Hi, dear humans,

I've been bulimic for over 10 years and would certainly characterize my eating disorder more accurately as a food addiction than anything else. When I was in a treatment facility, I could relate much better with the women who were also addicted to heroin or cocaine than I could with the anoretics or other bulimics, for the most part. Anyway, that was many years ago now, and I'm still bulimic, and I'm pretty lonely in this aspect of my life because I've had a sad history of coming out to friends, family, and partners who then react badly or don't know what to do, making it worse for me. I don't trust most people to understand and to accept my decisions, to let me engage in harm reduction at my own pace.

I'm now very private about it and don't have anyone to talk to. Therapy isn't the same as someone else going through it to talk to. So I'll describe where I'm at and hope that maybe it resonates with you and you might want to talk about it! 

I've gotten along okay, would say I have a functional relationship with my addiction, pretty manageable and stable, with me only binging and purging about once a day for the past 5 or 6 years, but sometimes 2-3x more per day if there's a lot of food I come across at an event or if there's fatty/sweet foods being served when I'm with friends, etc. So that's not uncommon. It obviously gets hard during holidays and at parties, going on dates, etc. but I hide it easily and it typically doesn't stress me out much anymore. I think I must be in denial about it even being a problem except that it's expensive and my teeth are paying for the damage of consistent vomiting for 11 years, and I know if it weren't a problem, it wouldn't be something I would try to keep my friends from knowing about me.

This whole pandemic has me worried about how I can get enough food while limiting my exposure and potentially spreading the virus. I wish I could just stop the urges to binge, of course. I know it's impossible to stop the urges by continuing to binge, but I have not been able to successfully stop for more than a couple months at a time ever, and I have recognized harm reduction as the best approach for me. This means I try to limit my behaviors by doing what I know I can do that is helpful- like running/exercising regularly, not letting myself get hungry, eating meals with friends rather than alone, keeping REALLY busy, managing stress, not getting down on myself for using food this way, getting enough sleep, trying to find and engage in healthy self-soothing activities like reading (but so far this is really hard for me- I almost always end up binging if I let myself have down time).

Anyway, I would love to connect with someone who also experiences some of this and is looking for someone they can vent to, talk to about the unique results of this condition on our day to day lives. Please let me know a bit about yourself if you're interested!

Thanks for reading. Be well :)

-Brynn