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Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2003
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When Kids Can’t Concentrate: How Eating Disorders Impact Our
Children’s Education
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Men with Eating Disorders: Falling through the Cracks
Tommy Schrider, Actor
I stand before you here today to give voice
to the, until now, untold scores of men both young and old across this
country who have suffered or continue to suffer from disordered eating.
A silent group, we have starved, binged and purged ourselves in the
shadows, humiliated by our inability to eat and enjoy food like normal,
healthy, red-blooded American men are expected to. Restricting food,
zealous calorie counting, throwing up meals and self-inflicted
emaciation were reserved for insecure young women bent on attaining
self-worth through supermodel slimness: a decidedly female problem that
preyed on the weak and unfortunate “other”. Anorexia and bulimia were
certainly foreign to me, until I woke up three years ago and realized
they were eating me alive.
Never in my wildest dreams
could I ever have conceived of the debilitating insanity, the
soul-crushing despair that my eating disorder wreaked upon me. And it
was not as if I had been immune to adversity before. As an adolescent, I
was painfully shy and struggled with frequent bouts of low self-esteem
and depression. I had a difficult time making friends and was unable to
concentrate in school, so I turned to drugs and alcohol for a sense of
well-being and security. It worked for awhile: my social life
skyrocketed and I experienced my first taste of self-possession.
Eventually, however, getting wasted became the top priority in my life,
which I began to notice was slipping quietly through my fingers. So,
when I was eighteen, I entered rehab for twenty-eight days, started to
confront some of my demons, and have, I am grateful to say, remained
sober for the last twelve years. Thanks in large part to my sobriety, I
went on to college, made the Dean’s list three years in a row, graduated
Cum Laude and went on to receive an MFA in acting at New York
University’s Tisch School of the Arts, one of the most competitive
programs in the country. But I tell you these things not to brag or
boast. No. I tell you because I want you to know that I have been
through rough waters and made it back to shore. I do not enjoy nor do I
make a habit of playing the victim. Nothing, however, could have
prepared me for the turmoil that lay ahead.
Ironically, anorexia first
reared its ugly head in the midst of a very fruitful period in my life.
I was a year out of undergrad, apprenticing at a major regional theatre,
where I had the good fortune of being cast in three large roles in three
main stage productions with three important directors. I wasn’t prepared
for, nor did I feel I was deserving of, that kind of success.
Unfortunately, I was my own greatest skeptic, and nothing I did could
live up to the enormous expectations I had heaped on top of myself. My
body, unable to withstand the emotional stress I kept bottled up inside
it, shut down. It just stopped. I was, quite literally, blocked, unable
to relieve myself. Thus, everything I ate, every morsel that crossed the
threshold of my lips, made me feel bloated and heavy. Suddenly, there
was this cold, hard stone in my stomach that was dragging me down. Food
became anathema to me, and that discomfort soon turned into a
full-fledged obsession.
My blood boiled with rage
at my body, which I felt had betrayed me. Distrust of food soon
mushroomed into an unreasonable fear and loathing. Moreover, because I
felt fat, I started to see myself as fat. I maniacally watched what I
ate and reveled in what I didn’t with I passion I had never know. My
first thought upon waking, my final thought before bed and all of my
thoughts in the hours between revolved around denying myself food. At
this point, I was in my second year of graduate training, slogging
through very physical sixteen hours days at one-hundred and twenty
pounds. Health complications like anemia and the beginnings of
osteoporosis set in. My red and white blood cell counts spiraled. Ten
minute walks home turned into two-hour tours of food shops, gazing
trancelike at all of the goodies I forbade myself to eat. I tossed and
turned through sleepless nights, dizzy with terror as to how I would
ever survive the coming day.
No one seemed to now what
to do. I saw countless doctors and homeopaths for the magical solution.
Gastric emptying studies and endoscopies yielded nothing except
recommendations to add a high fiber cereal to my breakfast. My teachers
and classmates were obviously concerned, yet were at a loss as to how to
help. The possibility that a man in their midst had anorexia was alien
to them. It was not something they could comprehend, let alone discuss.
