Drunkorexia - The New Craze
The pressures to stay thin in today's society and still have an active social life is increasing by large numbers.
Women in Australia, the UK and Us are being affected more so than males. With our celebrity obsessed culture which portrays many beauties, and also increases decadent behavior as a fashionable lifestyle choice has helped create an environment where "drunkorexia" can thrive, according to Australian obesity expert Samantha Thomas.
The pressure of looking thin and beautiful is really taking it’s toll, causing thousands of girls and women into rehab for eating disorders.
Doctor Thomas had this to say when asked recently about “drunkorexia”.
"I guess it's not surprising that we're starting to see it [in Australia] and it's quite dangerous. Starvation and binge drinking] are really glamorized and glorified," Dr Thomas said.
"It's a very dangerous fad because it will lead quite easily into some very damaging eating disorders and also an addiction…to alcohol."
Doctor Thomas, a senior researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, said there are heavy consequences associated with binge drinking, without eating.
"The effects of alcohol when drinking on an empty stomach are much stronger," she said.
"But also, this can become an ingrained, established behavior."
Mary, a 27-year-old who works at a Sydney publishing house, will often skip dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, knowing that when she goes out drinking she’ll be consuming 700 calories in alcohol.
"That's essentially half the day's calories. If I'm feeling too queasy to wait until I consume the alcohol, I'll have a glass of low fat milk to line my stomach," she said.
She said binging on alcohol was part of the social fabric in major cities, which made heavy drinking sessions difficult to avoid.
"There is almost nothing else to do with your friends on a weekend but get blind drunk," she said.
"When you live in a city where the primary social activity is getting drunk and picking up, then being drunk and attractive are simply musts, which means if you're going to have two meals' worth of calories in booze, you'd best skip the meal."
Mary said it was not unusual for young people, girls in particular, to avoid food and water for an entire a weekend, which was "deeply taxing" on their bodies.
"What is problematic is that binge drinking puts women in dangerous situations - there is a reason women get in more physical fights, that the STD and HIV rate is rising and that alcohol overdoses are becoming more common," she said.
"If you drink on an empty stomach you are simply much more drunk and much more dangerous to yourself and others, socially, morally and physically.
No one talks about it enough, but I shudder to think how many people from this generation will die of liver failure."
Dr. Thomas said governments, media and parents needed to drive home messages about healthy weight, as opposed to weight loss.
"We can't just blame celebrities. We really need to move away as a society from an ideal body type. That needs a big social shift," Dr. Thomas said.
"We're seeing a really big misinterpretation of obesity and obesity messages."
