Eating Disorder

[MajestyJo]

Converted from There is A Solution in the Big Book for people with eating disorders of all kinds.

We with eating disorders, know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as a drunk. Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the eating disorder problem.

We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to the Captain's table. Unlike the feelings of the ship's passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.

The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in sisterly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from eating disorders.

An illness of this sort - and we have come to believe it an illness - involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for her and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with an eating disorder illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad partners and parents - anyone can increase the list.

We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are, or who may be affected. There are many. Highly competent psychiatrists who have dealt with us have found it sometimes impossible to persuade a compulsive eater or dieter to discuss her situation without reserve. Strangely enough, our partners, parents and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor.

But there are us with eating disorders who have found this solution, who are properly armed with facts about ourselves, can generally win the entire confidence of another person with an eating disorder in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.

That the woman who is making the approach has had the same difficulty, that she obviously knows what she is talking about, that her whole deportment shouts at the new prospect that she is a woman with a real answer, that she has no attitude of Holier Than Thou, nothing whatever except the sincere desire to be helpful; that there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured - these are the conditions we have found most effective. After such an approach many take up their beds and walk again.

None of us makes a sole vocation of this work, nor do we think its effectiveness would be increased if we did. We feel that elimination of our eating disorder is but a beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations and affairs. All of us spend much of our spare time in the sort of effort which we are going to describe. A few are fortunate enough to be so situated that they can give nearly all their time to the work.

If we keep on the way we are going there is little doubt that much good will result, but the surface of the problem would hardly be scratched. Those of us who live in large cities are overcome by the reflection that close by hundreds are dropping into oblivion every day. Many could recover if they had the opportunity we have enjoyed. How then shall we present that which has been so freely given us?

We have concluded to publish an anonymous volume setting forth the problem as we see it. We shall bring to the task our combined experience and knowledge. This should suggest a useful program for anyone concerned with a eating disorder problem.

Of necessity there will have to be discussion of matters medical, psychiatric, social, and religious. We are aware that these matters are, from their very nature, controversial. Nothing would please us so much as to write a book which would contain no basis for contention or argument. We shall do our utmost to achieve that ideal. Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints and a respect for their opinions are attitudes which make us more useful to others. Our very lives, as ex-dieters, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.

You may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very ill from our eating disorders. Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why, in the face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. If you are a person with an eating disorder who wants to live in abstinence and freedom, you may already be asking -"What do I have to do?"

It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. Before going into a detailed discussion, it may be well to summarize some points as we see them.

How many times people have said to us: "I can take it or leave it alone. Why can't she?" "Why don't you eat and exercise like normal people or quit eating compulsively?" "That girl can't handle her eating." "Why don't you try Atkins diet and join a gym?" "Lay off the starchy stuff." "Her will power must be weak." "She could stop if she wanted to." "He's such a great guy, I should think she'd stop for his sake." "The doctor told her that if she kept going through the binge/purge cycle again it would kill her, but there she is doing it all over again."

Now these are commonplace observations on people with eating disorders which we hear all the time. Back of them is a world of ignorance and misunderstanding. We see that these expressions refer to people whose reactions are very different from ours.

Moderate eaters have little trouble in giving up over dieting or over-eating entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone

Then we have a certain type of compulsive dieter or over eater. She may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair her physically and mentally. It may cause her to die a few years before her time. If a sufficiently strong reason - ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor - becomes operative, this girl can also stop or moderate, although she may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

But what about the person with a real eating disorder? She may start off as a moderate eater; she may or may not have a continuous dieting or compulsive eating issue; but at some stage of her eating disorder career she begins to lose all control of her food consumption, or dieting and over exercising once she starts to eat compulsively or try to control her weight in some other way.

Here is the woman who has been puzzling you, especially in her lack of control. She does absurd, incredible, tragic things while eating or dieting. She is a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She is seldom mildly intoxicated. She is always more or less insanely drunk on food or abstaining. Her disposition while eating or abstaining resembles her normal nature but little. She may be one of the finest girls in the world. Yet let her eat or abstain for a day, and she frequently becomes disgustingly, and even dangerously anti-social. She has a positive genius for getting into her disease at exactly the wrong moment, particularly when some important decision must be made or engagement kept. She is often perfectly sensible and well balanced concerning everything except her obsessions, but in that respect she is incredibly dishonest and selfish. She often possesses special abilities, skills, and aptitudes, and has a promising career ahead of her. She uses her gifts to build up a bright outlook for her family and herself, and then pulls the structure down on her head by a senseless series of sprees. She is the person who goes to bed so intoxicated she ought to sleep the clock around. Yet early next morning she searches madly for the hoarded food, laxatives and diet pills she misplaced the night before. If she can afford it, she may have food and laxatives or diet pills concealed all over his house to be certain no one gets her entire supply away from her to throw down the garbage. As matters grow worse, she begins to use a combination of high-powered sedative or diet pills, or food stuck in her pockets to quiet her nerves so she can go to work. Then comes the day when she simply cannot make it and she acts out all over again. Perhaps she goes to a doctor who gives her diet pills or some other means of helping her to abstain with which to taper off. She may use several doctors to get something to control her appetite. Then she begins to appear at hospitals and sanitariums.

