Drunkorexia

“Drunkorexia is a colloquialism for anorexia or bulimia combined with alcohol abuse. The term is generally used to denote the utilization of extreme weight control methods to compensate for planned binge drinking.”

Wikipedia

The VERY FIRST TIME I drank was so that I wouldn’t eat. I remember the thought process very clearly. I was 14 and desperately trying to lose weight.

I purposely drank so that I would not feel hungry and it worked. I thought I had found the solution to what I thought was an ‘eating problem’.

I quickly learnt that drinking had added benefits. (or so I thought) I was able to talk about things that were uncomfortable to me, like feelings.

When I drank I didn’t feel like I was crawling out of my skin all the time. I felt accepted for the first time ever. I felt free for the first time in my life. I didn’t realize what a lie this was until it was too late.

It felt good to drink and it felt good not to eat. Combining the two seemed like a perfect solution to all my problems.

I was bulimic at the time and didn’t want to be. I figured out if I drank, I didn’t eat, so I didn’t have to throw up.

I was also very conscious of the calories in alcohol so I made sure if I was going to drink I would absolutely not eat to save up the calories for the drinking.

What I didn’t realize is that I was addicted to MORE.

If something made me feel good, take me outside of myself then I became addicted. Hence, I drank alcoholically right from the start.

I didn’t fall into full blown alcoholism until later in life but the seed was planted.

With Drunkorexia it is hard to say what comes first, the eating disorder or the alcoholism.... the chicken before the egg scenario.

What I know to be true is that eating disorders and alcoholism can literally feed off each other. One fuels the other.

For me, the drinking was fueled and magnified by my eating disorder. I’ve had an eating disorder since my very first memory of being alive.

My disordered belief was that drinking helped me combat my ED.

Drinking, combined with not eating made me feel comfortable in my skin. It made me feel alive (even though it was killing me)

Drinking and feeling hungry, empty, had a euphoric effect on me. That, in itself was addicting.

In my experience, eating disorders gravitate to drinking. It very much did for me because I didn’t want to eat.

I obsessively already counted calories. I always knew how many calories were in any class of liquor. I obsessed over saving calories in actual food.

Alcohol backfired. It backfired initially by instead of making me eat less it started to make me binge eat.

After a binge drinking session I would end up being out of control hungry, eating any and everything in sight.

Sometimes this would be when I was in a blackout. I would not realize what I had done until the next morning. I would be horrified, terrified and absolutely filled with self loathing.

But I continued my time with Drunkorexia until I graduated high school.

Then I stopped drinking altogether. There was just to many calories in it. I couldn’t take that fact anymore.

So I stopped. I didn’t want to drink anything alcohol or otherwise that had calories in it.

Subsequently I didn’t drink alcohol for the next ten years.

Drunkorexia is real and it is so very dangerous. It didn’t leave me when I left high school. It started up right where it left off. But this time it was a little different.

It started again with the same motives, to stop me from eating. Then eventually in the last few years it helped me to eat.

To numb the feelings eating brings with it. The guilt, the obsessive thoughts. Alcohol allowed me to eat and be numb of my ED brain.

Drinking fueled my eating and eating fueled my drinking. It’s an insane cycle that will forever continue until we want to stop.

I had to get help with my alcoholism initially as my life was so out of control, it was unbearable.

Over the years of constant relapses (and utilizing Drunkorexia behaviors to fuel my relapses) I finally realized that in order to remain sober I had to tackle my eating disorder.

In all my relapses, my motive behind drinking was my eating, or not eating.

Drunkorexia. Anorexia. Alcoholism. It all stems from the same disordered thinking process.

In order to recover from one disorder, I had to face ALL the issues behind it. I had to face my disordered thinking. All the actions that were behind my disordered motives.

For me, that was facing the reasons why I felt the need to run away from myself. Little by slowly. One scary demon at a time, I am discovering freedom.