by April Krueger

Created on: April 28, 2008

It has been said that recovering from an eating disorder is harder than recovering from a heroin addiction. Think this is a pretty bold statement? Consider this: a heroin user does not need their drug for survival, while someone with an eating disorder has to face their drug, at least three times a day, every day. Food is the basic tool, the drug used in an eating disorder because it is often the only thing a person feels they can control in their life. Food is very personal, it is something that we learn to use early on, first for the purpose of satisfying hunger. When we are young we eat because we are hungry. There is rarely any consideration as to a certain food being either "good" or "bad". However, social conditioning and parents often use food as a reward or punishment. Finish all the yard work? Let's go get ice cream. Don't want to eat your broccoli? You'll sit there until it's gone. And society labels food voraciously. The "triple chocolate deadly sinful delight" at a restaurant is drooled over by the children, while their mothers "virtuously" deny it. Is chocolate sinful? Is it deadly? Certainly not. But we begin to ingest these words from a young age, along with our food rewards, and suddenly, we are consumed. Typically, girls seem to become more obsessed than boys. This is not to say that males do not suffer from eating disorders. But the distribution is decidedly lopsided. How then, growing up in a culture consumed by manipulating food and its powers, can someone recover from an eating disorder? There are many therapies for eating disorders, myriad treatments ranging from individual cognitive behavioral therapy, to immersion therapy involving the whole family. Some patients are hospitalized, medicated, and thrown into group therapy, while others are treated at home. Some schools of thought believe eating disorders, especially anorexia, are so intertwined with family dynamics, that the only way to treat it is to treat the entire family. However, being a product of the former method of treatment myself, I cannot say with great certainty that eating disorders can be successfully treated. And is treated the same as cured? To treat means to counteract a disease or condition, perhaps to put it at bay for awhile. But a cure is a restoration, a full recovery of one's health. Perhaps a better word would be "managed". Eating disorders can certainly be managed, there a many people living in recovery from eating disorders. But that does not mean they do not struggle with their thoughts everyday. It is like alcoholism, where a person can be in recovery for many years, but one drop, one taste of their former obsession can send them reeling into relapse. This is where the concept becomes tricky. Since food is the drug of choice in an eating disorder, how can someone ever be fully treated and recovered, if they must use their drug everyday?

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