From Eating Disorder to Alcohol; A Quest for Nourishment
“Do you want to quit binging and purging?”
Only 18 years old, and my therapist seemed frustrated with our lack of progress. I was frustrated too. Of course I didn’t want to quit binging and purging. In this vulnerable, dejected state of my life, my eating disorder was the only thing that felt right. It was sincerely the only part of me that felt like it was winning.
I was thin, but I could eat anything and everything my heart desired. I truly felt like I had found the ultimate hack for modern day survival, and I had no intention of giving it up. It would years before my obsession with food and daily binge/purge sessions would morph into an addiction to alcohol.
In many ways, my food addiction is what kept me from falling down the rabbit hole of drinking sooner than I did. But ultimately, they all came from the same basic need to ‘nourish’ myself in a toxic way.
It's easy to see now that my deep hunger for acceptance and love felt superficially appeased in the forms of food and later alcohol. I’m three years sober, and my bulimia has also since passed, and it not because food no longer called to me or booze stopped numbing my feelings.
The true bridge to healing comes from the inner desire to want better for myself; to seek to nourish myself the right way; to finally learn how to love that 18 year old sitting on the couch thinking her value was based on the number on the scale.
I’m over 40 now, and I can say that learning how to love myself has been a lifelong journey. It’s a journey with no destination. But the first step began the day I wanted more for myself than acceptance or flattery, a size 2 dress or some guy’s attention. It was the day I wanted to feed my soul.
To fill myself with nourishment that would help me live -- not help me die.