Psychiatric Patient, Anorexic Patient, or Legitimate Patient
“You can’t purge in the dining room like that!” the counselors and nurses would tell me. “Do you know how triggering that is for the other girls?”
At first, I didn’t even know what purging was, but in therapy groups, I learned it was forcing yourself to vomit to get rid of food you just ate so that you didn’t gain weight, or to lose weight. Then I got really confused about why the counselors and nurses said I was “purging” when I threw up, because I obviously wasn’t doing it on purpose, and I would do anything to gain weight, my body just wouldn’t cooperate.
The anxiety the meals and snacks on the eating disorder unit caused was obvious to everyone.
Dr. Hizami, my psychiatrist on the regular psychiatric unit decided I must have an anxiety disorder and put me on a medication called Klonopin, a benzodiazepine (powerful anti-anxiety/sedative medication.
I completely lost it. Now I was officially a psychiatric patient. It was like someone flipped the crazy switch on me and I turned into a ball of self-destructive energy, smashing my head against walls, biting my arms till they bled, and pulling out fistfuls of my own hair.