This is by no means a comprehensive picture of the true compulsive eater or dieter, as our behavior patterns vary. But this description should identify her roughly.

Why does she behave like this? If hundreds of experiences have shown her that one binge/purge cycle means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it she takes that one compulsive bite? Why can't she stay on the healthy eating wagon? What has become of the common sense and will power that she still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?

Perhaps there never will be a full answer to these questions. Opinions vary considerably as to why the compulsive binger reacts differently from normal people. We are not sure why, once a certain point is reached, little can be done for her. We cannot answer the riddle.

We know that while the compulsive binger/dieter keeps away from trigger foods, as she may do for months or years, she reacts much like other women. We are equally positive that once she takes any trigger foods whatever into her system, or diets compulsively for a time, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for her to stop.

The experience of any compulsive eater will abundantly confirm this. These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took her first compulsive bite, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the person with an eating disorder centers in her mind, rather than in her body. If you ask her why she started on that last bender, the chances are she will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc a compulsive eater’s behaviors create. They sound like the philosophy of the woman who, having a headache, beats herself on the head with a hammer so that she can't feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of a compulsive eater, she will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.

Once in a while she may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that she has no more idea why she took that first compulsive bite than you have. Some with eating disorders have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they often suspect they are down for the count.

How true this is, few realize. In a vague way their families and friends sense that these people are abnormal, but everybody hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse herself from her lethargy and assert her power of will.

The tragic truth is that if the woman be a real compulsive eater, the happy day may not arrive. She has lost control. At a certain point in the food consumption of every compulsive eater, she passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop eating or dieting is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.

The fact is that most with eating disorder, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in binging/purging. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first compulsive bite.

The almost certain consequences that follow eating even a donut do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting her hand on a hot stove.

The eating disorder person may say to herself in the most casual way, "It won't burn me this time, so here's how!" Or perhaps she doesn't think at all. How often have some of us begun to eat in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth serving, pounded on the table and said to ourselves, "For God's sake, how did I ever get started again?" Only to have that thought supplanted by "Well, I'll stop with the second one." Or "What's the use anyhow?"
When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with over eating tendencies, she has probably placed herself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently into isolation. These stark and ugly facts have been confirmed by legions of those with eating disorders throughout history. But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot.

There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.

If you are as seriously bulimic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.

A certain American business man had ability, good sense, and high character. For years he had floundered from one sanitarium to another. He had consulted the best known American psychiatrists. Then he had gone to Europe, placing himself in the care of a celebrated physician (the psychiatrist, Dr. Jung) who prescribed an answer for him. Though experience had made him skeptical, he finished his treatment with unusual confidence. His physical and mental condition were unusually good. Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was binging in a short time. More baffling still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall.

So he returned to this doctor, whom he admired, and asked him point-blank why he could not recover. He wished above all things to regain self-control. He seemed quite rational and well-balanced with respect to other problems. Yet he had no control whatever over food. Why was this?

He begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth, and he got it. In the doctor's judgment he was utterly hopeless; he could never regain his position in society and he would have to place himself under lock and key or hire a bodyguard if he expected to live long. That was a great physician's opinion.

But this man still lives, and is a free man. He does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined. He can go anywhere on this earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude.

Some of our binge eater readers may think they can do without spiritual help. Let us tell you the rest of the conversation our friend had with his doctor.
The doctor said: "You have the mind of a person with a chronic eating disorder. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you." Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.

He said to the doctor, "Is there no exception?"

"Yes," replied the doctor, "there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, compulsive eaters have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men and women are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with a person with an eating disorder of your description."

Upon hearing this, our friend was somewhat relieved, for he reflected that, after all, he was a good church member. This hope, however, was destroyed by the doctor's telling him that while his religious convictions were very good, in his case they did not spell the necessary vital spiritual experience.

Here was the terrible dilemma in which our friend found himself when he had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.

We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, "a design for living "that really works.

The distinguished American psychologist, William James, in his book" Varieties of Religious Experience, "indicates a multitude of ways in which men have discovered God. We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired. If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try. Those having religious affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to their beliefs or ceremonies. There is no friction among us over such matters.

We think it no concern of ours what religious bodies our members identify themselves with as individuals. This should be an entirely personal affair which each one decides for herself in the light of past associations, or her present choice. Not all of us join religious bodies, but most of us favor such memberships.

In the following chapter, there appears an explanation of compulsive eating, as we understand it, then a chapter addressed to the agnostic. Many who once were in this class are now among our members. Surprisingly enough, we find such convictions no great obstacle to a spiritual experience.

Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered. These are followed by forty-three personal experiences.

Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives.

We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many compulsive eaters, men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, "Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing."

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