THE ANOREXIC BULIMIC SURVIVAL GUIDE is a must read for anyone suffering from anorexia bulimia.  The guide outlines the gutsy and valiant journey of recovery and courage as written and lived by a middle-aged woman with almost 20 years of abstinence. “Shash” has lived a life with this eating disorder for 43 years and has finally embraced a lifestyle that is no longer choking from anorexia bulimia.   Providing 21 actual survival tools, The Anorexic Bulimic Survival Guide offers great support, humor and compassion to all who are challenged with this compulsion.  *****

My name is Shash and I am a recovering anorexic/bulimic.  I have 19 years now of abstinence from being a practicing bulimic.   I finally admitted my secret at age 32 to a therapist, I am now 54.  I started when I was 11 years old.   I have found that this eating disorder, disease, addiction, whatever you want to call it is one of the most difficult addictions of any of the addictions for an individual to overcome.     Alcholics can stop drinking, put down the bottle and not die, a grass smoker can put down their joint and not die, but how do you not eat?  You can’t.  To eat or not eat is not the question.  If you don’t eat, you die. Pretty simple. 

I hope you find something in here that you can identify with, something to help you along in your journey.  My goal is to share some “food for thought”.  For me I have come to understand that the reason that I binge is because there is some unexpressed feeling, need, desire and thought that  I don’t want to acknowledge so I shove them down with food.  The recovery in this eating disorder is learning to eat in a way that healthfully nurtures yourself.   That has been my goal over the past 19 years.  How to eat in a way that feeds not only my body, but my emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physcial being.  It puts a whole new spin and perspective on how eating can effect my entire person.

Every day I get up I face the challenge to stay in abstience.  I wish the desire to binge would just go away, but I don’t think it ever will, for me.   

Good Luck To You, and I send you hope, courage, humility, wisdom and love to deal with this disease.

 Your Sister In Recovery,

Shash

I went cold-turkey for a bit and then went back on Prozac.  Just recently I was wondering what the side-effects of being on Prozac for a number of years could be so I called Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac to find out the answer.  I asked if they had any studies on being on the drug for someone like me who has been on it for 15 years or more…..guess what…..the nurse-customer service person told me “no” and then suggested that I contact my Physician to find that information out.  C’mon, how is a doctor going to know if the manufacturer doesn’t know?  I surmised from that reply that the long-term affects can’t be that great….but…..neither are the consequences of not taking it.  To tell you the truth, I would probably not be here if I hadn’t been taking prozac for all these years.  I would have wound up choking to death during a bulimic bout or committed suicide.  I’ll take the long-term effects whatever they might be and consider myself lucky I have made it all these years.

Is that discouraging?  I don’t know…I think it is my reality and I have had to adjust and accept that as a part of my life.  I find it encouraging for myself that I am aware of this and have been able to practice abstinence after all these years.  I can’t even imagine what it is like to have “full recovery”, to never think about wanting to binge, to eat whatever I want to without worrying that I might want to get it out. I can’t even imagine what that would feel like. 

I wonder if I had not waited so long to get help if I could have full recovery….ie…the longer you have it the harder it is to get full recovery?  I have to be careful not to be too hard on myself because this is certainly bringing up some feelings for me…like I should be better recovered than what I am….but I’m not.  And that’s why I say it goes for one day at a time.  Is this discouraging?  A little?  Is life discouraging?  A little.  But it is all real….I have learned that in order to stay abstinent in my disease…..it is crucial to stay in reality because if I don’t stay in reality it will be harder for me to stay in abstinent….I am not currently practicing anorexia bulimia but I know that in an instant, I can have anorexic bulimic thoughts.  Come to think of it, I don’t like the two differentiations….it doesn’t make sense…either I am an anorexic bulimic or I am not and for me to think that I can get full recovery is like telling an alcoholic that he is cured from his disease.  I don’t think you could convince a truly recovered alcoholic of that differentiation.  What do you think?  I would love to know if you have heard of this before….

