The cult of eating disorders

I was admitted to the eating disorder ward at a psychiatric hospital the day after my junior prom. By the time I decided to enter treatment, I had been struggling with anorexia for two years. Two years of disordered behaviors took a toll on my health: My medical complications included malnutrition, dehydration, lanugo, insomnia, hair loss, low blood pressure, amenorrhea, lowered body temperature, gastroparesis, and heart arrhythmias. Despite all of these, I spent most of the two years before treatment convinced that anorexia nervosa was a lifestyle choice. I was among the enlightened few who had realized that I didn’t need food to survive. I was a member of the pro-ana community.

Pro-anorexia (pro-ana) and pro-bulimia (pro-mia) are based in the idea that consumption is a matter of personal choice, and thus people have the right to engage in disordered behaviors without interference from the psychiatric community. These beliefs are propagated in online communities where eating-disordered individuals can swap weight-loss tips and tricks, share “thinspiration,” and encourage each other to engage in increasingly extreme eating behaviors. These websites provide a community that supports and normalizes disordered thoughts and behaviors. They foster friendships of mutually-assured destruction.

I discovered the pro-ana movement in the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, a few months after I began restricting my food intake. At first, my food restriction wasn’t about weight loss – I just wanted to see if I could do it. I don’t remember what prompted me to Google weight-loss tips, but what I found would affect me for the rest of my life. There are a myriad of pro-ana websites online. Some of them I found too extreme. Several sites were shrines to “the goddess Ana” with quasi-religious “thin commandments.” After nine years in Catholic school, those weren’t for me. Other sites looked more like tumblr, plastered with pictures of emaciated girls overlaid with thinspo mantras. I spent a fair amount of time on those types of websites collecting triggering images to “inspire” me to be a “better anorexic.” After all, that was my goal.

Growing up with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and persistent depressive disorder meant that everything took longer and felt harder for me. I remember one instance when I had studied for three hours and earned a B on a quiz, while my friend had studied for 20 minutes and earned an A. I had the heart of an overachiever, but neurochemistry that fought me at every turn. Growing up, I never had much of an appetite, so I decided to go along with my natural “talents.” Thanks to my apathetic stomach, I was going to be perfect. But I couldn’t do it alone.

After digging through innumerable pro-ana websites, I found the one that I would call home. It was a forum-based website where we could trade tips (ways to further our disorders) and bemoan failures (like eating). Throughout my junior year of high school, I spent hours each day on this website. The people on this website knew everything about me, and I genuinely believed that they were helping me be the best version of myself. We may have been slowly starving ourselves to death, but we felt high on life.  I believed with all of my heart that there was nothing wrong with being anorexic. On the contrary, I was superhuman, looking down on all of the “pathetic” (healthy) people who “fell victim to their base urges” (nourished their bodies). Colors felt sharper, my body was surging with adrenaline, and I felt alive.

The second semester of my junior year, I was dizzy and cold all of the time. I was fainting regularly, my hair was falling out, and I seemed to be sprouting fur. I finally became concerned when I started having heart palpitations. As many as 20% of those suffering from anorexia will die prematurely from health complications, most prominently heart attacks, and I was terrified.

But this still wasn’t enough to convince me to seek treatment. As scared as I was, I wasn’t ready to give up my eating disorder. It felt like a musician going deaf, or a painter being paralyzed. Anorexia was the one thing I felt really good at, my identity. Additionally, entering treatment would mean breaking contact with the pro-ana community, which had become my family. Giving up my pro-ana beliefs meant leaving behind the incredible, supportive–read: enabling–friends I had made online.

Thankfully, one of my pro-ana friends entered treatment a few months before I did. This girl was my best friend in the entire world, and we were close in a way that was viciously unhealthy for both of us. We had lost contact while she was in treatment, but eventually she tracked me down and told me that I needed to get treatment, too. This wasn’t the first time I had heard this. My high school boyfriend had been trying to convince me to get help for months, but he never had a shot at getting through to me. In fact, no one who wasn’t formerly pro-ana could have convinced me. They could never understand what the pro-ana community gave me, so they had no idea what they were asking me to give up. I needed someone who had believed what I believed to tell me that recovery was worth it; that my core beliefs were utterly wrong; that being perfect doesn’t matter if I’m dead. And because she had been there, I believed her.

I should mention that I was not an innocent victim in all of this. Within my pro-ana community, I was on the front lines sharing “techniques” that I had developed, encouraging others to delve deeper into their disorders. I helped my disordered friends inflict further damage on their bodies under the guise of helping them, and that is something that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s been five years since I entered treatment and deactivated my online account, and I can only hope that they found people to convince them that recovery is worth it.

Tonight, with four other panelists at a Mind Matters event, I will be sharing my story. I am doing this because I see traces of eating disorders in many people at Yale. The cult of perfection can lead Ivy Leaguers down this path, in an environment where their self-esteems are constantly challenged.

If you know of someone that may be engaging in disordered behaviors, encourage them to seek professional help. Be part of their support system, but not at the cost of your own health.

If you self-identify as pro-ana, pro-mia, listen to me. I have been in the trenches of this disorder, and I am telling you that recovery is worth it. It is worth sacrificing the parts that you like about your eating disorder to get your life back. Being a whole person with flaws feels infinitely better than being the most perfect empty shell.

Jessica Magro is a junior in Morse College, Yale University. The original version of this article was published in The Yale Daily News (April 19, 2017) and is posted here with permission from Jessica Magro.