Alcohol, fun right? Get tipsy and turnt and go out for a boogie. Enjoy a few glasses of bubbly and socialise at a soirée. Perhaps even discuss life’s philosophical issues while drinking merlot at the dinner table for hours on end. I have been in all of these various scenarios and more both before and after I developed an ED and let me tell you it is a complicated one to navigate.
I love a drink. A qualified bartender who can make a mean cocktail, it’s only natural that I do. But there is a struggle every time. Firstly, I ponder the calorie content of alcohol. Kevin loves to come in and remind me how many various things are contributing to the consequential rise in blood sugar that is about to take place. This was definitely entrenched in my subconscious by diet culture insta post bullshit warning me that alcohols aim is to make me gain hundreds of pounds.
Before I go any further, let’s get one thing straight, having a beer, a glass of wine, or a shot of tequila is not going to make you gain an excessive amount of weight! Piss off influencers please, no more extremes, moderation is the only key you need to know!
Secondly, if I don’t drink I struggle with feeling like a bit of a social outcast for the night. Instead, I say fuck you to Kevin and have a couple of glasses of punch…
Finally, the distorted hunger cues. I always get insatiable hunger when I drink both the night of and the day after. The feelings of mental and physical hunger adjacent to the knowledge of calorie content in alcohol always sends my ED brain into a spin. It is not fun and all I really want to do is enjoy a night out!
I have also drunk during my ED as a numbing agent. Unfortunately, after going on 3,4,5,6 and sometimes 7-day benders, I would have to cope with the most extraordinary mental health crash. My brain would go into a spiral about everything and I would go to some dark places. On a side note, it is worth mentioning that when I began drinking with a disordered body my tolerance drastically changed. I ended up once or twice in some pretty scary situations where I could not control the effects it was having as I was physically incapable of processing the alcohol.
I am a teenager and a college student, so I won’t be stopping drinking anytime soon. But creating that healthy relationship with alcohol in recovery has been a challenge. I am slowly figuring it out but I still have a long way to go. I guess I wanted to write this post just to remind anyone out there with an ED that I know it is hard. I go through it every time I have a night out and laboriously have to unpick every ED thought that comes into my mind on a 24 hour having a drinking cycle. Trust me though, taking the time to challenge each thought is worth it. Have fun! But be careful, don’t skip the meal and line your stomach. Have breakfast the next morning and know that if you are struggling, someone else probably is too.
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