Drunkorexia
Many people are aware of the dangers that come with all types of eating disorders, but especially anorexia among young women. We also know about the facts that occur with binge drinking. Now, imagine putting both of them together in one young adult, and you are facing an alarming new trend that is flooding dorms and clubs: Drunkorexia.
College students and young adults are at greatest risk for eating disorders and developing excessive unhealthy drinking behavior often followed by alcoholism, such as binge drinking. Peer pressure plays a big role there. If you now keep in mind that the same young women worry about weight gain and often develop an eating disorder, you can see how easily it happens. They feel a need to adjust their diet in order to compensate the excess calories of the drinking sprees.
Many engage in higher physical activity combined with eating disorders like vomiting or laxatives to prepare for their binge drinking. The consequences might be malnutrition which can affect all major organs, especially heart and brain. The calories from alcoholic drinks are mainly without nutritional value. Alcohol actually increases a person’s appetite for carbohydrate-rich foods, which affects the body’s blood sugar and may cause pancreatitis or diabetes.
Not eating all day and then drinking alcohol on an empty stomach increases the absorption of the alcohol into the bloodstream. Many people do this exactly for this reason. You get a higher blood alcohol level in a shorter time, which increases the risk of alcohol poisoning. Also, the risk of liver and stomach problems is higher. Binge drinking always comes with those risks, but why increase them?
If you are engaging in this behavior I describe here as Drunkorexia, please stop before it is too late. Besides developing alcoholism, you might develop a severe eating disorder and put your body in extreme health risks.
Another very dangerous trend is ‘smoking alcohol’, where you don’t drink the booze, you inhale it through vaporizers to get an instant high. It is like pure alcohol shooting in the brain and extremely dangerous. When somebody drinks any liquor, it takes time until the alcohol affects you and it comes to intoxication. If you smoke it, it races through the lungs into the brain and the danger of alcohol poisoning is extreme high. The human body will vomit, if it gets too much alcohol. If you inhale it, you can’t get rid of it anymore. It is the unhealthiest way to try to diet while getting intoxicated.
Please be mindful with your health. An active, healthy lifestyle will give you more respect among peers than a self-destructive one in the long run. Always ask yourself who you want to impress. Is it worth it to engage in these unhealthy things to do so?
In case you already see a problem with this, please do not hesitate to reach out for help. Help is available and you are not alone. More and more people are waking up and giving up, choosing a healthy way of living in recovery instead a slow suicide in substance use disorder. If you have experienced drunkorexia or have smoked alcohol, I would love to read about your experience in a comment under this article. Help somebody else by sharing your experience. Or share your stoy on our page, easy and convenient by clicking here, Share Your Story .
Susanne Johnson