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thoughtsfromthebeloved-blog · 7 years ago

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Just Another Dude With an Eating Disorder (And Some Other Stuff)

“You’ll probably be fat when you’re older.” I can still hear his voice in my head. I was twelve years old and at a small Christian youth camp. He was a grown man who I barely even knew but those words stayed with me.

Growing up, I was a bookworm but I was also an athlete. I ate whenever I wanted to. I ate whatever I wanted to. I ate however much I wanted to. I played soccer most of the year and was active the rest of it. Weight was not something that ever crossed my mind. I had a naturally athletic build and a ton of energy to burn. I didn’t know the first thing about “fat”. I was worried about being shy, being a preacher’s kid, having acne, being something other than friends with a girl. And, speaking of girls, eating disorders were their thing. I remember us whispering about the girl who only brought an apple and celery to lunch, or the two who would rush to the bathroom just before lunch ended. It was the nineties. Models had eating disorders. Women had eating disorders. Me? It wasn’t even a blip on my radar.

That all changed at nineteen. I’d recently started playing music and realized immediately that this was going to be my life. I also started drinking and smoking at about the same time. I continued playing soccer my freshman year of college but I also started my first band. When it came time to choose between the two paths it was obvious for me; only one of them allowed me- even encouraged me- to drink and smoke and eat to my heart’s delight. No more rigorous training and healthy living. I’ve entered the rock star phase. Alcohol made me less shy. I was away from my family and shed my “restrictive beliefs”. Acne cleared up. Alcohol and music suddenly allowed me to talk to women in a let’s-not-just-be-friends kinda way. What could possibly be wrong with this glorious new life?

And then it happened. I got my first belly. I was 5’11” and probably weighed about 170 lbs (I’d kill for that now) and I knew the end was near. The man’s voice came back to me. “You’ll probably be fat when you’re older”. Shit! My dad was a star athlete and became overweight. His brother was overweight. I started to connect the dots as I chose to see them and that was the moment that this monster of an obsession was born. One day I ate way too much at the local pizzeria in my town. A thought struck me. I knew about the people who would make themselves throw up. “Hmm… I wonder if I could do that.” It didn’t seem like that big a deal. More of a dare for myself in a time when I was experimenting with all kinds of new things and pushing more and more boundaries. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and stuck my fingers down my throat. After a few seconds I started to gag and then all of the food came up. I looked at it in a pile in the bottom of the toilet and felt a strange contentment seeing it. “Well, that’s it. I’ve crossed another line”. It was almost exciting. I never made this connection then but this was around the time that I walked away from my faith, started drinking heavily and my nuclear family imploded. I was homeless and utterly alone and needed to feel like I was in control of something.

This became a ritual. I would walk into town and obsessively catch my reflection in every storefront and in every car window just hoping I would be good looking; hoping I would have a chiseled jaw and look like someone I was never born to look like; but I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was fat. I was disgusting and I hated myself. I had “ballooned” up to 175 lbs so I dropped out of school and moved home. I would starve myself, run for a few miles everyday and, when I couldn’t take the hunger anymore, I would binge and then purge. And it worked! I dropped down to 155 and went back to school. I was constantly complimented on my new body. I was even more confident with women and they seemed to respond to me better now that I was “alright”. Although, come to think of it, I would have been just a little happier losing another 5 or 10 pounds.

This pattern continued off and on over the next 20 years. The next time I was 180 lbs and went down to 165. Then it was 190 lbs and I got down to 170. Eventually, at it’s peak this year, I was 240 lbs and I dropped to 190. I’ve gotten myself to a 50 pound swing. I was aiming for 70. It still takes only three or four months to lose all of the weight but there is another interesting pattern that is emerging as well. The first time I lost the weight it stayed off for a couple of years. Then it was one year. Then six months. This year, I lost 50 lbs from January until sometime in April and gained it all back by June.

Over the past decade I have become a fanatic at the gym because that’s what has become necessary. I do an hour of intense cardio followed by an hour of weights 6 days a week. I go for a 3 to 4 mile walk everyday. I eat 2 eggs and a handful of vegetables when I wake up. I have a 200 calorie Weight Watchers entree for lunch and another for dinner. I give myself some leeway with fruit. Then, as the weight is dropping (up to a pound a day), I take it down to one entree. Occasionally I skip breakfast. I never skip the gym, though. Finally, I’m at a point where I hit a wall but I’m still not satisfied. I go on the master cleanse (essentially a way to justify starvation under the ruse of cleansing the body of toxins). It involves having nothing but water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and a spoonful of maple syrup. I can have as many of these concoctions as I’d like throughout the day but even that’s not good enough for me. I’ll just stick to three or four, thank you. Every other day I chug a gallon of saltwater and let it come out the other end just as forcefully over the next few hours.

