic has to wake up every morning and decide not to drink, you have to decide not to starve yourself, you have to decide not to purge, you have to decide not to wreak havoc on your body and mind and soul. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately, eating disorders can never truly replace the needs they temporarily replace. The desires it promises to fulfill always evaporate the moment it has worked its course. Both metaphorically and literally, after every full meal you are left starving and have to immediately turn your efforts to eating again. It’s a never ending cycle, which is precisely what addiction is: “a repeated behavior, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others.”  (Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts)

Anything can become an addiction, and it’s time we treated eating disorders accordingly. And why not? I saw a video a few days ago about a woman who was addicted to nose-spray. Social media can be an addiction, and so can porn and gambling and sex. The problem with food is that it is everywhere, we are constantly surrounded by it, and not one person eats like another. If you are confused whether your eating habits are healthy or not, perhaps you ought to ask yourself who is in charge. You or the behavior? While it is possible to rule a behavior, an obsession/addiction is impossible to control. Now ask yourself this: given the harm you are doing yourself and others, are you willing to stop? No? Then you are probably in trouble. 

In the Buddhist conception of the universe, the wheel of life revolves through six realms, one being the realm of the hungry ghosts, inhabited by “creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large, bloated, empty bellies”. Regardless how much these “hungry ghosts” (the addicts) uses, consumes, or acquires, they constantly crave more—even as their health deteriorates and their relationships and finances fall apart. 

It feels somewhat unfair to look at addiction as gluttony above all else. Is it a mere reckless pursuit of pleasure? Gabor Maté, who I’ve already quoted above and works with drug addicts, claims that addictions always originate from pain, whether felt openly or subconsciously. Rarely, if ever, for pleasure alone. In short, it is a way to navigate life without living through it, a way to self-medicate suffering, a way to ward off the pain of a meaningless existence. It is a sign, a symptom of distress. 

Anorexia and bulimia (or anorexia purging type as my therapist insists on calling it), plagued me for the better part of my childhood, adolescence and early to mid twenties. It was my all-absorbing focus, the provider of ultimate meaning, and the sole reason for waking up each morning. In a way it had become a god to which I was completely subjugated. For a long time my life felt like a downward spiral of hopelessness and despair, and terrible loneliness, stuck in a trance of illusory feelings of comfort. I had morphed into a hollow person plagued by emptiness. Luckily our brains are remarkably resilient. Even after years of abuse it is possible to rewire ourselves in ways that allow us to live, perhaps for the first time, a fulfilling, healthy life. After all, we are the makers of our fate. 

That said, nothing about recovery is linear. What to some is easy, to “just eat”, to me, at times, is still difficult. I still struggle… and I know that sometimes I lie to others in an attempt to deny myself the support I need. I look back at pictures of myself as a young girl and cry. How much life lost, and for what? At what cost? Anorexia is a complicated disease, full of paradoxes. We willingly starve ourselves, sometimes to the point of death, while most healthy people fear hunger, and avoid it at all costs. There was a time I even enjoyed my hunger pangs, though who knows, chronic malnutrition influences our thinking, feeling, and behavior in remarkable ways.

Unfortunately I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. I wish I could create a guidebook, but no one’s recovery is the same. There is one commonality however, and that is acceptance. You have to accept there is a problem, and then seek professional help and find a support system. Every day you postpone your recovery is another minute of life lost. Living and feeling is something I feared for so long, but it’s wonderful to feel human, and not like a mere automaton floating through time. No amount of thinness ever felt as good as Life feels. 

My inbox is open for anyone in need of a friend.