February 20, 2019 • 29 mins
In this classic episode, we take a look back at something making headlines again lately, "drunkorexia". This term was coined in 2008 to describe people who intentionally drink on an empty stomach to "save" calories and money, but it has more serious implications for the intersection of eating disorders and substance abuse.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph Moon
Never Told You. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of
stories in the news about something called drunk arexia, which,
(00:26):
if you don't know, is pretty much what it sounds like,
depriving yourself of food so that you can get drunk
or faster, and that you can save your calories for alcohol.
And this is something that I have caught myself and
a lot of my friends doing, and hopefully it goes
without saying it is not a healthy thing to do,
(00:46):
not a wise thing to do at all. In this
classic episode, we take a look back at drunk orexia,
substance abuse, and eating disorders. Welcome to Stuff I've Never
Told You from House touff Works dot com. Hello, and
(01:07):
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 rexio. Yeah, 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
(01:30):
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. You are not
getting any nutrients from that bud light. I can just
assure you that is very true. Now, Caroline, before we
get into this podcast on drunk Rexy, I just want
(01:52):
to offer a trigger warning here that we are going
to be talking about eating disorders and behaviors associated with
eating disorders. So for those of you who might be
sensitive to those topics, just a warning of what is ahead.
The term drunk arexia first popped up in two thousand eight,
mostly in celebrity blogs that were referencing ultra thin celebrities,
(02:15):
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 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
(02:35):
manarexia or theorexia, 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 though um, it's a new term.
(02:56):
It's an old habit there. There's really nothing new about
the idea of the cutting back on food so that
they can supposedly drink more and not gain the weight.
And over at Jezebel, Lyndy West brushed it off as
kind of pointless because she was like, wait, aren't we
just calling anorexia by a different name. But the reason,
one of the reasons though I wanted to talk about
(03:17):
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 disordered behavior that
I don't feel like has gotten as much media attention before. Yeah,
(03:41):
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 in moderation when you're out socially. No,
I mean, we're we're talking about an issue of you know,
(04:05):
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 do want to note though, before we go on,
that I am I don't want to say that I'm
(04:27):
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 manorexia,
where those are the exact same symptoms as anorexia. You're
just calling it a funny name because guys are doing
(04:50):
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 connect and of not eating so that
they can drink at least when it comes to these
trend stories about what's going on on college campuses. For instance,
there was a two thousand ABC News story which quoted
(05:13):
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 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
(05:35):
assumed that you were gonna eat maybe just a salad
or something very small, if anything at all, so that
you could have all of shnaps you wanted. Right. This
young woman talked about how it was basically a support
system among her sisters, that they would trade methods for
skipping meals, like working out late at night instead of
eating having just one medium meal during the day, which
(05:55):
I mean I would lose my freaking mind um and
in some case 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, 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,
(06:18):
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 eighteen
nineteen twenty year old perspective, where you see two things
that are lauded on campus culture if you're a female,
(06:42):
being fun party girl and being thin girl, you know,
and and that way, like I totally understand her twisted
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
(07:05):
girls doing that. Although the motivations for guys practicing drunk
orexia 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
(07:25):
to be a little bit more financial and also wanting
to optimize their potential drunkenness. Right, yeah, money is definitely
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
(07:47):
drinking liquor later that night. So like this this money issue,
like I get it, and I trust me. I used
to live at a bar in college for a period
and day to the bartender because it was just that
convenient it. 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
(08:11):
literally like when I'm reading about drunk arexy, I'm like, wow,
this logic literally never occurred to me because I love
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,
(08:32):
the eating aspect aside, doesn't this just sound like a
lot of rampant drinking problems on the loose And and yeah, absolutely,
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 orexia combo. Trying to break
(08:55):
this cycle, this logic, I should say in kids heads
the eight it's a good thing to get as drunk
as possible on an empty stomach and be that you
You're you're striving to be thin. And at at what cost?
Anyway you cut it. The amount of drinking and the
(09:16):
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 Missouri, Columbia,
which looked at that relationship between alcohol abuse and eating disorders.
