July 1, 2013 • 28 mins
The term "drunkorexia" was coined in 2008 to describe people who intentionally drink on an empty stomach to "save" calories and money. Media reports suggest that it's sweeping college campuses, but Cristen and Caroline also discuss how the trendy term has more serious implications for the intersection of eating disorders and substance abuse.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from House touff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And on today's podcast, we're going
to talk about a term that has only been around
for a few years, and it is drunk or rex CEO. Yeah,
(00:25):
and it's appeared in a lot of trend stories about
not only eating disorders, but like college students in particular,
particularly those college students who are choosing to drink their
calories rather than eat their calories. And I'm just going
to start off by saying that the two are not equivalent.
(00:48):
You are not getting any nutrients from that bud light.
I can just assure you that is very true. Not Caroline.
Before we get into this podcast on drunk rex, I
just want to offer a trigger warning here that we
are gonna be talking about eating disorders and behaviors associated
with eating disorders, so or those of you who might
be sensitive to those topics, just a warning of what
(01:11):
is ahead. The term drunk arexia first popped up in
two thousand and eight, mostly in celebrity blogs that were
referencing ultra thin celebrities, usually women obviously, who appear to
subsist on alcohol and cigarettes. But now it's popping up,
portraying a trend particularly among college girls, although this is
(01:33):
something that guys are doing as well, and it is
not a medically accepted term, and you could lump it though,
together with things like man orexia or therexia, which is
the obsession with healthy food that can actually become unhealthy,
or pregarexia when pregnant women will starve themselves in an
attempt to not look pregnant, and drunk arexia though even
(01:57):
though um, it's a new term, it's an old habit there.
There's really nothing new about the idea of people cutting
back on food so that they can supposedly drink more
and not gain the weight. And over at Jezebel, Lindy
West brushed it off as kind of pointless because she
was like, wait, aren't we just calling anorexia by a
(02:19):
different name. But the reason, one of the reasons that
I wanted to talk about it is because even though yeah,
drunk arexia might be very headline grabby, and yes, it
can be a different name for a type of eating disorder,
because it is so attention grabbing, I feel like it
could serve a useful purpose because it is highlighting a
(02:41):
disordered behavior that I don't feel like has gotten as
much media attention before. Yeah, and I mean a lot
of people online I read about, you know, argue that
it's really not that big of a deal, like you
should be cutting back on calories if you're going to
be drinking a lot. But we're not really talking about
you know, eating healthy all the time and then drinking
(03:03):
in moderation when you're out socially. No, I mean, we're
we're talking about an issue of you know, maybe you're
unhappy with your body, you know, maybe you're taking steps
that are completely unhealthy, or maybe you're just you know,
completely cutting out food the day that you decide you
want to go out and party at night. Right, Because
it's often associated with binge drinking in particular, And I
(03:27):
do want to note though, before we go on, that
I am I don't want to say that I'm a
fan of the term drunk arexia. I understand that there
are certain pitfalls to it in terms of maybe jazzing
up what would otherwise just be called anorexia, but I
do think it's useful as opposed to something like men arexia,
(03:48):
where those are the exact same symptoms as anorexia. You're
just calling it a funny name because guys are doing
something that girls used to just do. But with drunk arexia,
it's not that these people aren't eating all the time.
It's more the connection of not eating so that they
can drink at least when it comes to these trend
(04:10):
stories about what's going on on college campuses. For instance,
there was a two thousand eight ABC News story which
quoted a female sorority member who talked about how drunk
orrexia is encouraged in her Greek system and it was
no big deal with if there was a social coming
up the girls in her house. And I'm not saying
(04:31):
that this is going on at all stories everywhere. This
is just an example from one ABC News story taking
one sorting house. But she said that, you know, it
was assumed that you were gonna eat maybe just a
salad or something very small, if anything at all, so
that you could have all the shnops you wanted. Right.
This young woman talked about how it was basically a
(04:52):
support system among her sisters that they would trade methods
for skipping meals, like working out late at nine instead
of eating having just one medium meal during the day,
which I mean I would lose my freaking mind um
and in some cases throwing up before going out. And
they quoted her as saying, I've done drunk arexia for
years and I'm still healthy and I'm skinny. She said,
(05:13):
that's the best of both worlds to me, so it's
not likely that I'll stop doing it anytime soon. And
I just I want to shake her and then transition
it into a hug, you know, like shake, hug, hug,
shake um, because like that, it's just not healthy. You're
doing something so terrible to your body when you're substituting alcohol.
But I can understand, though, from thinking back to my
(05:35):
eighteen nineteen twenty year old perspective, where you see two
things that are lauded on campus culture if you're a female,
being a fun party girl and being thin girl, you know,
And in that way, like I totally understand her twisted
(05:55):
logic of saying, well, it's the best of both worlds.
I can do all of these things and I don't
have to really do it the hard way, even though,
as we'll talk about, you're actually putting your body through
very hard things by doing this, but it's not just
girls doing that. Although the motivations for guys practicing drunk
(06:17):
arexia would would you call that practicing drunk rex male
drunk orexix? Uh, their motivations tend to be a little
bit more financially motivated, and for guys, their motivations tend
to be a little bit more financial and also wanting
to optimize their potential drunkenness. Right, Yeah, money is definitely
(06:40):
a motivator. Uh. This one guy they quoted said when
you consume on an empty stomach, you feel the effect quicker.
He said, there was one Friday where I only ate
a pint of ice cream all day, knowing I'd be
drinking liquor later that night. So like this this money,
if you like, I get it, and I trust me.
