Age: 34

Anorexia

I suppose I was around 12 when I first stopped eating. Looking back, I am not certain why? Only that I could, so I did! I think most people then considered it a 'teen' thing and that I would outgrow it. By the time I was 16, my periods had stopped and I weighed 84 pounds. I had full-blown anorexia.

My family doctor had me hospitalized. By then, it was no longer a choice element. The thought of food would bring on immediate nausea. I recall clearly one doctor that came to see me. He told me I was wasting his time and that my parents should 'do something' with me. That incident made me very wary of approaching medical people for a long time.

Over the years, I have received medication on and off, but I have quickly relapsed into my anorexia once support is withdrawn. The real crunch for me came in Spring '95. I collapsed. It was a heart attack. The years of self starvation had damaged my body irreversibly. I was in the hospital for 5 months. This time I received therapy as well as medication.

It has taken the 18 months since to regain my strength. I am now just over 105 pounds. I now do the grocery shopping. I couldn't face that for years. I even cook for my family.

To aid in my recovery, I was given extensive therapy on a one-to-one basis. I have to say that the therapy was the best treatment. The sub-conscious mind is an extraordinarily strong thing and my emotional difficulties needed to be addressed. I still have to use beta-blockers for my heart as I am left with a 'murmur' and morphine-based painkillers on occasion. I no longer though use medication for the anorexia.

Two things that I avoid that help me, weighing scales and mirrors. Both can bring about strong negative responses. It is a little like alcoholism. I will always have the tendency towards anorexia, but by avoiding certain triggers I can live a "normal life".

I will never be able to associate pleasure and food, but through education I can understand the necessity for it. I now acknowledge that eating is a task I must attend to and I've established a daily eating routine.

For me, it has always been about control, never weight. I do worry about relapsing and have never had the opportunity to talk to other people who have experienced this type of illness. Support is paramount and recovery can be tough as I often feel isolated. Few people understand how hard it is living with anorexia.

I hope that one day all kids will receive the help they need before their problem becomes deeply embedded. I now focus on today and worry about tomorrow when it arrives. I thank my husband and my kids for their support and belief in me.

Age: 28

Anorexia

Listen to how Amy reached the point of recovery on realaudio

What started as a "FAD DIET", became a compulsion for me. I had gotten so bad at school with my starving, laxatives and diet pills, that I was forever passing out in my dorm room. I was in treatment at school with a psychiatrist at a local hospital that was pushing for hospitalization.

After passing out in my dorm room, ending up in the emergency room with low potassium, I was hospitalized on a general psychiatric unit for one month.

Besides the "fad diet", the big thing that really triggered my eating disorder was being raped at college. After 30 days of continued weight loss, my family was called to take me home to a hospital in New York that specialized in eating disorders.

I suffered from my eating disorder for 8 years with multiple hospitalizations ( I gave up counting after 12). I was tube fed on IV's and miserable. I was placed on antidepressant medications including Anafranil, Disipramine, Prozac and Zoloft.

At the height of my illness, the eating disorder consumed my entire life. I gave up my friends, isolated myself in the house, dropped out of college (temporarily) and spent 5 days a week at the eating disorders' clinic for nutritional counseling and group therapy. Add to that, medical appointments three times per week. My family didn't understand this. To them, being thin was desirable at ANY COST.

I suffered many relapses and my eating disorder progressed to the point that I wanted to die. I reached that point of death and woke up in the ICU in 1994... that was when my recovery really began. My last hospitalization was in 1995.

I'm currently on Elavil. I'm also in out-patient psychotherapy on a weekly basis with my psychiatrist.

I have great hope for the future. I'm as close to eating disorder free as I think I can get. I refuse to let my eating disorder get out of control.

I went back to school and received my Master's Degree in Social Work. I am a practicing social worker and my intention is to help others fight this battle. My hopes and dreams for the future are to work with a non profit organization here in New York to help people with eating disorders get the treatment they need, even when they can't afford it.

I'm now married. I now have 2 1/2 years free of hospitalizations. Relapses happen with ED's and the media doesn't help at all...it's a never ending battle.

Age: 27

bulimia

I first learned about bulimia during a school orientation. Several of my friends and I tried it and I was the only one who liked it. I liked the fullness and sudden emptiness, the complete high feeling afterwards and also the instant relaxation that comes after throwing up.

I really was not an overweight child. I was very athletic and also never really paid much attention to my body until I began binging and purging. I did it occasionally until the age of 13. That's when I was raped by a family friend.

I then began purging without binging and entered anorexia. I was anorexic until I was 21. I entered the hospital at age 21 with a ruptured esophagus at 5 feet 6 inches and 100 lbs. I had maintained this weight for several years. I was insistent that I did not have an eating disorder and that I had the flu for several months. They did not believe it and called my parents.

I was out-of-state, going to college, and my mom flew to see me. She gave me an ultimatum, move home or go for treatment. I moved home. It was a mistake. I can see that now, 6 years later. But at the time, I was not ready to admit that I even had an eating disorder much less get treatment for it.

After moving home, I entered counseling for depression. I began to see that I did have an eating disorder and that was the first time I talked about the rape.

Several years later, I left home again after taking a job in my field of study. I had decreased my bulimic behavior to several times a week and also began using prescription drugs and cocaine to substitute for the relief of the bulimic behavior. I had a suicide attempt about 6 months after moving away from home. At that time, I was binging and purging approximately 15-20 times a day and wasn't working and obviously not paying my bills. Actually I wasn't doing anything but being bulimic.