They found that six of the college kids they talked
(09:39):
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 Addiction and
Substance Abuse echoes this stuff, saying that fift of individuals
with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drug compared to only
(10:01):
nine 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 fat when you when
you are suffering from antorexia or boliemia. That there's a
lot of like you know, emotional and mental things that
go into it too, as far as like perfectionism, obsessive
(10:24):
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 maybe calm some
of that anxiety that drives them. Uh. Yeah, when we
(10:50):
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 was an
article in the New York Times talking about this and
(11:10):
they interviewed Douglas Bunell, 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
(11:33):
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
(11:56):
a strong relationship going on between ween the eating disorders,
whether it be anorexia, bulimia, or eating eating disorders not
otherwise classified and substance abuse, right and not all jibes
with a two thousand seven study from Biological Psychiatry which
found that to thirty three percent of bolimics and anorexics
(12:21):
do 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 arexia came out in the Journal of American
College Health, and he looked at twenty two college students
(12:42):
at 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 relation ship has been established. And for researchers
(13:04):
for 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
(13:25):
as 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
(13:45):
stop consuming something. So it's a challenging set of things
to overcome. And um, when it comes to bulimia, for instance,
they might be using alcohol to purge, or for anorexics,
they might be drinking to calm anxiety. And so, uh,
this is one of the newer aspects of of these
treatment centers. Yeah, very multifaceted treatment that you have to
(14:08):
definitely be 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
(14:31):
alcohol marketing. I 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 Yacoba Urus. Then
the theory is that diet alcohol adds encouraged teens and
college students to engage in this troubling behavior that more
and more experts are referring to as drunk orexia. And
(14:55):
so it's actually getting more and more uh, actual academic
attend show. 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 women in a
(15:18):
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 want to call it
(15:41):
healthy alcohol, where you have like the fitness kind of
ab where you have the fitness ads such as something
for like um, 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
(16:02):
I don't, I can't think about alcohol after I finish
a jog um. 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 options
like Bethany Frankel's Skinny Girl cocktail mixes and stuff like that.
(16:24):
Yeah Yeah. Jacoba Rus in the Atlantic called out that
that brand a lot, because it 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 done jogging. Now
you were running a race and somebody handed a cup
(16:45):
out instead of water, it was and that skinny girl. Well,
I poured the first one all over my face, like yeah,
and then I and then I drank another one to
make the my cramps go away. Well. David Joern 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
(17:06):
question that the alcohol industry is presenting their goods 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 business, Caroline.
I can speak anecdotally in that absolutely there is this
(17:31):
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 surplus.
It's cute. I don't know, I feel like that I
(17:52):
would always have burbs. But it's not the idea of
drinking on an empty stomach or like a little happy hours.
You know, if you leave work and if you stop
by a bar before you get to dinner, that can happen.
Um and things like skinny Girl margharite is. I don't
feel like it's so much marketed to younger girls on campus,
(18:15):
but women are age, it's not it's it's not just
a college thing, which is the only reason why I
find drunk orexia 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.
(18:38):
I mean we've we've 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 now, although I mean, I guess
it's better to drink a mimosa than like just straight
gen or something. But uh, you know, I mean we
(19:00):
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,
(19:21):
researchers often worn women, especially against things like drinking on
an empty, 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
(19:43):
was a two thousand eleven in 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 the inside, no
matter what our waistline is, because this puts us at
(20:05):
high risk of gas, stritius, ulcers, 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
(20:28):
that if you did intentionally not 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
(20:50):
at the gender aspect of it of these four thousand
participants and found that women drunk or x X were
more likely to experience those negative alcohol related consequences such
as memory laws 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
(21:13):
they were talking to a couple of college guys about
binge drinking on an empty stomach and the blackout aspect,
and they weren't happy about it. I mean, they still
did it. They did 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
(21:34):
the weekend, you're going to go. 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,
(21:56):
buzzy term, Dr Harris Straightener, who was the vice press
and of the Care and Treatment Centers, told Glamour magazine
that he thinks it should get a nod in the
d s M, the Diagnostic 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
(22:17):
in the manual. It's 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 uh,
if it's happening every weekend, every week, then it's something
(22:38):
to think about. Yeah. He also pointed 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 arrest. 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,
(22:59):
that's the it's really really bad for you. 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
(23:21):
still a good reminder to think about what we 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 or xx. Yeah you know, I went.
