Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling) Support Group

Today, July 3rd, 2012, was the first day I have ever been truly afraid of this Trichotillomania in my life.
I have been feeling nauseous for the past 4 days; I thought it was due to my period. But....I don't think that was the case. In fact, I know it wasn't.
Nothing I tried made the nausea go away. Ibuprofen, Tylenol, relaxing, warm water, TUMS, nothing. Nothing helped. And after I got out of the shower today, I knew what I needed to do even though I was 1000000% against it: throw up.
I hate throwing up. I know that no one could possibly ENJOY throwing up, but I REALLY didn't want to. I was afraid of what would come up.
But I had no choice. The nausea would not quit and they say throwing up makes nausea go away. My mother, who has been 110% supportive, stood by my side as I threw up. It may not seem like a big deal (woo, you threw up, points for Adelina) but...
I've been eating my hair ever since I've been pulling. I have not told ANYONE this; it's been my secret. But the secret was finally out when I threw up.
We really didn't get to see it, but it was pretty obvious I had thrown up a hairball.
I was a mixture of angry and relieved. Angry because I knew I would throw up a hairball, and relieved because someone else knew about my hair-eating.
You know how you get a bit of a blotchy face when you throw up from the strain? Yeah, I got that. Also...when I looked in the mirror to put my contacts in, I realized my eyes had bled.
Yeah. I threw up THAT HARD. I'm not going to go into gruesome details for the sake of others' breakfast/lunch/dinner digestion, but it scared the living hell out of me; if hell was living inside me, it no longer is.
Deep down, I knew I was probably going to throw up a hairball. As disgusting as it sounds, it's true. I'm thankful I threw it up because if I hadn't........well, let's not go there. If I let it go for a VERY extended period of time, I could have died.
Everybody has it-can't-happen-to-me-itis about SOMETHING, and this was mine: having a hairball lodged in my stomach or whatever. But I'm telling you this to let you all know that it CAN happen to you.

Today I made a promise to myself that I will make an honest effort to stop pulling/eating/breaking hair. I don't want to go through what I went through these past 4 days of nausea and what happened today. It's not worth it. I'm not looking for sympathy, empathy, or whatever. I just want to know that I can stop someone from dangerous consequences. If ANYONE out there has trichophagia (hair-eating), please take my story into serious consideration. It can happen to you, and you can die from eating hair. Nobody can digest hair easily, and it can entangle itself in your intestines. I'm not trying to scare the shit out of anyone; these are the down-to-earth facts. I don't want to see anybody go through what I did today or even worse. Don't wait until it's too late to go back and fix it. They say it's never too late; I beg to differ.
Posted on 07/04/12, 01:18 am