I used to live at a are in college for
(07:01):
a period and dated the bartender because it was just
that convenient, Um, like I get the whole thing of
like if I eat less, I will get drunk faster.
I remember having that thought. It was never like I
literally like when I'm reading about drunk COREXA, I'm like, wow,
this logic literally never occurred to me because I love
(07:22):
eating so much. Um, but I do remember having the
same thought of like, well, I can get drunk faster
and they have money. Uh so, yeah, that's awful. Yeah,
And I'm sure that some listeners are thinking, okay, yeah
the eating aspect aside, doesn't this just sound like a
lot of rampant drinking problems on the loose And and yeah, absolutely,
(07:46):
there is definitely a substance abuse issue that's tied up
with this. And that's why campus abuse counselors are more
commonly warning against that drunk correxia combo trying to rake
this cycle. This logic, I should say in kids heads
that a it's a good thing to get as drunk
as possible on an empty stomach and be that you
(08:11):
you're you're striving to be thin, and at at what
costs anyway you cut it. The amount of drinking and
the not amount of eating. Both of those things are
harmful for your bodies. And you put it together and
it's even more harmful. Right. And one study that looked
at that combination was study out of the University of
(08:34):
Missouri Columbia, which looked at that relationship between alcohol abuse
and eating disorders. They found that of the college kids
they talked to reported quote, saving meal calories to spend
on drinking, and of those, three times more women than
men admitted to drunk orexic behavior. The National Center on
(08:58):
Addiction and Substance a Views echoes this stuff, saying that
individuals with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drugs compared to
only nine percent of the general population. And I think
it's interesting because, I mean, you know, we've talked about
eating disorders a lot, and and the motivations behind it.
That it's not just necessarily I don't want to be
(09:19):
fat when you when you are suffering from anorexia or bolivia.
That there's a lot of like you know, emotional and
mental things that go into it too, as far as
like perfectionism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and so you know, some
studies have talked about how perhaps women and men with
some type of eating disorder are also binge drinking to
(09:41):
maybe calm some of that anxiety that drives them. Yeah,
when we really get down to the clinical level, if
we get off of college campuses for a minute and
get into eating disorder treatment centers that are really looking
more into the substance abuse factors, we can see how
those two things can be really intertwined. For instance, there
(10:03):
was an article in The New York Times talking about
this and they interviewed Douglas Banell, who is the director
of outpatient clinical services for the Renfrew Center based in Philadelphia,
and he talked about how there are women who are
afraid to put a quote grape in their mouth, but
they have no problem drinking a beer. And part of that,
like you said, it's a motivation of calming those nerves
(10:28):
um that might be associated with eating disorders. And uh,
just to drive home some more statistics, the New York
Times article also cited a two thousand three Columbia University
study which found that people with eating disorders are five
times more likely to become substance abusers, and on the
flip side of that, substance abusers are eleven times more
likely to have an eating disorders. So clearly there is
(10:52):
a strong relationship going on between the eating disorders, whether
it be anorexia, bulimia or eating. This eating disorders not
otherwise classified and substance abuse, right and not all jibs
with a two thousand seventh study from Biological Psychiatry which
found that thirty three percent of belimics and anorexics do
(11:17):
have substance abuse problems, and since this was really highlighted
on college campuses, Adam Barry, who was a professor of health,
education and behavior at the University of Florida, published in
two thousand and ten the most comprehensive study on drunk
orexia came out in the Journal of American College Health,
and he looked at twenty two thousand college students at
(11:38):
forty different universities and he found that controlling for factors
of race, school year, Greek affiliation, and on campus living,
vigorous exercise, and disordered eating uniquely predicted binge drinking. So
clearly that relationship has been established. And for researchers for
(12:00):
substance abuse counselors and eating disorder researchers, now the psychological
and neurological links between eating disorders and substance abuse is
something that researchers are looking deeper into because they're starting
to understand how they put they fit so closely together
because food can function addictively in the same way as
(12:20):
drugs and alcohol. But for treating someone who is dealing
with an extreme eating disorder and with a substance abuse problem.
It can be challenging to unravel because with eating disorder,
you're telling them to start consuming something, but to treat
the substance abuse that you're telling them to stop consuming something.
(12:42):
So it's a challenging set of things to overcome. And Um,
when it comes to blimia, for instance, they might be
using alcohol to purge or for anorectics. They might be
drinking to calm anxiety and so, uh, this is one
of the newer aspects of of these treatment centers. Yeah,
a very multifaceted treatment that you have to definitely be
(13:04):
careful with. Now we've talked about a lot of like
contributing factors to why it's happening. You know, people wanting
to save money and get drunk faster, people wanting to
save calories so they'll be thinner. Um, maybe soothing social anxiety.