I went out for for cocktails, didn't you know? Had
it had been a while since I'd eaten, had a
(23:42):
little too much to drink, went home and just fell asleep,
didn't 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 me up for the rest of
the weekend. Oh yeah, and drinking on an empty stomach too.
(24:03):
It's a thing of how it hits you 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
(24:23):
thing to do to your bodies. But I want to
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?
(24:45):
Do you think that it's being overblown? Do you think
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 orexia. Mom Stuff at Discovery
(25:08):
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 letters, Kristen,
(25:32):
I have a message here from Cody, who was struck
by something that was said in our John Rock Inventing
Birth Control episode. Cody says, I will buy and then
proudly wear a shirt that says, quote, keep coke on
ice and not in your vagina. Thank you ladies for
(25:53):
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,
that's that's like an epitaph in the making. Two Karen
the Irvan quotes keep coke on ice and not im
your vagina. More brilliant words have never been spoken. Well,
(26:14):
I mean really like for so many 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 one here in response 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.
(26:35):
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 what, christ and Caroline said, take him away.
Let's take him away. So so that's um, that's not
what actually happens, but I like to think it is.
(26:57):
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 four teens,
and luckily I was already on birth control. While 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,
(27:18):
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 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
(27:40):
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, 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
(28:02):
this controversy over Plan 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 news that those restrictions
to Plan B have been lifted, the age restrictions. So
I also like to credit the moment I shared with
(28:24):
Kathleen Sibelius 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 talking loudly on our phone. I
need to make Plan B more available to that sixte
year old. Really appreciate it. Well, thanks to Kathleen Sebelius
(28:44):
and Barack Obama and everybody else for listening to this podcast. Mom.
Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
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while you're at it, you can follow us on Twitter
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(29:06):
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how stuff Works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph Moon
Never Told You. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of
stories in the news about something called drunk arexia, which,
(00:26):
if you don't know, is pretty much what it sounds like,
depriving yourself of food so that you can get drunk
or faster, and that you can save your calories for alcohol.
And this is something that I have caught myself and
a lot of my friends doing, and hopefully it goes
without saying it is not a healthy thing to do,
(00:46):
not a wise thing to do at all. In this
classic episode, we take a look back at drunk orexia,
substance abuse, and eating disorders. Welcome to Stuff I've Never
Told You from House touff Works dot com. Hello, and
(01:07):
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 rexio. Yeah, 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
(01:30):
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. You are not
getting any nutrients from that bud light. I can just
assure you that is very true. Now, Caroline, before we
get into this podcast on drunk Rexy, I just want
(01:52):
to offer a trigger warning here that we are going
to be talking about eating disorders and behaviors associated with
eating disorders. So for those of you who might be
sensitive to those topics, just a warning of what is ahead.
The term drunk arexia first popped up in two thousand eight,
mostly in celebrity blogs that were referencing ultra thin celebrities,
(02:15):
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 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
(02:35):
manarexia or theorexia, 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 though um, it's a new term.
(02:56):
It's an old habit there. There's really nothing new about
the idea of the cutting back on food so that
they can supposedly drink more and not gain the weight.