Eventually, my body can’t handle all of the stress of the starving and the working out and that voice sneaks in, saying “just go buy a bunch of delicious food. Get everything you’ve been missing out on. We can throw it up. It’ll just be this one time.” I give in. The pattern begins again only now the binging and the purging are actually on the side of the process where I gain all of the weight. I’m buying four boxes of cereal, two boxes of mac and cheese, and four boxes of hot pockets and devouring them in one sitting. I can’t stop eating until I feel physically ill. I can’t eat at all without throwing up. This begins once a day. Then it quickly climbs to four or five times a day. Often, there will be immediate back to back cycles. My grocery bill is making me broke. I am no longer going to the gym at all. I sit in a chair, read and watch movies, isolate and live in my mental disorder, sleep too much or not enough and I repeat the pattern over and over and over again.

Now, for some perspective, the eating disorder was not always the focal point of my vices over the years. As I wrote, I developed a taste for alcohol at nineteen. That escalated quickly and, after a couple of weeks, I was a daily drinker. I dabbled in drugs here and there, having a coke problem for awhile that was really annoying. Seriously, stupidest drug ever. Anyhow, That really took the spotlight over those next years. I was homeless more often than not. The only way that I got by was by playing music and having people think I was talented and charming enough to let me use them for whatever I needed to get drunk and back to my isolation. Those years are a blur of insanity. I played music throughout but every time an opportunity came along for my career I would go get drunk somewhere until it went away. In retrospect this may have been the best thing. The only thing that kept me alive in those days was being broke.

I had been living in Manhattan but, after another homeless spree, I ended up in Rockland County. It was there that I heard about this thing called Ayahuasca. I went to Peru for two weeks and sat in a hut in isolation with only a journal and a pen. Every other day we had a ceremony where we worked with the medicine of Ayahuasca. My life was forever changed. I had been spiritually blocked and incredibly bitter. Ayahuasca was like the spiritual drain-o that I was in need of. During those weeks in the jungle I had a vision of making music that would go deeper than my music previously had. No more just singing songs about getting drunk, getting my heart broken or falling for some girl. I wanted songs that embodied what I was learning there. I was learning that service is the highest form of human existence. I was learning that music is my service work and I needed to begin really surrendering my ego to something greater and more important. I’ve yet to come close to that place of enlightenment but I’ve taken a few steps in that direction on occasion. Unfortunately, I take steps in all sorts of directions.

I had my last sip of alcohol over 6 years ago. Problem solved. I’m spiritual. I’m thin. I’m a recovering alcoholic. What could be wrong with the world? I met a lovely young woman at my first show after I returned from Peru and, after only nine months, I convinced her that she was in love with me. I was certainly more than smitten. Unfortunately, underneath the alcohol and drugs, I needed to face yet another addiction that had manifested since my earliest childhood memories. I am a sex addict. And not the cool kind. Not the kind who just can’t stop having sex with super models even though he wants to stay committed. I disclosed to my girlfriend shortly after we got together and she decided to stay and help me find the help that I would need. I started going to meetings and seeing a therapist. It look promising. I popped the question and, after the third time, when I did it correctly (according to her), she said yes. I had a great run of sexual sobriety going up to the wedding. I was cured and I was on the road to eternal bliss. I was in a band that had all of the signs of “making it”. We were playing bigger venues and sold out shows. Ticket prices went up and people kept coming. People were paying attention. All of my dreams were right in front of me.

Shortly after the wedding, reality hit. I slipped sexually. My band had an incredibly tumultuous break up. My wife lost her job. I took a job in the city with a two hour commute each way. My sex addiction thrived in the city. I never slept with other women and so I justified my acting out and told myself I wasn’t really betraying my wife. She knew about it before we got married so it’s not my fault. That’s one of the biggest lies I have ever told myself. My world was crumbling. I suddenly had a wife and a five year old step daughter and I was supposed to be a grown up. Music was over and I was a commuter working in an office in Manhattan. I couldn’t breathe. I hid in my addiction. I withdrew from my wife. I realized that I would kill myself if I stayed at a job like that forever and so I decided to throw everything I had into making an album and really focusing on making a career out of it.

