Doing the Dance Between Life and Death with Orthorexia Nervosa

WATCH – IF FOOD BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, EAT ON –

Sept. 5, 2021 – When she began her recovery, she was able to trace many of her challenges back to the impact of growing up with a difficult home life. She loved her parents very much, but they were troubled. “My father had lost both his parents at an early age and grew up in foster homes in the 1940s in the UK, so you can imagine what that was like,” she says. “Back then you just had a stiff upper lip, you pulled up your boot straps and you got on with it.

“Growing up, I never felt safe … so I kept dancing and performing my way through. I have forgiven, but I was always looking for approval through my achievements, my teachers and my friends, and drugs and alcohol were a welcome reprieve.” Alice’s first blackout from alcohol was with her friends when they were 11, drugs came into the picture when she was 13.

“I sought it out,” she confesses. “I wanted anything to feel different to how I felt.”