And over at Jezebel, Lyndy West brushed it off as
kind of pointless because she was like, wait, aren't we
just calling anorexia by a different name. But the reason,
one of the reasons though I wanted to talk about
(03:17):
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 disordered behavior that
I don't feel like has gotten as much media attention before. Yeah,
(03:41):
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 in moderation when you're out socially. No,
I mean, we're we're talking about an issue of you know,
(04:05):
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 do want to note though, before we go on,
that I am I don't want to say that I'm
(04:27):
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 manorexia,
where those are the exact same symptoms as anorexia. You're
just calling it a funny name because guys are doing
(04:50):
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 connect and of not eating so that
they can drink at least when it comes to these
trend stories about what's going on on college campuses. For instance,
there was a two thousand ABC News story which quoted
(05:13):
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 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
(05:35):
assumed that you were gonna eat maybe just a salad
or something very small, if anything at all, so that
you could have all of shnaps you wanted. Right. This
young woman talked about how it was basically a support
system among her sisters, that they would trade methods for
skipping meals, like working out late at night instead of
eating having just one medium meal during the day, which
(05:55):
I mean I would lose my freaking mind um and
in some case 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, 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,
(06:18):
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 eighteen
nineteen twenty year old perspective, where you see two things
that are lauded on campus culture if you're a female,
(06:42):
being fun party girl and being thin girl, you know,
and and that way, like I totally understand her twisted
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
(07:05):
girls doing that. Although the motivations for guys practicing drunk
orexia 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
(07:25):
to be a little bit more financial and also wanting
to optimize their potential drunkenness. Right, yeah, money is definitely
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
(07:47):
drinking liquor later that night. So like this this money issue,
like I get it, and I trust me. I used
to live at a bar in college for a period
and day to the bartender because it was just that
convenient it. 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
(08:11):
literally like when I'm reading about drunk arexy, I'm like, wow,
this logic literally never occurred to me because I love
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,
(08:32):
the eating aspect aside, doesn't this just sound like a
lot of rampant drinking problems on the loose And and yeah, absolutely,
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 orexia combo. Trying to break
(08:55):
this cycle, this logic, I should say in kids heads
the eight it's a good thing to get as drunk
as possible on an empty stomach and be that you
You're you're striving to be thin. And at at what cost?
Anyway you cut it. The amount of drinking and the
(09:16):
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 Missouri, Columbia,
which looked at that relationship between alcohol abuse and eating disorders.
They found that six of the college kids they talked
(09:39):
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 Addiction and
Substance Abuse echoes this stuff, saying that fift of individuals
with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drug compared to only
(10:01):
nine 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 fat when you when
you are suffering from antorexia or boliemia. That there's a
lot of like you know, emotional and mental things that
go into it too, as far as like perfectionism, obsessive
(10:24):
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 maybe calm some
of that anxiety that drives them. Uh. Yeah, when we
(10:50):
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 was an
article in the New York Times talking about this and
(11:10):
they interviewed Douglas Bunell, 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
(11:33):
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
(11:56):
a strong relationship going on between ween the eating disorders,
whether it be anorexia, bulimia, or eating eating disorders not
otherwise classified and substance abuse, right and not all jibes
with a two thousand seven study from Biological Psychiatry which
found that to thirty three percent of bolimics and anorexics
(12:21):
do 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 arexia came out in the Journal of American
College Health, and he looked at twenty two college students
(12:42):
at 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 relation ship has been established. And for researchers
(13:04):
for 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
(13:25):
as 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
(13:45):
stop consuming something. So it's a challenging set of things
to overcome. And um, when it comes to bulimia, for instance,
they might be using alcohol to purge, or for anorexics,
they might be drinking to calm anxiety. And so, uh,
this is one of the newer aspects of of these
treatment centers. Yeah, very multifaceted treatment that you have to
(14:08):
definitely be 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
(14:31):
alcohol marketing. I 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 Yacoba Urus. Then
the theory is that diet alcohol adds encouraged teens and
college students to engage in this troubling behavior that more
and more experts are referring to as drunk orexia. And
(14:55):
so it's actually getting more and more uh, actual academic
attend show. 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 women in a
(15:18):
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 want to call it
(15:41):
healthy alcohol, where you have like the fitness kind of
ab where you have the fitness ads such as something
for like um, 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
(16:02):
I don't, I can't think about alcohol after I finish
a jog um. 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 options
like Bethany Frankel's Skinny Girl cocktail mixes and stuff like that.