Two weeks or so after the 911 binge fest, I had to go to Florida on business, that’s when the anthrax scare happened…I kid you not, the office I was working out of was literally next door to the building where the first guy died from anthrax exposure and then the US declared war.  I was staying in a really nice hotel in Boca and when the news hit that we had gone to war, I then ate the contents of that mini-bar in one sitting and then got into the car to go to Whole Foods to bring food back to the room to binge on.  I remember specifically their turkey meat balls seemed to hit the spot. That was my second, ”Last Binge”. 

When I traveled during the 70’s and 80’s on business staying in hotels for weeks at a time, I would order room service and get my favorite things to binge on…that is dangerous…my favorite things were big ole’ hamburgers and apple pie with ice-cream for dessert.  Of course I could vomit because I was in my own hotel room.  Eating disorders can’t get any easier than that…look at a menu, call room service, have it delivered, sit there with a bed full of food and gorge and my own private bathroom with a scale to do the evil deed when I am done! 

Right now, I am scared about many things.  The economy, the election, my personal finances during this time, my parents health, retirement funds for the future and so much more if I think about it.  The thing to do here is not think about it.  I find that when I live in the “what if” it makes me nuts.  The “what if” is something I have no control over yet I want to have control over it….I get scared, feel the “hole” want to stuff and fill it….and gratefully I have not hurt myself in many years over this fear like I used to.  I still torture my head to some degree, but I haven’t thrown in the body to go with it.  I’m not saying I won’t ever do it again but I don’t know what the future will bring and this recovery is so tender that I am capeable of anything….I pray that I won’t go there again.  That is all I can do. 

I can go for stretches, a week or a month at a time where I am jazzed about life about the possibilities.  I work in that space until I have over-joyed myself to death.  I realize that when I am on a “joy ride”, I have set up expectations that life will look very differently in the physical realm….ie…I will make more money, I will find the love of my life although since going through menopause that is not really a concern these days, I will wake up everyday and the world is mine….those are expectations….I don’t know where I got those expectations or thoughts that money and loving a mate will be the answer to my dilemma. 

Then, I realize, I must be depressed.  Did I take my meds, did I exercise and eat right yesterday, did I get enough sleep, did I set appropriate boundaries, did I try to control and manipulate someone or a situation, because doing all of those things or not doing those things can make me feel like I have a mental hangover.  So, I take a look at what I did yesterday, evaluate it, and try to see what I am going to do differently to keep me in the safe-zone….meaning, I am not going to binge and purge.

So if I look at yesterday, I didn’t want to exercise but I did, I ate okay, I didn’t take my meds, I got enough sleep, I had expectations of others and tried to manipulate, I tried to control what I have absolutely now way of controlling and it bumms me out because it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.  Life doesn’t go the way I want it and it pisses me off or gets me depressed.  Yes, this is the emotional tight-rope I walk on most days.  It’s exhausting.  I wish it wasn’t like this, but it is….and in this moment, I can jump into the shower, hit the gym and then go to work with a positive outlook…I don’t feel like it, but I know it is all that I have to do in healthy self-care and to maintain my abstinence for another day.

I asked her what happened….there were several things… it was a week ago that her dog had died, she had taken a  new position at her old employer several weeks ago which was not working out and she decided it best for her health if she left because of the triggers going off.  She had been trying to contact new people and then she went into the fear and downward spiral of not being enough, of letting people down, in her mind, not being everything for someone else and a failure for not meeting their needs.  As she shared this me, I can so relate.  The disease of anorexia and bulimia is built on unreal and unhealthy expectations of ourselves to be everything someone wants us to be at the expense of our own wellbeing.  The sad thing is that I did not know what was for my own wellbeing for years and I have had to learn healthy self-care as an adult. 

I got what she was saying, I felt what she was saying and after having 20 years of abstinence from purging, I have to admit that each day is still a struggle of being a peace with decisions I make that are in my own best interest.  I was told that to take care of myself first was selfish.  And now I am learning that my own safety and wellbeing is first and foremost above anything or anyone else.  If I am not taking care of myself, I cannot be there for anyone else in a healthy and stable manner.  That took years for me to wrap my head around but it is finally starting to sink in. 