My parents and my girlfriend, whom I put through the emotional wringer,
were worried sick, and it was they who first broached the idea that I
may, in fact, be suffering from an eating disorder. But I was deaf to
their pleas and simply drifted further away, cut off from everyone and
thing around me.
A tumultuous, unbearably
lonely year later, my therapist at the time forced me to fae the reality
that I was anorexic, and needed to do something about it before the
damage was irreparable. I went to an inpatient hospital program during
the Christmas break of my third year at NYU, but left after two weeks,
determined to complete my Masters. While I did gain some weight back
during treatment (though not nearly enough), I hadn’t solidified myself
against those seductive, deadly voices that lure the sick back into the
anorexic abyss. Soon, I was restricting again, more heavily than before.
This was followed by wild bouts of binging, a new development, that
flung me into an utter panic. My only retaliation was further
restriction, which led to further binging, and, inevitably, I began to
purge. I was now enmeshed in a ruthless cycle that dominated every
aspect of my withering life. My first acting job out of NYU was at a
summer theatre in the Berkshire mountains playing Albert Einstein in a
show about his life: a dream job. But my disease nearly took it away
from me. Hours before opening night, I parked my car in a desolate patch
of woods, a daily ritual, and proceeded to binge and then purge - in a
very unsafe manner. Regardless, I went on that night and it was all I
could do to keep from vomiting all over the stage.
Several weeks later, my
parents came to see the show. Before I went to meet them at their hotel,
I, you guessed it, binged and purged. On the drive over - and I remember
this clear as day (even the shirt I was wearing) - I announced to myself
out loud that I could not live like this anymore, and that if I was
unable to get better would kill myself. And I meant it. When I arrived
at their room, I broke down, told them everything and begged them for
help. They stayed in that hotel or another week, putting their lives on
hold at a moments notice, until the show closed, so I wouldn’t have to
suffer alone. They just may have saved my life.
I immediately went into
another hospital program where my parents kept me for twenty-nine days,
a full two-and-a-half weeks after my insurance ran out. Others I met
there were not as lucky, forced out long before they had come to grips
with their illness. These were women - and, yes, men - young and old who
were, almost unanimously, tremendously bright, tremendously sensitive,
tremendously generous and tremendously sick. Most came from
dysfunctional families. A disproportionately high percentage had
suffered violent physical and/or sexual abuse. Whatever our backgrounds,
we all shared a significant pain and sadness that had manifested itself
in an irrational terror of eating. Even though I was often, as a man, in
the minority, I saw myself in each one of their hollowed faces. All of
us were striving toward this twisted idea of physical perfection thrust
upon us by the outside world in order to fill the gnawing emptiness we
felt inside. Some are in recovery today, most not. Some are dead.
Because of my parents’ love and support, both emotional and,
importantly, financial, I was able to stay in treatment, gain back the
lost weight (some thirty-five pounds of it) and build a solid foundation
which has thus far sustained my recovery. I am lucky. I am blessed. I
left with a chance.
I now look forward to the
future. My girlfriend and I have worked and continue to work, slowly and
often painfully, through the aftermath of those years - in fact, we are
getting married this summer. I have a career, albeit in its infancy, as an
actor and anticipate the challenges and mysteries that lie ahead. But, as
I said, I am lucky. There are countless others whose stories do not turn
out for the better. I ask you, please, to do what you can to increase
awareness of eating disorders in this country, among women and
men. Increased awareness, open and frank discussions about the nature and
scope of these diseases and proactive support from parents, teachers,
counselors and peers will help us recognize those who are falling through
the cracks, and more importantly, catch the before they
fall. With your help, we can make this worthy goal an even worthier
reality. Thank you.
The briefing was held
Wednesday, February 26. We thank Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL) and
Representative Ted Strickland (D-OH) for hosting this briefing.
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