And you know, it's all part of a binge drinking
culture on campus. But it's also part of a huge
disgusting weight loss industry. Like inexcusable diet alcohol marketing, I
(13:28):
can't stand up marketing marketing. It promotes the connection between
drinking and wait. And this was discussed in an article
in the Atlantic by yakaba eurus. Then the theory is
that diet alcohol adds encourage teens in college students to
engage in this troubling behavior that more and more experts
are referring to as drunk orexian. So it's actually getting
(13:52):
more and more uh, actual academic attention. Yeah, and for
women especially one to start referred to these new marketing
tactics as like Virginia slims all over again, because they're
saying for years, if you think about beer advertisements, for instance, uh,
a lot of times the legacy advertising for that cast
(14:12):
women in a more objective light, shall we say, But
now it's like marketers are just finally figuring out that,
oh wait, women like booze, so but women also want
to be slim, so we can open up this whole
new market for it. And they usually distinguish between two
different types of these diet or healthy I don't even
(14:36):
want to call it healthy alcohol where you have the
fitness ads such as something for like the low calorie
beers where it will usually be and these always make
me laugh because it's usually showing someone who is still
sweaty from working out and pounding a beer, which which
I'm like I if I don't, I can't think about
(14:56):
alcohol after I finish a jog. But then you also
have the more straight up diet marketing four things that
are a lot of times targeted to women as local
pre mixed option like Bethany Frankel's Skinny Girl cocktail mixes
and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Jacoba Eurus in The
(15:19):
Atlantic called out that that brand a lot because it
I mean, it is one she's She's made a ton
of money off of it. Obviously, Um, it's working. And
I have had a Skinny Girl margarita and it was
wasn't It was refreshing, it was acceptable. Yes, I had
it right after I got it done jogging. Now, you
were running a race when somebody handed a cup out
the instead of water and Skinny Girl, Well, I poured
(15:41):
the first one all over my face. You're like, yeah,
and then I and then I drank another one to
make the mike cramps go away. Well. David Journ again
had a really pragmatic attitude about this. He's the director
of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said, there's no
question then that the alcohol industry is presenting their goods
(16:02):
to women as their their diet products because that's what
sells well. And here's the thing too. We've talked a
lot in this podcast about how, oh, this is something
happening on college campuses. These young women, they're being duped
into drinking locale things. This is not just on college ye, Caroline,
I can speak anecdotally in that absolutely there is this
(16:24):
connection in our brains. I mean, just think about the
term beer belly about how I mean, obviously, if you
drink a lot, you are going to gain weight because
it's the same thing is if you if I drink
a six pack of Coca Cola every day, I'll have
a coke belly and I will always smell very servilus you.
I don't know. I feel like I would always have burbs.
(16:47):
But it's not the idea of drinking on an empty
stomach or like hello happy hours. You know, if you
leave work and if you stop by a bar before
you get to dinner, that can happen. And things like
skinny Girl margharita is. I don't feel like it's so
much marketed to younger girls on campus, but women are age.
(17:09):
It's not it's it's not just a college ing, which
is the only reason why I find drunk arexia being
now spun out into something that's just a phase that
college kids will go through, because it's I feel like
it's far more wide reaching than just that. Yeah, but
there there are some serious implications. I mean, we've we've
(17:32):
mentioned the health stuff and the eating disorder stuff, but
I mean, you have to think about what you're doing
to your body when you're not putting actual vitamins and minerals,
and drinking a mimosa doesn't count the O janet no,
although I mean, I guess it's better to drink a
mimosa than like just straight gen or something. But uh,
(17:52):
you know, I mean we have issues of drinking on
an empty stomach that there's a faster absorption rate of
alcohol into the bloodstream, which leads to that higher level
of impairment and intoxication, which has some definite health implications.
It could actually make you unhealthy, but it also puts
women in particular at higher risk for sexual assault and
things like d u I yeah, researchers often worn women,
(18:16):
especially against things like drinking on an empty stomach, just
because we tend to metabolize alcohol faster. A lot of times,
we have less body fat than men do, and so
our level of impairment might be even higher. We're at
a higher risk of something like blacking out that can
according to research. There was a two thousand eleven in
(18:38):
University of Missouri study which highlighted this, which puts us
at a higher risk for violence, for engaging in risky
sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning, and chronic disease later in life.
If we're doing this a bunch, we're beating our bodies
up on the inside, no matter what our waistline is.
Because this puts us at higher risk of gas stritis, ulcers,
(19:00):
and malnutrition down the road. And yeah, sure, sometimes you know,
you might not eat a big lunch and you might
go have a martini after work, and that's gonna happen.
But it's it's this whole chronic issue, the chronic binge
drinking and also motivating yourself to do so, telling yourself
it's okay to do that if you did intentionally not
(19:25):
eat as much during the day, right well. Another study
from the Journal of American College Health looked at students
at ten different universities and of more than four thousand participants.
Thirty nine percent of students who drank within the past
thirty days reported restricting calories on days they planned on drinking.
They looked at the gender aspect of it of these
four thousand participants and found that women drunk or XIX
(19:48):
were more likely to experience those negative alcohol related consequences
such as memory loss and unwanted sexual advances, whereas men
who reported this behavior were much more likely to get
into fights. Oh yeah, and there was anecdotally. In one article,
they were talking to a couple of college guys about
(20:09):
binge drinking on an empty stomach and the blackout aspect,
and they weren't happy about it. I mean, they still
did it. They had no plans to stop because I
mean I I knew guys like this. I was in
you know, social circles like this when I was in college,
where it's totally accepted and expected it on the weekend,
(20:30):
And even though so many times it ended up with
just not feeling good about yourself, you still did it.
And I guess that's the question. It's like, we know
we're doing things that are harmful to ourselves, Why why
do we continue doing it? And even though again drunk
orexia might sound like a throwaway, buzzy term. Dr Harris Straightener,
(20:52):
who was the vice president of the Karen Treatment Centers,
told Glamour magazine that he thinks it should get a
nod in the d s M and the diagon Anastic
and Statistical Manual, because he said, quote in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we look at different
factors that influence other disorders, and I think it's time
to give this trend a paragraph in the manual. It's
(21:12):
a definer of a particular eating disorder. So you might think, oh, well,
but you know, Monday through Thursday, I'm eating plenty and
I go to the gym. You know, it's just Friday,
Friday and Saturday, you know. But still I feel like
that's you know, it's if it's happening every weekend, every week,
then it's something to think about. Yeah. He also pointed
(21:34):
out that this chronic behavior, this chronic drunk corexia, can
deplete your potassium and have such an incredibly bad effect
on your heart that it could eventually lead to cardiac ars. Yeah.
