ADDICTED TO THE NEEDLE ... ON THE SCALE.

• Author: Pastor, Iris Ruth
• Position: LITERARY SCENE

TODAY EN THE U.S.--supposedly the land of plenty--every night millions of people go to bed hungry due to poverty. They simply cannot afford to buy the food they see on the supermarket shelves. I am not one of them. In addition, millions literally are starving themselves to death because they are suffering from a condition known as anorexia nervosa. I am not one of them, either. I have one of the other eating disorders--bulimia, characterized by repeated cycles of bingeing and purging. Research shows that ED (eating disorders) cause all sorts of threatening conditions. To name just a few: stroke, electrolyte imbalance, rotted teeth, ravaged knuckles, esophageal cancer, etc. Celebrities routinely die from ED--non-celebs, too.

None of the above was of particular interest to me in 1966 when ED first started flirting with me. I was a transfer student attending the University of Florida in Gainesville--1,000 miles away from my mom and dad for the very first time. My high school boyfriend had just broken up with me. I was unsure about a major field of study.

Along with all of the changes I was experiencing at that point in my life, my grounding thought was to stay thin. If 1 was thin, I could cope--and when I found a way to be thin, remain thin, and eat all the forbidden stuff I secretly craved... well... I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Little did I know that this designated path very well could lead me there a lot quicker than desired, and little did I know that my brand of heaven would shortly turn into a hell of my own making.

This all was occurring in the iconoclastic 1960s, way before: eating disorders even had a name; campus counseling centers offered treatment; sorority houses would need their plumbing pipes replaced on a regular basis. Why?--because so many sorority girls were throwing up after carb binges that their stomach acid was corroding the pipes' interiors.

When I began bingeing and purging, there simply was no vocabulary to describe what I was doing. At that point, I viewed my strange behavior as not only benign, but as a very creative by-product of my highly functioning right-brained mind. Once again. I had found a clever way to live my life. I could indulge my cravings by bingeing and I could control my weight by purging. Best of all, when engaged in this cycle, my mood lightened; my angst lessened; and I remained lean.

Moreover, great things happened when the scale was south of 110 pounds: my cheekbones became more prominent; my love life took off; my hour-glass figure became even more finely chiseled; I went from ordinary looking to noticeable. What 18-year-old college freshman could...