Dangerously unhealthy reading habits
How eating disorder memoirs worsened my health until one didn’t
It will come as no shock to any reader that people’s mental health has suffered during the current pandemic. Eating disorder charity Beat has reported a 73% surge in demand for its various support services during the rise of COVID 19 in the U.K.
This statistic came as no surprise to me as during the early weeks of lockdown and social distancing, my body and losing weight became my quarantine project. I’m not sure as to why my worries over my body had come to a head during this period, but memes mocking weight gain, videos urging us to become ‘quaren-toned,’ and health anxieties certainly didn’t help. This led to me seeking out fictional and personal accounts of women’s struggles with eating disorders and how these women eventually recovered.
Purge: Rehab Diaries begins with a refreshing discussion of the various forms eating disorder books take on, that is, self-help texts and a cross between the traditional memoir and self-help book.
Johns explains that eating disorders are sadly not so simple, and rarely can they be navigated by following a handy step by step guide fuelled by God or the latest treatment program. Johns then emphasises that despite several months in an inpatient unit, she is not cured of her disorder, and self-help guides are rarely correct when they urge readers to be fully recovered once and for all following treatment.
Unfortunately, eating disorders are often life long and require ongoing therapy and support.
I have found Johns words to ring true during my somewhat bizarre stint into solely reading books on eating disorders. Memoir after memoir assured me that it would not be a manual for those seeking out new destructive disordered behaviours, rather it would be the story of the woman’s — because so many are overwhelmingly written by women — descent into her disorder and her eventual recovery. Yet time after time the authors would essentially provide a how-to guide for developing an eating disorder.
While Purge does at times detail the author’s behaviour during this time, it is never cast in a positive light, nor are we as readers supposed to approve. Instead, we see a woman truly battling with an ongoing illness. Unlike other well-meaning but perhaps naive authors, Johns knows full well that she may have readers scouring her memoir for tips and tricks. She is careful with what behaviours she includes and the way she portrays them.
This review shall truly strive to not provide readers with eating disorder habits or suggestions. I will not discuss the behaviours covered in Johns’ memoir, nor shall I list my own. I will note that Johns’ text could prove triggering for those grappling with disordered eating or eating disorders, and the following review could prove to be distressing, too.
To combat this and to prepare potential readers, I have provided a list of resources below for those living in both the U.K. and the U.S.
Johns references the dangers of eating disorder memoirs within the first few pages of Purge: Rehab Diaries and how copies of certain choice texts are often smuggled into inpatient eating disorder treatment centres and passed about patients like Bibles.
While this may horrify other readers, I welcomed her candidness: Johns was no recovered saint here to sway me with her struggles and eventual successful recovery, rather she was being forthright about why as readers with disordered eating, we inhale memoir after memoir. By admitting how she had engaged in destructive behaviours in the past, and used texts for means specific to my own, Johns gained my trust and drew me in in a way that other ED memoirists had not. She seemed more 3D, more real. Once I got to the part where Johns discussed being a postgraduate humanities student like I am now, I was sold.
Purge follows the main trajectory of the eating disorder memoir: she describes her crises while in grad school in Minnesota, beginning inpatient treatment and the eventual ups and downs she experiences when back in the real world.
Much of the text focuses on the therapies she partakes in and the friends she makes while in treatment, and how these other women help her heal or aid in her covertly engaging in disordered behaviour while in hospital. These characters provide some much-needed brevity to Johns story, and I enjoyed reading about her relationships with the other young women at the centre in Wisconsin.
But it is not the timeline of Johns book that I believe sets it apart from others as it follows the chronology of many, if not all, eating disorder memoirs and novels.
For me, it was the fact that Johns readily admits to breaking the rules while an inpatient, that she acknowledges both the healing power and danger posed by eating disorder memoirs.
While conducting some background research for this review, I was struck by how many readers had similar feelings in regards to Purge. Several women reviewed the memoir on Goodreads and said that they enjoy how Johns’ frankness, that she does not sugarcoat her disorder.
Conversely, Purge does not discredit the good that therapy and recovery do for the eating disorder patient. Perhaps most happily of all were the women who say that they return to this book when disordered thoughts crop up for them again and that they find Johns words to be a great help.
Johns readily admits to breaking the rules while an inpatient, that she acknowledges both the healing power and danger posed by eating disorder memoirs.
I find that Johns walks a fine line between glazing over her illness and painting a bleak future for the reader. Rather than give us yet another how-to guide, Purge serves as a reminder that support and recovery are possible, and that recovery will be an ongoing project. This is why I found it a difficult but ultimately rewarding and distinct read.
Again, please find links to support in both the U.K. and the U.S. below, including to Beat, whose online services I have found particularly useful during lockdown:
Beat (U.K.): https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/about-us
National Eating Disorders Association (U.S.A.): https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/