I mean, so if you're doing this constantly, even if
it is just on the weekend. I mean, if it's
every weekend, ah, that's that's it's really really bad for you.
(21:54):
And I mean also if you're a student, or if
you're just a person who sits at a desk and
looks at a computer, I mean, it can cause a
lot of difficulty concentrating, studying and making decisions. And we're
not trying to be alarmist over this. I just think,
at least for me reading it, it was a good reminder.
Even though I am years away from being in college,
it's still a good reminder to think about what we
(22:16):
put into our bodies and how how we treat ourselves. Right, Yeah,
I uh, without getting too personal, this past weekend, I
accidentally was drunk orrexic. Yeah, you know, I went I
went out for for cocktails, didn't you know it had
been a while since I'd eaten, had a little too
much to drink, went home and just fell asleep, didn't
(22:38):
eat dinner. And you know, it's like I felt so
much worse the next day than I would have had
I just done the normal pattern of like have a
good dinner, go out and have some cocktails, go home,
drink some water, and have a good night's sleep. It
was awful. It like messed me up for the rest
of the weekend. Oh yeah, and drinking on an NB
stomach too. It's the thing of how it hits you
(22:58):
so much faster, at least it does with me. It's
like I'll have a glass of wine or a cocktail
and all of a sudden, there's no in between of say, oh, well,
I feel a little more relaxed. It's like, oh, no,
I I hope I am walking in a straight line. Yeah,
And it's just, you know, it's just not a good
thing to do to your bodies. But I want to
(23:18):
hear though about this because I have a feeling there
are probably people in college you're listening who know exactly
what we're talking about, and people out of college to
the whole idea of saving calories for drinking instead of eating.
And I don't know, I guess how do we make
sense of all this? What is your experience with it?
Do you think that it's being overblown? Do you think
(23:40):
it's just something that you know, kids will be kids
and do what they want to do on those crazy
college campuses, or is this something that like Dr Harris
Straightener told Glamor magazine that it needs to get more
clinical recognition is something that is going on. Let us
know your thoughts on drunk correctia. Mom Stuff at Discovery
(24:01):
dot com is where you can send your emails. You
can also message us on Facebook or tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of letters
to read for you when we get right back from
a little break and now back to our levels. Christ
and I have a message here from Cody, who was
struck by something that was said in our John Rock
(24:25):
Inventing birth Control episode. Cody says, I will buy and
then proudly wear a shirt that says, quote kee Coke
on ice and not in your vagina. Thank you ladies
for making my drive home pleasant despite the other incompetent drivers,
and you were so welcome. And if somebody wants to
make us that shirt, I also will wear it. I mean,
(24:47):
that's that's like an epitaph in the making Teer Careen
then Irvan quote kee coke on ice, not in your vagina.
More brilliant words have never been spoken. Well, I mean
really like for so many any reasons, one of which
is just like, I mean, you want a cold Coca cola, right, right,
and and so many reasons, so many. Well, I've got
(25:09):
one here in respond to our episode on Plan B,
which I mean, I really think that President Barack Obama
must listen to stuff I've never told you. Because the
day that our episode on Plan B restrictions, in which
we advocated for the White House to remove age restrictions
from access to Plan B, Barry said, hey, you know
(25:31):
what christ and Caroline said, take him away. Let's take
him away. So so that's, um, that's not what actually happened,
but I like to think it is. But this email, though,
is coming from a listener who would like to remain anonymous,
and she writes, I'm a seventeen year old who became
sexually active at fourteen, and luckily I was already on
(25:52):
birth control. Well, I'm very lucky to have understanding parents
in a good support networks. Some of my friends are
in more difficult situations. A lot of them did not
have easy access to birth control, condoms and other products
that keep sex safe. However, many of them still have sex.
And you are correct in saying kids are gonna do
what they're gonna do, because currently I have two friends
who use a double dose of birth control in the
(26:13):
morning and at night the day after they accidentally have
unsafe sex as an emergency contraceptive, which is effective but
not well regulated. It's very, very important for Plan being,
other forms of birth control and emergency contraceptives to be
readily available for teenage girls. Teens, even young teens, are
more sexually active than adults want to accept, and these
products would not increase the amount of sex teens have,
(26:35):
but decrease the rate of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe sex.
I also wish that more people would listen to the
voices of those that these changes would affect the most
young teenage girls when talking about this controversy over planed B. Unfortunately,
many do not value the opinions of women and especially
young girls. So thank you for covering this topic that
affects many women and trans men. She nets so good
(26:58):
news that those restrictions to Plan B have been lifted,
the age restrictions. So I also like to credit the
moment I shared with Kathleen Sebelius on an airplane from
Detroit to Traverse City, Michigan, where we we shared a
look that was probably it. Yeah, She's probably like, oh
my god, remember that time that Caroline and I rolled
our eyes together at that sixteen year old who was
(27:20):
talking loudly on her phone. I need to make plan
being more available to really appreciate it. Well. Thanks to
Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama and everybody else for listening
to this podcast. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send letters or you can message us
on Facebook. Like I said, while you're at it, you
(27:40):
can follow us on Twitter at moms Stuff podcast and
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(28:03):
from thousands of other topics. Is it houstuff works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from House touff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And on today's podcast, we're going
to talk about a term that has only been around
for a few years, and it is drunk or rex CEO. Yeah,
(00:25):
and it's appeared in a lot of trend stories about
not only eating disorders, but like college students in particular,
particularly those college students who are choosing to drink their
calories rather than eat their calories. And I'm just going
to start off by saying that the two are not equivalent.
