"Normalize" Bulimia? Heaven Forbid...

Dr. Ed Welch has an excellent post on the pervasiveness of bulimia and the nature of "control" its practitioners experience over at his blog. (Ed Welch, whose excellent study on repenting from addictions, "Crossroads",  I reviewed here, is one of my favorite authors and biblical counselors. He is a licensed psychologist and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation, aka CCEF. I am currently working on a review of his new book, "What Do You Think of Me? Why Do I Care?").

Welch compassionately addresses the secretive nature of the bulimic behavior, and puts his finger right on the question a bulimic believer hates to ask herself:

First, if you have any interest in God, does the secretive essence of this behavior concern you? Secrets separate relationships. They separate friends and spouses, and become a private place in which you hide from God. 

 Second, has it improved your life? The answer to that is easy: no. But you say: “So what? It works for me.” Perhaps you feel as though nothing will improve your life so you might as well be thin while you go through the drudgery and misery.

Consider this from another angle. If you are a near-daily practitioner of purging, you are saying much more than “I want to be thin.” The word control is almost always a part of bulimic vocabulary. You have been controlled or dependent on the whims of people who treated you poorly, and you are sick of it. You live with incessant self-loathing and suicidal hopelessness and bulimia gives you some sense of control over this darkness. Its benefits, however, are ephemeral and fleeting. 

So what is the answer? How are we to face a God, when we feel He must be "disgusted" with us? Oh, how I wish someone had shared the Good News of grace with me back in 1989! Go read the rest of the post here: http://www.ccef.org/blog/bulimia-new-normal

Endless Attempts to Fill the God-Shaped Void: "Drunkorexia"

In my book, "Redeemed from the Pit", I mistakenly identified C.S. Lewis as the originator of the quote "Inside every person, there is a God-shaped vacuum". (I have since learned that it was Blaise Pascal.) Regardless of who first said it, the validity of this statement is continuously borne out in the fallen world around us.

This week, I was notified of the following article, which discusses the campus trend of "drunkorexia" (the practice of deliberately getting intoxicated on an empty stomach, or habitually abusing alcohol while starving one's self of food.) This is not a new practice - forgoing food in favor of liquor is actually an old trick -- everyone knows that alcohol is absorbed more quickly when there is no food in the stomach. I just didn't realize it had a name. (Nor is it limited to college campuses - women long beyond university with both eating disorders and alcohol dependency regularly do this.)

The onlinecollege.org article begins:

At first, "drunkorexia" may sound like kind of a funny word, jokingly made up to describe a situation in which college students and others forgo food in order to be able to afford more alcohol and feel higher effects of alcohol on an empty stomach. But what some may brush off as crazy college-kid behavior is actually a serious problem that can have highly damaging consequences both in long- and short-term health. Of course, that hasn't stopped college students from engaging in this unhealthy trend, and a study at the University of Missouri-Columbia indicated that one in six students had practiced drunkorexia within the last year. Typically, drunkorexia is done by women; the study showed that three out of four drunkorexia respondents were female.

(Continue reading here.)

As I have often noted, eating disorders and drunkenness tend to go hand-in-hand. From a biblical perspective of human behavior, this should not surprise us: "lusts of the flesh" take many forms, and when one is weak in this area, self-control and moderation tend to break down in multiple ways. Additionally, as I point out in Chapter one of my own book, eating disorders engender so much shame and self-loathing that we often gravitate to alcohol as an anesthesia. When in the depths of bulimarexia and drunkenness myself, I used to rationalize that if something made me feel better [alcohol], even for a little while, I would happily use it.

Of course, no number of bottles will ever take the pain and shame away. (Just ask Amy Winehouse.) Only Jesus Christ can do that.

Starving yourself thin will never make you happy, improve your relationships, or, MOST importantly, meet your TRUE needs - forgiveness and intimacy with your Saviour. Seeking solace in alcohol compounds the problem, of course; but the fact that so many seek to fill this God-shaped void with poison testifies to how deep our human need is for God.

Whether you know Hi now or not, you will never be satisfied or find joy in anything less. You weren't designed to.

BULIMIC & USING SYRUP OF IPECAC TO PURGE IT

From another blog alerting to the dangers of eating disorders, a wake-up call to bulimics who use syrup of ipecac as a "safety hatch".

BULIMIC & USING SYRUP OF IPECAC TO PURGE? IT


It is DEADLY and leads to cardiac arrest. If you are using syrup of ipecac (I don't believe it's available over the counter anymore), stop immediately. E-mail me if you want to chat or need support.