Addiction and Mental Health my Story.

Chapter 4:- The rollar-coaster of eating disorder recovery

 After I graduated from treatment it was a  roller-coaster ride.   I ate well for a while but then relapsed and started losing weight again.  My eating disorder voice started to kick in and the obsession to lose weight was back.  I ended up getting a membership at the gym on to be told that my fat percentage was too high but I needed to gain weight to be at a healthy weight. I started working out but I was not feeding myself enough and all a sudden my body gave up and was like I need food and I started to get into my new phase of my eating disorder bulimia.  Binging and purging became a way of life, starving then overeating then purging. It was a cycle I hated, my self harm increased as well due to the guilt. I had discovered that I got a momentary high from binging and purging. I say momentary because it didn't last very long before the extreme guilt came back and the cycle started all over again.  I had taken a whole year off school to do Eating disorder treatment and mentioned to go back to school and take another year of university courses though I could only manage three at the time. I switched my major from history to sociology with the idea of helping people in the future.  I took to sociology course in summer school before and then got right into second year sociology courses.  My favourite course during that time was about social deviance. I did well when I was in school but still struggled with the eating disorder and self harm. I was volunteering and helping people from other countries practice there English. I still struggled with depression and anxiety but I managed to make it through the year that I wasn't sure I would be able too.  My eating disorder was brutal but I had it in control or so I thought enough that I could complete that year of school.  Being a perfectionist and an overachiever school was very important to me.   Life was getting better  and my therapist suggested I move out on my own to get away from my parents and try to develop some independence.  I looked around for something that summer  and found a friend that I could sublet friend who I thought would be there in the summer. Little did I know that I was not prepared to face the real world.  I was very naïve and sheltered. If the eating disorder was brutal then going into the real world was even more brutal.   So much for a geological relocation helping in recovery my eating disorder did not improve when I moved out and I also discovered a new world that I had no clue about.  I moved in with my roommates only to find out that the girl I thought was staying their was not living there anymore but I was so happy about my independence I didn't care. Bought a whole bunch of food and set up.   I found though most of the food went bad and I went from starving to binging  and purging at multiple restaurants, it was a brutal cycle and I hated it.  There was a lot of parties at the house and I discovered a new way to numb myself - alcohol.  I struggled with social anxiety and alcohol made me less anxious well at least at first in the long run it made life much harder to deal with.  I then came up with the solution or so I thought for purging, I started smoking.  I look back and realize how crazy that is to start smoking in order to stop purging and that became a new addiction.  I still remember the first time I smoked, it wasn't peer pressure I didn't even know how to smoke or light a cigarette had to get some random stranger to help me light it.   I started feeling extremely anxious and depressed and wasn't coping very well, all the while trying to complete three online university programs.   Little did I know the eating disorder was nothing compared to the battle that was to come..... drug and alcohol addiction.