do not metaphor me

It has been my experience that people with bipolar disorder love to self-medicate with anything.  I know I sure did.  For years I used my eating disorder to control my moods.  When I was up, I would not eat and exercise obsessively.  Eventually, with my body starved for what it needed to function, I would have no choice but give into the fatigue.  Bringing me down.  When I was down, I would binge and purge.  Because the act of eating the worst foods imaginable then purging them jacked up my endorphins and dopamine and made me feel everything.  Bringing me up.  Over and over, the cycle went with my moods.  But here is the thing.  I wasn’t just self-medicating.  I was an addict.

That’s what I think people don’t understand when they hear about someone having an eating disorder.  Eating disorders are an addiction.  Just as much as alcohol, drugs, gambling, or anything else that has control over you.  Endorphins and dopamine are ruling the show.  You can’t just quit it.  You don’t just wake up one morning and be like, “You know what.  Starting right now I’m just going to have healthy regular food thoughts.  It will be like it never happened.”  Because I’m going to tell you the truth right here and now.  Even though I no longer participate, I still obsess over food most days.  Just like the alcoholic thinks about that next drink.  Or gambler thinks about that next big win.

However, when I was knee deep in it, it was so much worse than it is now.  When I was not eating, I would obsess over how little I ate.  Counting and recounting how many calories I had eaten in my head.  I even had a notebook where I used to write it down at the end of the day.  You know, to make sure I didn’t eat more than the day before because that’s a normal thing to worry about.

When I was bingeing and purging, I would obsess over what I was going to eat.  I would spend hours picking it all out in my mind.  I would imagine going to the store.  Picking it off of the shelf.  Paying for it.  Getting to the house.  What order I was going to eat the food in.  Then finally the purging part of the ceremony.  I would imagine it over and over and over again.  Until my hands shook from anticipation and the ritual was completed.

And don’t even get me started on the amount of laxatives and diet pills I used.  I’m a little bit too embarrassed to give specifics anyway.  My addiction was so strong my brain still tells me I need them sometimes.  I was a diet pills and laxatives junkie.  Sometimes I think about it and wonder, how in the world am I still alive?  How did Dexatrim and Correctol not take me out?

This is my point.  (Even though I went down a rabbit hole.)  Self-medication does not work.  It isn’t even a good band-aid.  It only makes the mood-swings worse.  The only thing is you are too strung out and obsessed to notice.  You’re better off playing musical meds until you find the right combination for you than to self-medicate with an addiction.  At least that was the case with me.

One day when I was wanting to backslide really bad, I wrote this poem.  And for those who aren’t bulimic (my hope is all of you), I do realize at a non-bulimic glance the first stanza sounds like a contradiction.  But it’s not.  Hate, shame, and fear were the emotions I felt from the act of bingeing.  However, for everyone and everything else I had apathy. 

If you are suffering from an eating disorder, please tell someone you love and seek professional help.