(16:24):
Yeah Yeah. Jacoba Rus in the Atlantic called out that
that brand a lot, because it 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 done jogging. Now
you were running a race and somebody handed a cup
(16:45):
out instead of water, it was and that skinny girl. Well,
I poured the first one all over my face, like yeah,
and then I and then I drank another one to
make the my cramps go away. Well. David Joern 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
(17:06):
question that the alcohol industry is presenting their goods 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 business, Caroline.
I can speak anecdotally in that absolutely there is this
(17:31):
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 surplus.
It's cute. I don't know, I feel like that I
(17:52):
would always have burbs. But it's not the idea of
drinking on an empty stomach or like a little happy hours.
You know, if you leave work and if you stop
by a bar before you get to dinner, that can happen.
Um and things like skinny Girl margharite is. I don't
feel like it's so much marketed to younger girls on campus,
(18:15):
but women are age, it's not it's it's not just
a college thing, which is the only reason why I
find drunk orexia 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.
(18:38):
I mean we've we've 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 now, although I mean, I guess
it's better to drink a mimosa than like just straight
gen or something. But uh, you know, I mean we
(19:00):
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,
(19:21):
researchers often worn women, especially against things like drinking on
an empty, 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
(19:43):
was a two thousand eleven in 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 the inside, no
matter what our waistline is, because this puts us at
(20:05):
high risk of gas, stritius, ulcers, 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
(20:28):
that if you did intentionally not 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
(20:50):
at the gender aspect of it of these four thousand
participants and found that women drunk or x X were
more likely to experience those negative alcohol related consequences such
as memory laws 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
(21:13):
they were talking to a couple of college guys about
binge drinking on an empty stomach and the blackout aspect,
and they weren't happy about it. I mean, they still
did it. They did 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
(21:34):
the weekend, you're going to go. 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,
(21:56):
buzzy term, Dr Harris Straightener, who was the vice press
and of the Care and Treatment Centers, told Glamour magazine
that he thinks it should get a nod in the
d s M, the Diagnostic 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
(22:17):
in the manual. It's 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 uh,
if it's happening every weekend, every week, then it's something
(22:38):
to think about. Yeah. He also pointed 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 arrest. 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,
(22:59):
that's the it's really really bad for you. 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
(23:21):
still a good reminder to think about what we 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 or xx. Yeah you know, I went.
I went out for for cocktails, didn't you know? Had
it had been a while since I'd eaten, had a
(23:42):
little too much to drink, went home and just fell asleep,
didn't 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 me up for the rest of
the weekend. Oh yeah, and drinking on an empty stomach too.
(24:03):
It's a thing of how it hits you 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
(24:23):
thing to do to your bodies. But I want to
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?
(24:45):
Do you think that it's being overblown? Do you think
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 orexia. Mom Stuff at Discovery
(25:08):
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 letters, Kristen,
(25:32):
I have a message here from Cody, who was struck
by something that was said in our John Rock Inventing
Birth Control episode. Cody says, I will buy and then
proudly wear a shirt that says, quote, keep coke on
ice and not in your vagina. Thank you ladies for
(25:53):
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,
that's that's like an epitaph in the making. Two Karen
the Irvan quotes keep coke on ice and not im
your vagina. More brilliant words have never been spoken. Well,
(26:14):
I mean really like for so many 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 one here in response 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.
(26:35):
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 what, christ and Caroline said, take him away.
Let's take him away. So so that's um, that's not
what actually happens, but I like to think it is.
(26:57):
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 four teens,
and luckily I was already on birth control. While 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,
(27:18):
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 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
(27:40):
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, 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
(28:02):
this controversy over Plan 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 news that those restrictions
to Plan B have been lifted, the age restrictions. So
I also like to credit the moment I shared with
(28:24):
Kathleen Sibelius 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 talking loudly on our phone. I
need to make Plan B more available to that sixte
year old. Really appreciate it. Well, thanks to Kathleen Sebelius
(28:44):
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 can follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stub podcast, and on Tumblr, as well as
stuff Mom Never Told You dot tumblr dot com and
Don't Forget To not only listen to us, but also
(29:06):
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 Don't Forget to subscribe.
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