Dieting vs. Anorexia

Control. Feeling in control. Being in control of my body. Controlling my weight. Those words set off a lot of strong emotions for me.

A couple of years ago I watched a movie. Requiem for a Dream. I was taking diet pills at the time, and my daughter tsk tsked and showed me this film. It was about a 20ish son who was addicted to heroin and his girlfriend. The film compared the mother who was taking diet pills to the son who was on heroin. The mother got more addicted to diet pills and kept needing more and more pills to get the same effect. Her diet doctor was uncaring, and mostly cared about getting patients in and out the door quickly. The doctor prescribed more and more diet pills for the mother, even though she showed signs of detachment from reality. At the same time, the son and his girlfriend got more and more addicted to heroin, with some disturbing scenes of the girlfriend prostituting for drugs. The mom eventually lost it, and ended up unable to talk, in a state hospital with horror stories of its own.

I still think of that movie occasionally. It had a chilling effect on me. Of course, I was in denial that it could ever happen to me, at the time. In retrospect, it was happening to me. The pills had me short tempered and nasty. I didn't even notice.