Sarah Kershaw’s Article on Eating Disorders
This article, “Starving Themselves, Cocktail in Hand” by Sarah Kershaw is a very interesting one about anorexia and bulimia. These eating disorders are all dangerous, but as Sarah Kershaw reports they are growing into different versions of each. One new version of anorexia that we as college students can relate to is “drunkorexia.” This is not an official medical term but it refers to binge drinkers, typically women, who starve themselves all day to offset the calories that they have consumed while drinking. This has grown to a serious problem because people who are anorexic usually avoid alcohol but now people drink to ease their anxiety and some even resort to drugs to suppress their appetites.
Dr. Bunnell who is now part of the Renfrew Center, which deals with helping people grow and recover from eating disorders has said that the obsession with being skinny and the social acceptance of drinking and using drugs are partly to blame for the development of eating disorders and alcohol abuse.
Bulimia is another very dangerous eating disorder. It is a form of losing weight by throwing up after each meal in order to get rid of the calories that were consumed. Many bulimics use alcohol to vomit. This leads to alcohol addiction and alcohol abuse.
There are many cases which hold the horrible stories of the dangers of these eating disorders. One of them is Judy Van De Veen, 36, who became anorexic at the age of 24. She said that in the first two months she would eat small bites of low-calorie foods but later she began overeating obsessively which later led to her throwing up entire boxes of cereal, whole pizzas and almost every other food she consumed. Not only was this dangerous for her but it was also very costly, sometimes exceeding $80 a day on food. After she went into treatment she later started drinking, which later led her to go to rehab where she spent more than $25,000 of her own money.Now she has a 14 month-old daughter and has been sober for three years. However, she said the temptation to binge and purge is haunting her again.
There are many researchers trying to figure out if eating foods simulates the same effect on the brain that alcohol or drugs would. However these are very different from each other because the treatment for alcohol or drug abuse would be to quit doing it but to stop eating food is not an option.
“Eating normally would be an effective behavior, but it’s easier to give up alcohol and drugs because you never need it again,” said Dr. Wandler, who is the vice president for medical services at Remuda Ranch. “If your drug is food, that’s a challenge.”
I think that Sarah Kershaw has done a great job in addressing this problem and making it clear to people the dangers that result from such eating disorders. There are many people that deny that they have a disorder and those are the ones that need the most help.