As she shared more, I felt great compassion and I know that will not be the last time she has that urge to vomit.  The next time the moment happens, she has a choice.  At least now I know I have a choice because beforehand, I didn’t.  It’s a critical moment in which I can’t sit with the feelings that are uncomfortable and learn to face them and feel them, have compassion and understanding those feelings, to learn how to love and forgive myself for all that may be creating them, and know that this too shall pass, or I can vomit. Feelings will not kill me, but anorexia bulimia will.

1. Combining the two meals of breakfast and lunch means I get jipped out of a meal somewhere down the line so I eat enough all day to cover the missed meal.

2. Having brunch usually means that you are not eating by yourself and you have to eat proportionately do to the company at the table.  You couldn’t really eat all you wanted to eat because it would scare them half to death.

3. Many brunch’s have a buffet line…oh that’s way bad….you can go back and forth as many times as you want and or you can eat while you are on the brunch line so you don’t have to carry all the food you intend on eating back to the table for everyone to gape upon.  The brunch line is really the “munch line”. 

Easy pickin’s on the “munch line”: Croutons, bread, biscuits, mini-muffins, crackers, sausage, bacon, silver-dollar pancakes, cookies, pastries, any basic finger food.   

Have you ever noticed that you don’t need any silverware when you go through the Sunday Munch Buffet line?  Fingers work just fine for me and they are my own version of the handy-dandy Swiss Army Knife.  The technique very easy:

1. Use the tongs to pick up the treat and put it on your plate.

2. Replace the tongs quickly and then use your fingers to get the little critters off your plate and into your mouth so you have adequate room to continue to add to your plate as you move down the line. 

As an eating disordered person, you never want to carry more than one plate back from the buffet line unless of course you are getting it for someone else….fat chance right?  But if someone does look at you funny while going through the line and filling up two plates, just tell them it’s for you aunt back at the table who is disabled.  You go from being a pig to a good samaritan.   

What do I think of Obama and McCain?  What do I think of Biden and Palin?  I definitely have opinions of them all and finding it hard to choose which ones are really acting in my best interest.  It is hard to make a decision about them when they focus so much on the negative of their opponents, instilling fear that is designed to make me gravitate to one or the other but fear is the most unhealthy of all reason to base choice on.  I know about fear, I spent 22 years over a toilet trying to get rid of my fears and I don’t want to spend anymore time doing so.  

The whole political process makes me want to isolate, to cut myself off from the rest of the world.  I hear people saying so many nasty things about one another, judging one another as to who is better than the other…I know that space, I have lived in that space and the only thing that has helped me move out of my disease and into a place of calm is to accept and respect the fact that everyone can have an opinion and not attack them because it is different than mine.  Like I said, that is what my disease did for 22 years. 

All of that judging of others and myself got me nowhere except over a toilet puking out my brains and I sure don’t want to put myself in that position again.

When I went away the first time, the food was nothing like I had ever eaten before.  Growing up in the south I was used to everything being boiled and salted, greasy, and really not too much fun to binge.  Then when I got to college I was in a whole new realm of food.  Great pizza, pastries, deli, Tastykakes, Dannon Yogurt, eggplant parm, hoagies and I guess I ate around 30 pounds worth my first semester because by the time I got home for Christmas, I was 30 pounds heavier.  The only thing I could fit into were my overhauls.  I got off the plane and my mother cried when she laid eyes on me.  I was so heavy that my thighs were rubbing together and they wore a whole through my jeans in the inner thighs…. 

All during xmas break I heard about how big my ass was and didn’t I want to go on a diet?  At some point during that vacation, I went on the carrot and grapefruit diet.  Not only was I eating grapefruits and carrots, but I was vomiting too.  I wanted to get that weight off and fast.  After around a month, I started to drop weight, then the next month I started to lose hair off my head.  I stopped getting my period because I was in the heat of the anorexic bulimic cycle.  I shared a suite with 3 other girls and I had to time my purges in between all of their classes.  A tricky thing I might add.  Then in my senior year of college, I shared the bathroom with a whole floor of girls and that was even harder to get the timing down. 

I wonder what college would have been like if I hadn’t been an anorexic bulimic…..I just know the pain many girls are going to go through during this school year.  So sorry for that.