You Can’t Purge Reality

There is a large community of people online who are recovering from eating disorders. It’s beautiful how so many different people, from so many different places, with so many vastly different lives can come together and support each other. Despite so many differences between all these people, a majority of them look up to Demi Lovato. And for good reason. Demi Lovato has been very open about her own journey and recovery from bulimia and has worked to open conversations about ending the stigma tied together with mental illness in society.

But recovery isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. And this illness does not always have happy endings. One of these not so happy endings would be Amy Winehouse. Even if you don’t know much about Amy Winehouse, most people know about her drug addiction that ultimately took her life. But what a large amount of people don’t know is the effect bulimia had on her health.

People with eating disorders are four times more likely to develop substance abuse issues than non-sufferers and Amy happened to be one of those sufferers. Also, like many eating disorder sufferers, she didn’t receive treatment for her illness. I believe this played a huge role in her death because 20 percent of people with an eating disorder who do not receive treatment will die prematurely from complications due to the illness.

Far too many sufferers have stories more similar to Amy’s than Demi’s because only one in ten will seek and receive treatment for their disorder. These are very real and very scary numbers that people tend to forget about when we discuss eating disorders and our recoveries. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness but receive the least amount of funding and sufferers are 56 percent more likely to commit suicide than non-sufferers. But we still aren’t talking about these things.

The truth may be that, however terrifying these numbers are, they are just numbers and numbers mean nothing unless you attach personal value to them. We have to remember that each of those numbers is a person. A person that lost their life to an illness that does not see nearly enough attention.

I personally could’ve easily became one of those numbers. Just like so many other sufferers, I spent years telling myself that if I weighed above a certain point I would kill myself. This disorder is about control, not about a desire to lose weight, but if my weight wasn’t where I wanted it to be, I viewed as my losing control. And I couldn’t handle that. I have come so far from those days but even recovery isn’t always great and I have a long ways to go. As of writing this, I am making my way out of the worst relapse I’ve had and I’m only a week clean from purging. But those are victories because if you aren’t recovering from your eating disorder you are dying from it. Recovery may be the hardest decision a sufferer ever has to make, but it will also be the best decision they ever make.

While recovery is an amazing decision, the eating disorder itself is an ugly illness that nobody chooses. It’s an illness the destroys jobs, relationships, families, and lives. It’s an illness that kills and needs to be treated as such. Which is why it needs to be discussed, and not only by sufferers themselves. Because the people who tend to forget how dangerous this illness is are not the ones who are fighting for their lives. So, even if you don’t have an eating disorder, I encourage you to educate yourself on them and start talking because four out of ten people know someone who does and there’s no statistics on it, but I’m sure the numbers are even greater that you know someone who is suffering with this illness and are too afraid to be vocal about it.