(00:48):
You are not getting any nutrients from that bud light.
I can just assure you that is very true. Not Caroline.
Before we get into this podcast on drunk rex, I
just want to offer a trigger warning here that we
are gonna be talking about eating disorders and behaviors associated
with eating disorders, so or those of you who might
be sensitive to those topics, just a warning of what
(01:11):
is ahead. The term drunk arexia first popped up in
two thousand and eight, mostly in celebrity blogs that were
referencing ultra thin celebrities, usually women obviously, who appear to
subsist on alcohol and cigarettes. But now it's popping up,
portraying a trend particularly among college girls, although this is
(01:33):
something that guys are doing as well, and it is
not a medically accepted term, and you could lump it though,
together with things like man orexia or therexia, which is
the obsession with healthy food that can actually become unhealthy,
or pregarexia when pregnant women will starve themselves in an
attempt to not look pregnant, and drunk arexia though even
(01:57):
though um, it's a new term, it's an old habit there.
There's really nothing new about the idea of people cutting
back on food so that they can supposedly drink more
and not gain the weight. And over at Jezebel, Lindy
West brushed it off as kind of pointless because she
was like, wait, aren't we just calling anorexia by a
(02:19):
different name. But the reason, one of the reasons that
I wanted to talk about it is because even though yeah,
drunk arexia might be very headline grabby, and yes, it
can be a different name for a type of eating disorder,
because it is so attention grabbing, I feel like it
could serve a useful purpose because it is highlighting a
(02:41):
disordered behavior that I don't feel like has gotten as
much media attention before. Yeah, and I mean a lot
of people online I read about, you know, argue that
it's really not that big of a deal, like you
should be cutting back on calories if you're going to
be drinking a lot. But we're not really talking about
you know, eating healthy all the time and then drinking
(03:03):
in moderation when you're out socially. No, I mean, we're
we're talking about an issue of you know, maybe you're
unhappy with your body, you know, maybe you're taking steps
that are completely unhealthy, or maybe you're just you know,
completely cutting out food the day that you decide you
want to go out and party at night. Right, Because
it's often associated with binge drinking in particular, And I
(03:27):
do want to note though, before we go on, that
I am I don't want to say that I'm a
fan of the term drunk arexia. I understand that there
are certain pitfalls to it in terms of maybe jazzing
up what would otherwise just be called anorexia, but I
do think it's useful as opposed to something like men arexia,
(03:48):
where those are the exact same symptoms as anorexia. You're
just calling it a funny name because guys are doing
something that girls used to just do. But with drunk arexia,
it's not that these people aren't eating all the time.
It's more the connection of not eating so that they
can drink at least when it comes to these trend
(04:10):
stories about what's going on on college campuses. For instance,
there was a two thousand eight ABC News story which
quoted a female sorority member who talked about how drunk
orrexia is encouraged in her Greek system and it was
no big deal with if there was a social coming
up the girls in her house. And I'm not saying
(04:31):
that this is going on at all stories everywhere. This
is just an example from one ABC News story taking
one sorting house. But she said that, you know, it
was assumed that you were gonna eat maybe just a
salad or something very small, if anything at all, so
that you could have all the shnops you wanted. Right.
This young woman talked about how it was basically a
(04:52):
support system among her sisters that they would trade methods
for skipping meals, like working out late at nine instead
of eating having just one medium meal during the day,
which I mean I would lose my freaking mind um
and in some cases throwing up before going out. And
they quoted her as saying, I've done drunk arexia for
years and I'm still healthy and I'm skinny. She said,
(05:13):
that's the best of both worlds to me, so it's
not likely that I'll stop doing it anytime soon. And
I just I want to shake her and then transition
it into a hug, you know, like shake, hug, hug,
shake um, because like that, it's just not healthy. You're
doing something so terrible to your body when you're substituting alcohol.
But I can understand, though, from thinking back to my
(05:35):
eighteen nineteen twenty year old perspective, where you see two
things that are lauded on campus culture if you're a female,
being a fun party girl and being thin girl, you know,
And in that way, like I totally understand her twisted
(05:55):
logic of saying, well, it's the best of both worlds.
I can do all of these things and I don't
have to really do it the hard way, even though,
as we'll talk about, you're actually putting your body through
very hard things by doing this, but it's not just
girls doing that. Although the motivations for guys practicing drunk
(06:17):
arexia would would you call that practicing drunk rex male
drunk orexix? Uh, their motivations tend to be a little
bit more financially motivated, and for guys, their motivations tend
to be a little bit more financial and also wanting
to optimize their potential drunkenness. Right, Yeah, money is definitely
(06:40):
a motivator. Uh. This one guy they quoted said when
you consume on an empty stomach, you feel the effect quicker.
He said, there was one Friday where I only ate
a pint of ice cream all day, knowing I'd be
drinking liquor later that night. So like this this money,
if you like, I get it, and I trust me.
I used to live at a are in college for
(07:01):
a period and dated the bartender because it was just
that convenient, Um, like I get the whole thing of
like if I eat less, I will get drunk faster.
