Bulimics v. Anorexics

I always checked to make sure Alana or other nurses and mental health workers supervising meals weren’t watching.

I at my chick peas and fruit (usually an apple or grapes) and drank my two four-ounce apple juices, but always tried to hide the butter in the chicken or pass along pieces of my wheat bread to Janine, a 13-year-old bulimic. There were times I hid pieces of bread and other “fear foods” – things that I found too scary to eat – in my clothes to give to Janine later.

The staff always monitored every meal, checking at the end to document how much you ate. If an inpatient ate “100 percent,” they got certain privileges like weekend passes or get their feeding tubes removed. Because I wasn’t gaining weight fast enough, I was placed on 4,600 calories (the calories I didn’t eat would come from the milky-looking fluid pumped into my nose tube). Naturally, I had to resort to tricks to eat as little as possible.

My nickname for Janine, who was my roommate for a brief period, was the "belligerent bulimic" because she always seemed angry and once threatened to pull the tube out of my nose. We didn’t have bathrooms in any of the rooms (they were in a common area with no doors in the stalls). There were no plastic bags in our rooms, and the only bottles allowed were shampoo and conditioner bottles. Still, Janine found ways to sneak food to binge and then found ways to make herself throw up. Our room frequently reeked of vomit.

"Anorexics wanted to fade out, bulimics wanted to stand out," said Amanda, who was 12 when she was hospitalized and treated for anorexia.

At St. Claire’s, lines were clearly delineated between bulimics and anorexics. Sure, there were some “alliances” between the groups, and there were even patients who at one time or another suffered from anorexia or bulimia, but there was suspicion among the groups.

"Bulimics often feel like failed anorexics," said Carol Tracy, a psychologist who for 25 years worked with undergraduate and graduate students with eating disorders in an outpatient setting at Princeton University.

She said anorexics embody the "cultural ideal" because they are thin, whereas bulimics often feel "out of control because they can't stop eating."

Tracy said traditionally, anorexics start restricting food at a younger age, usually when they're teenagers whereas bulimics more often affects young college-aged women. She also said the goal of therapy is to get a person with disordered eating to get in touch with their emotions and issues behind why they don't eat, binge and purge or use laxatives and diet pills.

Tracy has also treated "bulimarexics" - patients who have tendencies to both restrict food, binge and purge or use laxatives and diet pills.

Eating disorders, Tracy said, are used as coping mechanisms. “Instead of saying ‘I need to break up with my boyfriend,’ the focus shifts to ‘I would feel better if I lost a few pounds.’”