I began going to bars with a fake ID, drinking well into the early morning, then coming home and stuffing myself with anything I could get my hands on before throwing it all up. I would do this day after day, night after night. For years.
In college, I joined a sorority to try to establish a structure to my social life. I quickly found myself stealing food/alcohol from my sisters, eating their plates of dinner when mine didn’t feel like enough. I began getting fired from jobs, wrecking cars & losing boyfriends because of my eating, drinking & drug problems.
This cycle of insanity began to take a toll. I became increasingly isolated and alone and I knew something had to change. I realized that I needed freedom from this cage I had created for myself.
I hit rock bottom on December 12, 1985, and was able to quit the drinking, drugs, purging and eventually cigarettes. I thought I had found my way. But the good was still controlling me, and at this point, it was actually speaking out to me from the fridge, the freezer, even from the trashcan.
My emotional bottom with food was in 1999, when I was working as a flight attendant, 40,000 feet in the sky. I was binging on the airplane, food being more important to me than the passengers, and finally realized in that moment that if someone had a crisis or emergency on board, I would not be able to save them.