I remember having that thought. It was never like I
literally like when I'm reading about drunk COREXA, I'm like, wow,
this logic literally never occurred to me because I love
(07:22):
eating so much. Um, but I do remember having the
same thought of like, well, I can get drunk faster
and they have money. Uh so, yeah, that's awful. Yeah,
And I'm sure that some listeners are thinking, okay, yeah
the eating aspect aside, doesn't this just sound like a
lot of rampant drinking problems on the loose And and yeah, absolutely,
(07:46):
there is definitely a substance abuse issue that's tied up
with this. And that's why campus abuse counselors are more
commonly warning against that drunk correxia combo trying to rake
this cycle. This logic, I should say in kids heads
that a it's a good thing to get as drunk
as possible on an empty stomach and be that you
(08:11):
you're you're striving to be thin, and at at what
costs anyway you cut it. The amount of drinking and
the not amount of eating. Both of those things are
harmful for your bodies. And you put it together and
it's even more harmful. Right. And one study that looked
at that combination was study out of the University of
(08:34):
Missouri Columbia, which looked at that relationship between alcohol abuse
and eating disorders. They found that of the college kids
they talked to reported quote, saving meal calories to spend
on drinking, and of those, three times more women than
men admitted to drunk orexic behavior. The National Center on
(08:58):
Addiction and Substance a Views echoes this stuff, saying that
individuals with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drugs compared to
only nine percent of the general population. And I think
it's interesting because, I mean, you know, we've talked about
eating disorders a lot, and and the motivations behind it.
That it's not just necessarily I don't want to be
(09:19):
fat when you when you are suffering from anorexia or bolivia.
That there's a lot of like you know, emotional and
mental things that go into it too, as far as
like perfectionism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and so you know, some
studies have talked about how perhaps women and men with
some type of eating disorder are also binge drinking to
(09:41):
maybe calm some of that anxiety that drives them. Yeah,
when we really get down to the clinical level, if
we get off of college campuses for a minute and
get into eating disorder treatment centers that are really looking
more into the substance abuse factors, we can see how
those two things can be really intertwined. For instance, there
(10:03):
was an article in The New York Times talking about
this and they interviewed Douglas Banell, who is the director
of outpatient clinical services for the Renfrew Center based in Philadelphia,
and he talked about how there are women who are
afraid to put a quote grape in their mouth, but
they have no problem drinking a beer. And part of that,
like you said, it's a motivation of calming those nerves
(10:28):
um that might be associated with eating disorders. And uh,
just to drive home some more statistics, the New York
Times article also cited a two thousand three Columbia University
study which found that people with eating disorders are five
times more likely to become substance abusers, and on the
flip side of that, substance abusers are eleven times more
likely to have an eating disorders. So clearly there is
(10:52):
a strong relationship going on between the eating disorders, whether
it be anorexia, bulimia or eating. This eating disorders not
otherwise classified and substance abuse, right and not all jibs
with a two thousand seventh study from Biological Psychiatry which
found that thirty three percent of belimics and anorexics do
(11:17):
have substance abuse problems, and since this was really highlighted
on college campuses, Adam Barry, who was a professor of health,
education and behavior at the University of Florida, published in
two thousand and ten the most comprehensive study on drunk
orexia came out in the Journal of American College Health,
and he looked at twenty two thousand college students at
(11:38):
forty different universities and he found that controlling for factors
of race, school year, Greek affiliation, and on campus living,
vigorous exercise, and disordered eating uniquely predicted binge drinking. So
clearly that relationship has been established. And for researchers for
(12:00):
substance abuse counselors and eating disorder researchers, now the psychological
and neurological links between eating disorders and substance abuse is
something that researchers are looking deeper into because they're starting
to understand how they put they fit so closely together
because food can function addictively in the same way as
(12:20):
drugs and alcohol. But for treating someone who is dealing
with an extreme eating disorder and with a substance abuse problem.
It can be challenging to unravel because with eating disorder,
you're telling them to start consuming something, but to treat
the substance abuse that you're telling them to stop consuming something.
(12:42):
So it's a challenging set of things to overcome. And Um,
when it comes to blimia, for instance, they might be
using alcohol to purge or for anorectics. They might be
drinking to calm anxiety and so, uh, this is one
of the newer aspects of of these treatment centers. Yeah,
a very multifaceted treatment that you have to definitely be
(13:04):
careful with. Now we've talked about a lot of like
contributing factors to why it's happening. You know, people wanting
to save money and get drunk faster, people wanting to
save calories so they'll be thinner. Um, maybe soothing social anxiety.
