Winning Over Bulimia

"Kim! What's going on down there?”

"I'm so sorry, Mom. I couldn't help myself," was the only response I could verbalize. Then there was silence. Heavy silence.

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I'll never forget the horrible pain and intense emotions I felt the night my mother witnessed my nightly ritual of bingeing and vomiting over the kitchen sink. Fear. Shame, Guilt. Loss of trust. Unclean. Dirty. Sick, Bad person. Helpless.

We stood for a moment or an eternity in the kitchen, neither able to face the other. Mom sat down at the kitchen table. I stood by the sink trying to cover up the splattered mess of vomit.

With her head in her hands, she told me she could no longer handle my disease. She asked me to leave the house. The words cut into me like a knife. There l was, a recent college graduate and my life was falling apart. I was being torn apart-by two extremes of wanting to die, yet at the same time wanting so desperately to be normal. I knew that what my mom was telling me was difficult for her, and an act of tough love. It hurt, but at the same time I was somewhat relieved that my secret bingeing and vomiting was once again revealed.

Maybe this time I had reached a bottom where I would now take some action to recover from this daily nightmare and self-debasing, self-defeating behavior. Maybe. But discovery alone without action on my part would lead nowhere.

The thought of leaving home terrified me. The intense shame, guilt, remorse and fear were over-

whelming. But they were not enough to make me abstain from bingeing and vomiting for more than a week at a time. Indeed, these self-critical feelings only made my already low sense of self-worth worse. In a sense, those feelings made me worse, not better-at least if no action were to follow.

It would be impossible for me to pinpoint what year or what situation or for what reason I became anorexic and bulimic. It didn't come overnight. It wasn't until my sophomore year in college that losing weight, personal looks, food and exercise became my focus, my number one priority in life.

Manipulating my body through restricting calories and extreme exercise was a form of control. It was an indescribable, tremendous sense of accomplishment, a sense of personal accomplishment that I had rarely, if ever, felt in life! Control became compulsion. My rigid, daily schedule began at 5:00 a.m. and consisted of jogging, carefully selected exercises, and meals of oatmeal and sweet-and-low apples or pickles. I made sure that every hour of my day was scheduled in order to prevent me from thinking of food.

It was through this negative control that I found a sense of accomplishment, value and self-worth. It became my way of survival and no one was going to take that away from me! But that control never lasted. Depriving myself of foods high in calories always resulted in a change to bulimic behavior of bingeing or bingeing with vomiting.

Both forms of control made me miserable, even

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though I needed them. How could I break a pattern of immediate gratification that satisfied some strange

. sense of accomplishment and self-worth, yet at the same time made me miserable?

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It isn't easy. But it is possible.

My recovery is and has been a slow, gradual process. It began with willingness and belief that I could get better.

It was not until I entered group therapy in tandem with individual sessions that I realized the importance of acceptance. I had to begin to accept myself on a daily basis. I had to accept that, no matter what I ate or how much I weighed or how many times I vomited, it was the best that I could do, and I was an "okay person."

I became aware that I was completely out of touch with my feelings and the definite connection between those feelings and what I did with food. I could no longer consider myself helpless. I had to develop ways of dealing with anxiety, fears or anger other than using periods of starvation, resulting in bingeing or bingeing and vomiting.

But this knowledge and self-awareness alone was only the beginning. Being a compulsive, rigid individual, taking risks of replacing old behaviors with new ones and remaining paticnt was and is not easy.

Slowly I have been able to gain some sense of selfworth and confidence. They have enabled me to seek and accomplish some realistic goals that I set for myself. I became able to reach out to other people and was sincerely willing to change. Now I could let go of what I had thought was my only means of survival.

I was growing up. I was recovering.