I was watching the movie “Nebraska” and I immediately fell in love with the score. I looked it up and found that it had been written by a man named Mark Orton. I guessed his email address at his website and sent him demos of what would become the album “Beloved”. Amazingly, he responded a few days later and helped me map out how to make the album. He set me up with an amazing producer and we were able to recruit many of my heroes to play on the album. Here it was. My one chance to save my family without killing myself. This album HAD to get finished and I HAD to make a career of this. I needed to be able to be a grown up and have a family as a musician.

Well, the marriage was finished before the album was. She moved out with my beloved step daughter less than two years after moving in. My world was rocked. I was in denial. I lost a bunch of weight and got in shape. I got spiritual. Everything was fine! I threw every ounce of myself into music. I threw myself into anything that kept me away from the pain of losing my family. I knew I couldn’t drink. I knew if I acted out sexually I would never get my wife back. Why was my life so fucked up? A blur of trouble in school, alcohol, homelessness, insomnia, not being able to get out of bed, complete recklessness, hurting myself physically. What was so wrong with me? Well, the answer was clear and it was time to peel back the next layer and see what I didn’t want to look at. I am mentally ill.

I finally got on medication for depression. Unfortunately, I’m bipolar so that sent me into a severe manic episode. I was the only one who thought that things were perfectly normal. In fact, I was amazing! I did so many destructive things and pushed my wife away even further. It wasn’t until the police arrived at my door that I thought something might be a little off. It seemed perfectly reasonable to throw traffic cones at the construction workers next door. They put them WAY too close to my driveway! It all culminated with me deciding to take 80 pills of robitussin. I knew it could be dangerous to take with my anti-depressant. I knew about serotonin syndrome but I had forgotten to take my medication for a couple of days and so it seemed an appropriate time to do it. When else would I have such a wonderful opportunity? So that episode ended with my first ever trip to the psych ward. I was put on a bunch of medications, one I had a horrible reaction to. I went stir crazy. I wanted to stay in bed all day but soon learned that you were treated better if you stayed in the halls or the only other room and talked to the other patients. Finally, we got the meds straightened out and I was deemed safe enough to take my act on the road. However, during my stay, I had disclosed my eating disorder and they just so happened to have a brand new outpatient program for exactly that. An attractive young doctor came to see me to talk about it and asked me if I thought my sexual addiction would be an issue with the other patients. I assured her that it wouldn't. The other guys were very curious about how they could get a meeting with that doctor too but I kept my secret to myself.

So now we’ve come back around to the eating, the exercising, the purging, the starving, the nightmare. Now that I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs, I wasn’t acting out sexually and I was on top of my mental illness, the eating disorder came out in all its glory. It was his turn. He had the whole show to himself. No longer a background character he was now the star. There was just one problem. It didn’t work anymore. The two things I am most self conscious about are my overall weight and my neck. Well, the bulimia was making me gain weight and it was making my throat swell up like a frog. But could I walk into a room of women and be “the dude with the eating disorder”? Could I say it out loud? Being an addict was almost sexy for a musician. The same goes for the sex addiction and the mental illness to a somewhat lesser degree. But a male with an eating disorder? Not sure how to spin that one sexy. It was humiliating. Eating disorders are for women. I mean, I don’t want to sound sexist but that’s just the way it is, right?

I remember my first day. I walked into a lovely room. There was a piano in the corner that I wanted desperately to play but I didn’t want it to seem like I was looking for attention (a dilemma I have in any room with a piano). I was the first one there. I had to be evaluated by the nurse and so I was gone when the others arrived. When I rejoined them I was introduced to two women. A cute, quirky, painfully thin blonde girl and a serious, brazen, painfully thin Asian woman. I was jealous because they got to be thin and I was legitimately overweight. For them, fat was only in their head. Lucky bastards. These were my “classmates”. Then there was the head of the program, three interns, one nurse, one nutritionist and a receptionist. So three patients, seven staff and only one guy.

