With eating disorders, you’re either starving yourself to death, eating yourself to death, or your disordered eating has altered your brain chemistry sufficiently to make you feel hopeless, worthless, depressed and suicidal. They don’t just waste life, they take life. Every 66 minutes someone dies from an eating disorder. Awareness is not just necessary, it is life saving. Early intervention is the life saving prevention. Treatment saves lives, no matter the extremist identity your disordered eating morphs into.
I have lost two friends to eating disorders, and been taken to very dark places myself with them, both when very severely underweight (when my brain starved of nutrients did not have enough fat to make the happiness chemical Serotonin), and after a binge episode (where the sugar low after the high and altered dopamine and serotonin caused severe mood swings which altered my emotions). Every year on 19th Jan, I celebrate my rebirth day, celebrating the day I didn’t die from anorexia at 24. I remember that day very well, despite a happy family and life and fulfilling job, feeling so utterly hopeless and worthless due to the effects of my nutritional status on my brain, which led me to consider ending my own life. I bought rope from a climbing shop, and Googled how to tie a noose, and came home with full intention of doing it. I tied it up around the balcony and stood there for a few hours, but I didn’t do it. Instead I got into bed and called the Samaritans. I spoke to a guy called Richard for a bit and then my sister came in looking for her phone. I was saved by Richard and my sister.
Then when bingeing later on in my life, my eating disordered behaviour led me again to some dark places, feeling a fat worthless failure, unworthy of love. I thought then again about death a lot, but this time I was very vocal about it, plastering it all over my family WhatsApp group in a bit to push everyone away and make them hate me. Up until that point I had never shown my mum the noose from my anorexia day which I has wrapped in an old bag and banged at the back of the cupboard in my room, but I remember in anger throwing it at my mum to hurt her as she was making me gain weight and get healthy and fertile and I blamed her for my binges. I regret this action hugely now, as it was done thoughtlessly, but in the heat of the moment it happened. I will never forget the hurt in her face, the pain, the torture and stress. I was burning inside and I burnt her too. I could have used that fire to light a movement and make the world a better place, but my eating disorder consumed all my energy instead. I remember my ex saying “yes, you have achieved so much in your life but how much more could you have done without the eating disorders.” I used this as another way of beating myself up, and so in the end it was accepting the past, letting it go, that helped me to find peace. Hopefully, now I can use my bright light inside to be a beacon of light from the lighthouse that guides people across the choppy waters of eating disorders, against the strong tides of diet culture and food addition, and help people back to the safe shores of health. No one should die from eating disorders. No family deserves to lose loved ones. No matter the maelstrom of problems that you are drowning in or the tsunamis of challenges you are facing. No matter how many people try to dunk you beneath the water and how many responsibilities are pulling you down and drowning you. No matter the waves of sadness, regret or grief or anxiety you are facing. It is possible to develop a surfboard of healthy coping strategies to help you surf the waves. It is possible for you to access safety nets of support and boats of joy will come out of nowhere and pull you out of the deep waters. Follow the lighthouses bright lights. There is always a way back to shore. You just have to keep swimming and surf the waves. If I can do it, so can you.
Copyright Laura Campbell 01/03/2021
The Food Anti Extremist 