And you know, it's all part of a binge drinking
culture on campus. But it's also part of a huge
disgusting weight loss industry. Like inexcusable diet alcohol marketing, I
(13:28):
can't stand up marketing marketing. It promotes the connection between
drinking and wait. And this was discussed in an article
in the Atlantic by yakaba eurus. Then the theory is
that diet alcohol adds encourage teens in college students to
engage in this troubling behavior that more and more experts
are referring to as drunk orexian. So it's actually getting
(13:52):
more and more uh, actual academic attention. Yeah, and for
women especially one to start referred to these new marketing
tactics as like Virginia slims all over again, because they're
saying for years, if you think about beer advertisements, for instance, uh,
a lot of times the legacy advertising for that cast
(14:12):
women in a more objective light, shall we say, But
now it's like marketers are just finally figuring out that,
oh wait, women like booze, so but women also want
to be slim, so we can open up this whole
new market for it. And they usually distinguish between two
different types of these diet or healthy I don't even
(14:36):
want to call it healthy alcohol where you have the
fitness ads such as something for like the low calorie
beers where it will usually be and these always make
me laugh because it's usually showing someone who is still
sweaty from working out and pounding a beer, which which
I'm like I if I don't, I can't think about
(14:56):
alcohol after I finish a jog. But then you also
have the more straight up diet marketing four things that
are a lot of times targeted to women as local
pre mixed option like Bethany Frankel's Skinny Girl cocktail mixes
and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Jacoba Eurus in The
(15:19):
Atlantic called out that that brand a lot because it
I mean, it is one she's She's made a ton
of money off of it. Obviously, Um, it's working. And
I have had a Skinny Girl margarita and it was
wasn't It was refreshing, it was acceptable. Yes, I had
it right after I got it done jogging. Now, you
were running a race when somebody handed a cup out
the instead of water and Skinny Girl, Well, I poured
(15:41):
the first one all over my face. You're like, yeah,
and then I and then I drank another one to
make the mike cramps go away. Well. David Journ again
had a really pragmatic attitude about this. He's the director
of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said, there's no
question then that the alcohol industry is presenting their goods
(16:02):
to women as their their diet products because that's what
sells well. And here's the thing too. We've talked a
lot in this podcast about how, oh, this is something
happening on college campuses. These young women, they're being duped
into drinking locale things. This is not just on college ye, Caroline,
I can speak anecdotally in that absolutely there is this
(16:24):
connection in our brains. I mean, just think about the
term beer belly about how I mean, obviously, if you
drink a lot, you are going to gain weight because
it's the same thing is if you if I drink
a six pack of Coca Cola every day, I'll have
a coke belly and I will always smell very servilus you.
I don't know. I feel like I would always have burbs.
(16:47):
But it's not the idea of drinking on an empty
stomach or like hello happy hours. You know, if you
leave work and if you stop by a bar before
you get to dinner, that can happen. And things like
skinny Girl margharita is. I don't feel like it's so
much marketed to younger girls on campus, but women are age.
(17:09):
It's not it's it's not just a college ing, which
is the only reason why I find drunk arexia being
now spun out into something that's just a phase that
college kids will go through, because it's I feel like
it's far more wide reaching than just that. Yeah, but
there there are some serious implications. I mean, we've we've
(17:32):
mentioned the health stuff and the eating disorder stuff, but
I mean, you have to think about what you're doing
to your body when you're not putting actual vitamins and minerals,
and drinking a mimosa doesn't count the O janet no,
although I mean, I guess it's better to drink a
mimosa than like just straight gen or something. But uh,
(17:52):
you know, I mean we have issues of drinking on
an empty stomach that there's a faster absorption rate of
alcohol into the bloodstream, which leads to that higher level
of impairment and intoxication, which has some definite health implications.
It could actually make you unhealthy, but it also puts
women in particular at higher risk for sexual assault and
things like d u I yeah, researchers often worn women,
(18:16):
especially against things like drinking on an empty stomach, just
because we tend to metabolize alcohol faster. A lot of times,
we have less body fat than men do, and so
our level of impairment might be even higher. We're at
a higher risk of something like blacking out that can
according to research. There was a two thousand eleven in
(18:38):
University of Missouri study which highlighted this, which puts us
at a higher risk for violence, for engaging in risky
sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning, and chronic disease later in life.
If we're doing this a bunch, we're beating our bodies
up on the inside, no matter what our waistline is.
Because this puts us at higher risk of gas stritis, ulcers,
(19:00):
and malnutrition down the road. And yeah, sure, sometimes you know,
you might not eat a big lunch and you might
go have a martini after work, and that's gonna happen.
But it's it's this whole chronic issue, the chronic binge
drinking and also motivating yourself to do so, telling yourself
it's okay to do that if you did intentionally not
(19:25):
eat as much during the day, right well. Another study
from the Journal of American College Health looked at students
at ten different universities and of more than four thousand participants.
Thirty nine percent of students who drank within the past
thirty days reported restricting calories on days they planned on drinking.
They looked at the gender aspect of it of these
four thousand participants and found that women drunk or XIX
(19:48):
were more likely to experience those negative alcohol related consequences
such as memory loss and unwanted sexual advances, whereas men
who reported this behavior were much more likely to get
into fights. Oh yeah, and there was anecdotally. In one article,
they were talking to a couple of college guys about
(20:09):
binge drinking on an empty stomach and the blackout aspect,
and they weren't happy about it. I mean, they still
did it. They had no plans to stop because I
mean I I knew guys like this. I was in
you know, social circles like this when I was in college,
where it's totally accepted and expected it on the weekend,
(20:30):
And even though so many times it ended up with
just not feeling good about yourself, you still did it.
And I guess that's the question. It's like, we know
we're doing things that are harmful to ourselves, Why why
do we continue doing it? And even though again drunk
orexia might sound like a throwaway, buzzy term. Dr Harris Straightener,
(20:52):
who was the vice president of the Karen Treatment Centers,
told Glamour magazine that he thinks it should get a
nod in the d s M and the diagon Anastic
and Statistical Manual, because he said, quote in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we look at different
factors that influence other disorders, and I think it's time
to give this trend a paragraph in the manual. It's
(21:12):
a definer of a particular eating disorder. So you might think, oh, well,
but you know, Monday through Thursday, I'm eating plenty and
I go to the gym. You know, it's just Friday,
Friday and Saturday, you know. But still I feel like
that's you know, it's if it's happening every weekend, every week,
then it's something to think about. Yeah. He also pointed
(21:34):
out that this chronic behavior, this chronic drunk corexia, can
deplete your potassium and have such an incredibly bad effect
on your heart that it could eventually lead to cardiac ars. Yeah.