It didn’t take long to get comfortable. I actually really enjoyed my time there. The head of the program was amazing and I quickly bonded with the women there. I hadn’t been social at all since my wife left so it was comforting being somewhere everyday interacting with people who soon became my friends. It didn’t seem strange anymore to be in that room talking about my eating disorder. I would have preferred if that hadn’t referred to it as E.D. but otherwise it was cool. That was just the safety of that room, though. When we would go to the cafeteria I was aware that the other people there knew that we were the eating disorder program. After a few days of it, I got used to that too. I disclosed to my family in an email. I was starting to dig out from under the stigma. Even so, it was still easier to say eating disorder than bulimia. It seemed there was always another layer to peel.

Full disclosure: the program did not allow any exercise nor did it attempt to help me lose weight even though I weighed 216 lbs. This bothered me from day one and I concocted a brilliant plan. I would get done, lose the necessary amount of weight and get back in shape and THEN I would implement the program. They didn’t understand. I’m a musician. I have a brand new album coming out that is the album I’ve been waiting all of my life to make. I’m finally taking the next step and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my weight jeopardize my chances. This kind of shit actually makes a difference. There just aren’t a whole lot of famous, fat frontmen. Especially these days. One of my best friends is a megastar and he’s incredibly handsome and thin and works out like crazy. There’s pictures of him all over the internet and women swoon. He is unbelievably talented but would it be the same if he put on 50 lbs? How the hell could people accept me at this weight? I certainly couldn’t. I look like a regular person. So, I returned home and, after a few weeks, fell back into old patterns. However, instead of dieting and exercising, my ass went right back onto my bedroom chair and put the remaining pounds back on and an extra ten for good measure. The mere thought of the album release was causing me to do what I always have done: self-sabotage.

So now the album is out. We’re ready to do a big promotional push. They want my promo photos. Oops. I don’t have any. The last one I did was a decade ago and I was thin and perfect then. No way in hell I’m getting my picture taken now. I would rather not push the album. Okay, let’s put off the photo shoot for eight weeks. I’ll do an intense six week workout, barely eat, and then do the master cleanse at the end. I can lose 40-50 lbs and I will look gaunt at the end. Then, we take the pictures and I go back to being an outspoken advocate for healthy body image! Problem solved. After a few days of deliberation I knew I couldn’t live that level of hypocrisy. My album is about healing and acceptance and love. How can I offer that to others while feeding into the same bullshit machine that says my music doesn’t matter because I look like a regular person? I can only tell you to love yourself exactly how you are if I’m sexy enough to have the platform to say it from? Nope. Doesn’t work. I’m getting off the ride.

And then, after surrendering, a solution came to me. I could use my promo photos as a platform to bring awareness to eating disorders; especially among males who, as I’ve opened up about my issues, I have found suffer from eating disorders at an unbelievable rate but are far less likely to take about it. Suddenly, I wasn’t as afraid to be seen. I wasn’t quite as afraid to have my picture taken. I still want to look good. I’m still a little uncomfortable with the idea but I know that it’s for a greater good. I can take something that the music business uses to perpetuate an unrealistic ideal and I can use it to make a statement for the very opposite of that. It makes me a little less nervous to step in front of that camera. You have to understand, in my mind I am morbidly obese and I am disgusting. However, I know that me judging me is me judging you. Me saying I’m not good enough exactly as I am is me saying you’re not good enough exactly as you are. And I KNOW that you are worthy so I must be as well. We are all worthy. We are all loved and we are all worthy to give and to receive love. We are all worthy of speaking our truth and creating our art from our spirits regardless of how we feel about our bodies. Our spirits will shine through when we surrender to what we love. And then, as my dear friend Dina once said to me, "When we dare to dream big we give other permission to do the same."

I haven’t thrown up in a month. I am still overeating and eating unhealthy foods. I am putting on weight again because I’m stressed about all the work that has to be done to get to the promo photos. I’m becoming uncomfortable again. This is a work in progress. I’m not writing this from a place of success in order to tell you how to fix these problems. I am writing this to say that I am in it with you. Truth will take that horrible darkness that tells us we’re not worthy and it will bring it into the light where it will disappear. Let’s do this together. Let’s give better than what we were given. Let’s teach the little ones to give better than we gave. We can heal- each other and ourselves- for generations to come and even for the ones that have passed. The river runs both ways. This is our service work while we walk this planet. This is a story of redemption and it’s a story for everyone. I LOVE YOU!

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