Cleveland Women and Alcohol Project

By Karen Tucker

The WomenSpace Women and Alcohol Project works on the premise that alcoholism affects women differently than it does men, and requires separate treatment facilities. Paulette Zaryczny, Women and Alcohol project coordinator, explains some of the special problems and needs of women alcoholics:

Women alcoholics are more "invisible" than male alcoholics. Because it is more of a stigma to be a woman alcoholic in our society, women alcoholics do not seek help as frequently as men, and their disease more often goes unrecognized, even as it starts to eat away at them and their families. The stigma also leads to underreporting: although statistics continually show far fewer women alcoholics, most experts believe that half of all alcoholics are women. This "invisibility" is beginning to change, but the result has been fewer beds for women in treatment facilities. Women are put on waiting lists, and the few treatment centers that do treat specifically women do not have enough beds to take up the slack.

Women suffer more often than men from the dual addiction of drugs and alcohol. This dual addiction is aided and abetted by doctors who too often prescribe tranquilizers to women who come to them with complaints of coping problems but do not say they are.' drinking. Rather than delve into the roots of their problems, Paulette asserts, the physician merely "quiets" them by giving tranquilizers. This course of "treatment," she believes, stems from doctors taking women's complaints of stress less seriously than men's, especially when the stress is related to family and home...

Women generally are poorer and have less access to insurance coverage than do men. Not surprisingly,

this economic handicap hinders women from seeking treatment.

Women who seek treatment for alcoholism have special needs which integrated facilities do not meet. Alcoholism experts have found that women in integrated treatment facilities play out their learned roles as nurturers, thus tending to help the men more than themselves. Further, Paulette claims, women are ashamed when being treated with men because "they look bad and they're taught to look good."

Women alcoholics who have children suffer from the dual burden of feeling they have failed as mothers. During treatment, women must leave their children behind, which often confirms their belief that they are bad mothers. This creates a barrier to recovery for women already suffering from low self-

esteem.

On the positive side, women alcoholics are more likely to keep relationships intact. Many have supportive friends to turn to once they have admitted their problem and begun treatment. Men have a harder time sharing personal problems with other men. "Women struggle to relate through feelings frozen in alcohol," says Paulette. "Once in treatment, however, they have the support of friendships they have maintained.”

Fortunately government and private agencies are beginning to recognize these differences and separate treatment facilities and groups for women alcoholics are becoming more common. Locally, the Women and Alcohol Project has been instrumental in bringing about these changes.

The project, begun in November of 1980, was created on the initiative of Dagmar Celeste, project coordinator before she left to assist her husband's campaign for governor. A joint project of WomenSpace and Cuyahoga County,,, Women and Alcohol is funded by the County Commissioners and

works closely with the county's alcoholism outreach department.

The Women and Alcohol Project has helped establish and support women-only self-help groups which, according to Paulette, allow "honest sharing unencumbered by male expectations and enhanced by common experiences." For example, the project created and hopes to sponsor a special Women for Sobriety group to give those not involved an idea of the group's philosophy and methods. It also served as a catalyst for the creation of a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. In addition, an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for women has been meeting weekly at WomenSpace for some time; it is open to all women concerned about alcoholism. AlAnon, a group for family and friends of alcoholics, also meets weekly at WomenSpace.

Another function of the project is outreach. With the county outreach staff, Women and Alcohol conducts workshops and in-service training sessions at schools, hospitals, community organizations, courts and police stations. Participants are taught the symptoms of alcoholism and what they can do to help sufferers. Catholic schools, actively involved in alcoholism education, have set up Al-Anon, AA and Insight groups. The latter are for students with behavior problems stemming from drug and alcohol abuse.

The project also monitors local treatment centers to ensure they are providing adequate services for women. At the urging of the project, for example, Horizon Center increased the number of beds for women.

Another important aspect of the project is its involvement with legislation. WomenSpace's legislative organizer, Barb Scott, serves as a women's advocate (continued on page 14)

January-February, 1983/What She Wants/Page T 7201 amindsh-vrunel dasy odd san7 la cget

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