I mean, so if you're doing this constantly, even if
it is just on the weekend. I mean, if it's
every weekend, ah, that's that's it's really really bad for you.
(21:54):
And I mean also if you're a student, or if
you're just a person who sits at a desk and
looks at a computer, I mean, it can cause a
lot of difficulty concentrating, studying and making decisions. And we're
not trying to be alarmist over this. I just think,
at least for me reading it, it was a good reminder.
Even though I am years away from being in college,
it's still a good reminder to think about what we
(22:16):
put into our bodies and how how we treat ourselves. Right, Yeah,
I uh, without getting too personal, this past weekend, I
accidentally was drunk orrexic. Yeah, you know, I went I
went out for for cocktails, didn't you know it had
been a while since I'd eaten, had a little too
much to drink, went home and just fell asleep, didn't
(22:38):
eat dinner. And you know, it's like I felt so
much worse the next day than I would have had
I just done the normal pattern of like have a
good dinner, go out and have some cocktails, go home,
drink some water, and have a good night's sleep. It
was awful. It like messed me up for the rest
of the weekend. Oh yeah, and drinking on an NB
stomach too. It's the thing of how it hits you
(22:58):
so much faster, at least it does with me. It's
like I'll have a glass of wine or a cocktail
and all of a sudden, there's no in between of say, oh, well,
I feel a little more relaxed. It's like, oh, no,
I I hope I am walking in a straight line. Yeah,
And it's just, you know, it's just not a good
thing to do to your bodies. But I want to
(23:18):
hear though about this because I have a feeling there
are probably people in college you're listening who know exactly
what we're talking about, and people out of college to
the whole idea of saving calories for drinking instead of eating.
And I don't know, I guess how do we make
sense of all this? What is your experience with it?
Do you think that it's being overblown? Do you think
(23:40):
it's just something that you know, kids will be kids
and do what they want to do on those crazy
college campuses, or is this something that like Dr Harris
Straightener told Glamor magazine that it needs to get more
clinical recognition is something that is going on. Let us
know your thoughts on drunk correctia. Mom Stuff at Discovery
(24:01):
dot com is where you can send your emails. You
can also message us on Facebook or tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of letters
to read for you when we get right back from
a little break and now back to our levels. Christ
and I have a message here from Cody, who was
struck by something that was said in our John Rock
(24:25):
Inventing birth Control episode. Cody says, I will buy and
then proudly wear a shirt that says, quote kee Coke
on ice and not in your vagina. Thank you ladies
for making my drive home pleasant despite the other incompetent drivers,
and you were so welcome. And if somebody wants to
make us that shirt, I also will wear it. I mean,
(24:47):
that's that's like an epitaph in the making Teer Careen
then Irvan quote kee coke on ice, not in your vagina.
More brilliant words have never been spoken. Well, I mean
really like for so many any reasons, one of which
is just like, I mean, you want a cold Coca cola, right, right,
and and so many reasons, so many. Well, I've got
(25:09):
one here in respond to our episode on Plan B,
which I mean, I really think that President Barack Obama
must listen to stuff I've never told you. Because the
day that our episode on Plan B restrictions, in which
we advocated for the White House to remove age restrictions
from access to Plan B, Barry said, hey, you know
(25:31):
what christ and Caroline said, take him away. Let's take
him away. So so that's, um, that's not what actually happened,
but I like to think it is. But this email, though,
is coming from a listener who would like to remain anonymous,
and she writes, I'm a seventeen year old who became
sexually active at fourteen, and luckily I was already on
(25:52):
birth control. Well, I'm very lucky to have understanding parents
in a good support networks. Some of my friends are
in more difficult situations. A lot of them did not
have easy access to birth control, condoms and other products
that keep sex safe. However, many of them still have sex.
And you are correct in saying kids are gonna do
what they're gonna do, because currently I have two friends
who use a double dose of birth control in the
(26:13):
morning and at night the day after they accidentally have
unsafe sex as an emergency contraceptive, which is effective but
not well regulated. It's very, very important for Plan being,
other forms of birth control and emergency contraceptives to be
readily available for teenage girls. Teens, even young teens, are
more sexually active than adults want to accept, and these
products would not increase the amount of sex teens have,
(26:35):
but decrease the rate of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe sex.
I also wish that more people would listen to the
voices of those that these changes would affect the most
young teenage girls when talking about this controversy over planed B. Unfortunately,
many do not value the opinions of women and especially
young girls. So thank you for covering this topic that
affects many women and trans men. She nets so good
(26:58):
news that those restrictions to Plan B have been lifted,
the age restrictions. So I also like to credit the
moment I shared with Kathleen Sebelius on an airplane from
Detroit to Traverse City, Michigan, where we we shared a
look that was probably it. Yeah, She's probably like, oh
my god, remember that time that Caroline and I rolled
our eyes together at that sixteen year old who was
(27:20):
talking loudly on her phone. I need to make plan
being more available to really appreciate it. Well. Thanks to
Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama and everybody else for listening
to this podcast. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send letters or you can message us
on Facebook. Like I said, while you're at it, you
(27:40):
can follow us on Twitter at moms Stuff podcast and
on Tumbler as well at stuff Mom Never Told You
dot tumbler dot com. And don't forget to not only
listen to us, but also watch us every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday with new videos on YouTube. You can head
over to YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told
You and they'll forget to subscribe for more on this
(28:03):
from thousands of other topics. Is it houstuff works dot
com
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