Finding help for eating disorders is different from finding help for any other addiction. This is because other substance abuses can be stopped cold turkey. If you go through alcohol withdrawal–or any withdrawal–you may become very sick. You may wish you were dead. But if you go through food withdrawal, you’ll die for real.
There is help for eating disorders.
There is no abstinence from food. There is only management. This means that individuals who have eating disorders have to learn moderation, and that is very difficult, considerably harder than abstinence. There are a number of eating disorders which could be part of the problem. It’s not just all overeating. There is also anorexia nervosa, (which is basically starving yourself… sometimes to death) or bulimia nervosa (which involves inducing regurgitation). Some of these problems include a mental disorder in which the individual can not see a true picture of their own body but see only some imagined defect that exists only in their mind. There’s also binge eating, and compulsive eating disorders –both of which serve somewhat as sedatives to calm or hide other psychological issues.
Just as in other addictions, inpatient and outpatient treatment is available; and programs are designed specifically to deal with psychiatric and physical problems as well as providing moral support. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychotherapy are also useful tools in dealing with dysfunctional eating behavior. Choosing a treatment is crucial but magic does not happen overnight. As they say, it took more than one day to develop the disorder. It is going to take more than a single day to cure it. The most important thing to realize is that eating disorders can be treated.
