Myth: Eating’s Cheating When You’re Drinking

By Christina Taylor

WARNING: this article contains descriptions of negative behaviours around food and alcohol

When I developed anorexia aged 13, alcohol never really registered in my mind.

Although my mum’s first husband was a heavy drinker, and this contributed to the end of their marriage, my mum and dad drank very rarely, so growing up it wasn’t something I was aware of. As my illness progressed with lightning speed, I became afraid even to drink water. Recovery was difficult but I managed on a prescribed diet.

A contributing factor to the development of my anorexia was isolation and bullying. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, which explains a lot about my childhood. I really struggled with confidence and eye contact as a young child (still hate the eye contact thing) and I would hyper-focus (intensely fixate on one thing) and became easily distracted during group work—interrupting people is still a big issue for me. I found myself quickly socially isolated from my peers, with the other girls at my all-girls school making up secret codes to talk about me in front of my face and laughing at me. I had two close friends, one outside of school, but I spent years of my life being told I wasn’t allowed to sit in seats, having my things thrown on the floor and being picked last.

I did drama classes from the age of five (watched Neighbours, informed my mum I wanted to be Charlene) and as a teenager these became an escape from school and the constant belittling about my appearance and personality. One year my drama class organised a surprise birthday party for me, and it was the first time I’d felt truly accepted and liked. As I moved into my teens, some friends invited me to an after party when we were doing a show in a grimy little club called Fat Pauly’s. We were 15 and didn’t have to show ID. All my friends ordered drinks and I had no idea what to do, so I just did the same.

The first time I drank a Bacardi Breezer, it was like all the social awkwardness and discomfort of the last 15 years vanished. I could talk to people without feeling so uncomfortable that I thought I’d pass out, I was funny, I could dance, I could even talk to boys. As I’d been at an all-girls school, I was absolutely terrified of boys but still I longed for a boyfriend.

So I drank loads. I went out with my friends every weekend and did the same thing, drank more and more because all those anxious feelings vanished like magic. My weight started to creep up on my prescribed diet because I preferred drinks like alcopops and Baileys to beer or vodka.

The first time I drank way too much, I was sick. The next day, that seemed like a really good idea.

I started making myself sick before I went out, to account for the calories in alcohol. It had a knock- on effect and the alcohol hit me harder and quicker, which was exactly what I wanted of course. My friends’ mantra was ‘Eating is cheating’, and I bought into that. The more I drank, the less I ate and the more in control of my body I felt (ironically).

When I was 18, I got a job in a club while I was doing the last year of my A levels. There was a big drinking and drug-taking culture there and drinking at work was encouraged. As an 18-year-old girl who was relying on tips to fund a planned trip to New Zealand, I had lots of drinks bought for me. We stayed in drinking after work and often finished in the early hours of the morning.

My lack of eating anything of any nutritional value at all to compensate for the calories in drinks meant that I was often so drunk I could hardly stand. As I came to rely on alcohol more and more as a social and nutritional crutch, my tolerance grew, but many nights I would wake up with total blanks in my memory of what had happened the night before.

My parents noticed what was happening. They also saw such a big difference from someone who was bullied so badly that they couldn’t look people in the eye to a person regularly going out and acting normally with others that I don’t think they could bring themselves to intervene.

When I went to university, I just stopped eating because I could never predict when alcohol would be part of a social event. I’d eat fruit at best and make myself sick, but most nights I relied on huge quantities of alcohol and self-induced vomiting followed by a bottle of laxatives to avoid holding on to anything I’d eaten. Then I’d wake up and do it all over again. At university, I also started drinking on my own, just to blur out the uncomfortable feelings I had around my body and food. I’d sit drinking amaretto and playing video games until 2am, when I finally felt brave enough to order some chips (and then purge with laxatives).

Inpatient treatment forced me to permanently give up laxatives and to stop drinking temporarily, but I started again once I came out. This time it was wine, which a friend and I had in fact started drinking on our lunches out during inpatient treatment. I became unable to attend any social event without drinking, and the only way I could drink would be to eat nothing or make myself violently sick if I did eat. When I broke up with my boyfriend of four years, I lost all my stability and would often walk home by myself in the early hours of the morning or find ill-advised temporary boyfriends.

Eventually, after a particularly negative cycle of self-destructive behaviour, I moved back home. I continued drinking excessively when I met my husband. We were both heavy drinkers, and over the next few years, I started to feel ashamed over the number of bottles in our recycling. I found myself unable to eat without drinking a bottle of wine, and I’d wake up morning after morning feeling sick with huge blanks of memory and food all over my face from where I’d eventually given in to hunger and then made myself throw up in disgust. My husband started to worry about me as my blackouts became more and more frequent. I found myself in hospital after one party, and I was so drunk I pulled out the drip they gave me. I promised I’d stop, but I didn’t know how. Neither of us did. Our social lives revolved around alcohol.

I found out I was pregnant in 2011 and I gave up drinking immediately. I wish I could tell you my entire eating disorder was fixed then. It wasn’t, and it was incredibly difficult. But I had to spend nine months without relying on alcohol. When I drank again as a one-off on my hen weekend after my daughter was born, I just didn’t have the same urge to do what I’d done before. I couldn’t wake up and take care of my daughter feeling awful. Drinking to excess didn’t appeal to me any more. I stopped going on nights out where I knew I would be tempted to drink excessively. I didn’t have alcohol at home any more. I committed to recovering from my eating disorder and stopped making myself sick the day my daughter was born. After our son was born in 2014, I spent about three years drinking three to four times a year. Then, as the children got older, my husband and I rarely drank at all. The time spent teetotal allowed me to re-evaluate my relationship with alcohol and to understand how to drink because I actually enjoyed a drink, not to get out of my mind drunk.

Now, on the rare occasions I drink alcohol, I do it because I choose to. I know how to pace myself sensibly, and I have solid plans in place for what to eat when I get home. I don’t have any desire to lose control of myself or numb my thoughts. I know it’s much more enjoyable to be in control of the situation and that I will feel more secure and happy. I also choose what I eat and make sure that I eat appropriately to manage drinking alcohol, rather than it being an out-of-control free-for-all like it used to be.

I never thought I’d have a happy relationship with alcohol. I’ll never be someone who can just have one drink, but that part of my eating disorder is over.

Find Christina on Twitter @chtaylor__