I was committed to a treatment facility for several months. I just could not let go and stop purging. Then the court system forced me into drug treatment. I was told at that time that I was chronic and that I would never get better. I really did not care. I was ready to let bulimia kill me. I went to drug treatment, entered a half way house and attempted suicide again, also binging and purging many times a day and was committed to a state institution.

It was at this time that I took a serious look at my life and decided that I did not want to be bulimic anymore. I just could not seem to stop the behavior. I felt as if I was addicted. I could not maintain a healthy weight and I was severely depressed. Medication did not do much good for me because I was purging so much that it never had an opportunity to get into my system. I spent several months in this state hospital and was released. I moved back near my family with the hopes of working things out and maybe that would "cure me".

I have found that the only cure for me is to be honest about my feelings and to not "throw them up". Bulimia is a way I punish myself. I punish myself for feeling sad, happy, succeeding, failing, not being perfect and for doing a good job. I am learning that life is just one moment at a time and that often I can only say: "okay, for the next 5 minutes I will not binge or purge."

After having serious health problems several months ago with my heart and my kidneys, I faced the ultimatum, was I going to listen to my body or my eating disorder. I have chosen to listen to my body. It is hard and not always what I do. I am finding that the more I do listen to my body, the less my head tells me to binge and purge.

I think the hardest part for me is letting go of what I thought my eating disorder represented in my life: "stability, love, nurturance and acceptance". Trusting myself, and others, to find those things outside of food, and also learning to accept my body, has been very freeing.

I am not at a place where I can honestly say I love my body, but I can accept it for what it does for me and stop punishing it for what it doesn't do. My expectations today of life are: "one day at a time"; and I am finding that at the end of the day, if I slip and purge, I can forgive myself, look at why it happened and know that tomorrow is another chance for me to choose to be healthy.

I hope that one day there will be a place where people with eating disorders can go to find support, help and love for where they are at at the moment and not for where everyone thinks they should be. That was the hardest part of recovery. Today I am grateful that I have the experiences I have and I look forward to finding out what life is like when I live on life's terms and choose to do that bulimia free.

My wish today is to have a day bulimia free and not even have it cross my mind. I look forward to that day. It keeps me going. If I can help in any way, if you need to talk or just need to know that someone is out there that cares, you can email me at mich1896@flash.net. I appreciate the opportunity to share my experience with you and I send positive thoughts to each and every one of you who reads this message. You deserve to be healthy.

Age: 17

Anorexia

Mary talks about the process of recovery on realaudio

I started eating less, maybe one meal a day. Sometimes I would have snacks in between, but soon, that ended, too.

In the beginning, I weighed about 100 lbs. In a few months, I was down to 90. This didn't seem to be enough. I had to lose it quicker. So I started exercising every night, like a maniac. I did about two hundred sit-ups, a hundred leg lifts, and several other small exercises.

I also started eating even less. One day, I would eat maybe half a sandwich, then I wouldn't eat the next. I finally thought I'd reached my goal! 80lbs. But I still thought I was big. To me, though, the problem had changed from wanting to be thin, to an obsession with depriving myself of everything, mainly food.

My parents sent me to a psychiatrist, but it didn't help. So after a few weeks, I was on medication. They changed my medication four times, trying desperately to get me to eat, but nothing worked. I had slowly gone downhill. I was depressed all the time, only thinking about my weight. I was so hungry, but the guilt seemed worse than the starvation, so I continued.

My older brother had always been my hero, but one night, he cut his wrists. He lived, but it left a very vivid picture in my head. I could just kill myself and not have to worry anymore! I tried overdosing on muscle relaxers, but was only sent to the emergency room. A month later, I, too, cut my wrists. Nothing worked.

I ended up going to a hospital for other people with my problem, depression. But when I was in the hospital, I realized that nobody else had the two problems I had, depression and anorexia. I left the hospital after a week, unchanged. The psychiatrist changed my medication again, to Prozac. At this point, I was probably 75lbs. Three weeks passed, and I was slowly eating more, about a sandwich and a half each day. I pulled my weight up to 90 again. When I weighed myself, I started crying. I relapsed and dropped back down to 80lbs.

I cried all the time. Nothing was helping me and there was no way out. Everything seemed hopeless. A voice in my head constantly monitored what I ate, or even drank.

I returned to the hospital and this time listened to everything, and tried to actually learn what was causing this problem and what I could do to get out of the nightmare I had made for myself.

Now, a few months later, I feel somewhat relieved that most of this is over. I can eat more now and only hear the voice, if I let myself. Knowing that you can eat healthy, and stay thin, makes a big difference. You don't have to starve yourself to be that way.

I weigh 105 lbs. now and I feel happy about it. Every once in awhile, the voice will try to creep back in, but I just ignore it and continue trying to stay healthy.

I'm 17, but it seems like I've been through an awful lot. Thanks for asking me to write. I hope you can use it to help anyone that might have the same problems. They have to know, they're not the only ones, that's for sure!

Age: 17

bulimia

It was really easy at first and I had no problem doing it until I got weak and constantly felt sick. Not to mention the sore throat. In the beginning, I was 116 pounds. I'm 5'4". Now I realize that wasn't bad at all. I got down to 98 pounds and I was even more upset when no one had noticed that I had shed a pound.

I was constantly miserable and everyone around me had noticed. I also had an obsession with laxatives. Sounds gross, but it was another way to lose weight.

In my eyes, I think I still look horrible and I will never be perfect. I'm trying my hardest to stop this and slowly I am.

To most girls it sounds so perfect, but it's not. It's disgusting and painful and I would not want anyone to go though what I have been going through for the last few months.

I know it sounds like I am an old woman preaching this to you, but I'm not. I'm 17 years old and I'm really glad that I'm taking control of my problem before it got too serious.