An article on eating disorders in last week's Health Supplementprovoked the following response from Margaret*,a compulsive overeater
I read your article in today's paper with both interest and severe frustration. I would like to draw your attention to another facet of eating disorders that is nowhere mentioned - that of eating disorders as addiction.
I have been a compulsive overeater for about 20 years (I am 33) and although I have been recovering for the past 18 months or so, I am certainly not 'cured'. This is because I have an addiction - in my case it happens to be food - and addictions do not respond to the type of care talked about in your article.
I needed to go into an addiction treatment centre (with drug addicts, alcoholics and gamblers as well as those with eating disorders) and since then I attend group therapy once a week and 12-step meetings once or twice a week.
It is the philosophy of the 12-step programme that is helping me to recover, as well as the support of those who understand what I am going through because they have been through it or are going through it themselves.
No amount of counselling or willpower or any of the other actions I took were ever able to keep me from turning to food to deal with everything and anything in my life. I was totally obsessed with my weight and body image from the age of about 12 or so, maybe younger. I blamed everything in my life on the fact that I was fat and I felt powerless to do anything about it.
I was trapped in my body, and my panic about being fat and getting fatter only encouraged me to eat more. This calmed the feelings of panic but then I would panic more because I had overeaten, so I would eat more because all was now lost anyway . . . and so on and so on - an ever increasing vicious circle.
I thought I was unhappy because I was fat, I thought I had a weight problem - that that was what was wrong with me. But what I have come to see is that I was fat because I was unhappy. I projected all of my feelings on to my body.
Every time I 'felt' fat, I was really sad or lonely or angry or fearful or anxious, etc. I didn't understand what these feelings were; I couldn't identify them. I just interpreted all my feelings as being cravings - so when I was lonely and craved a hug, I thought I wanted food. When I was anxious about exams, I thought I wanted food. I used to feel that my head would explode with the intensity of the cravings.
I ended up burying all my feelings, burying them under a layer of fat, pushing them down with food.
My body image has changed radically in the past 18 months because I no longer project my feelings on to my body. Now I have learnt to identify them. And when I have fat days, I am able to stop and ask myself, okay, what is going on here? What am I feeling? What's happening? But most of the time now I feel fine with how I look. I am still a little overweight for my height but not much and I have to trust that that will take care of itself in due course provided I stay abstinent.
I thought I had a problem with my weight but I didn't. I have - to quote the 12-step programme - "an emotional illness with physical symptoms and a spiritual recovery".
Every time I read an article about eating disorders I find myself really frustrated because they never mention that eating disorders can also be addictions.
There is no cure for an addiction. You can have a fabulous recovery but you are never cured - you have to stay abstinent (which means the same thing if you are anorexic or an addict, in the sense that you have to eat three balanced meals a day) and it's not an easy thing to do because, unlike drugs and alcohol, you have to eat to live.
There is no mention in your article of OA (Overeaters Anonymous) or EDA (Eating Disorders Anonymous) which are the places that I need to be - not in an eating disorders unit in St Pat's or St John of Gods. I met a lot of people in the treatment centre who had been very badly damaged in the psychiatric system and who never received the help they needed. The 12-step programme has a policy of attraction rather than promotion but I see no reason why OA & EDA cannot be listed in an article such as yours and referred to in some way.
I need the counselling as well but I need the 12 steps more - they keep me abstinent from day to day while the counselling helps me to figure out what all the new feelings are, gives me support, helps me to see why I act the way I do and doesn't let me away with falling into the same negative traps I've always set up for myself.
Eating disorder articles always focus almost exclusively on anorexia and bulimia. There are a hell of a lot of compulsive overeaters out there (and binge eating disorder isn't a great term either as, for instance, I rarely went on binges - I just grazed all the time and was obsessed with food). I'd say a lot of people at WeightWatchers, for instance, are compulsive overeaters.
When I was a teenager I used to seize on any article about eating disorders in the hope that they would explain what I was going through and how I could get help. They never did - they never told my story and so I was 32 before I got help and went somewhere people spoke my language.
I went to AA meetings and NA meetings in the treatment centre and I felt right at home - the way they talked about needing drink or drugs was how I felt about food. I don't (thank God) have any other addictions (one is enough) but I am an addict and I always will be. I just don't have to practise my addiction - one day at a time I can stay abstinent.
Maybe if somebody had written about eating disorders as addiction (and this applies equally to many of those with anorexia and bulimia) then maybe I wouldn't have had to suffer for as long as I did.
* Margaret is not the author's real name, but because of the rules observed by those who attend AA meetings, she requested that her name not be used.