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It used to be that I'd go to my best friend's house every day after school, I was probably 11 when it started. She had a huge house, a kitchen with two refrigerators and two closets, not to mention cookie and candy jars lining the counters. Her stay-at-home was always making huge batches of chocolate chip cookies. I remember Tostitos - we used to finish off a bag every afternoon, along with cookies and other snacks. And Diet Coke.

But wait, it goes back further than that. I remember stealing a jar of sugar from my own kitchen when I was five or six, sneaking behind a huge framed mirror that was leaning up against the wall, eating sugar and knowing it was wrong. I remember eating pancakes for breakfast. I used to brag about how many pancakes I could eat (eight, although now it's probably 15+), to cover up how embarassed I was about my appetite. Or waffles - my brother and I used to try and eat them as fast as we could..there was an odd number of waffles in each box, so whoever ate faster, ate more. I guess this was all before it became a problem. I was uncomfortable with how much I ate and it was often compulsive and secretive, but it wasn't extreme. I was never concerned with my weight, I didn't turn down social opportunities for a night at home with food, I didn't try to starve it off when I was done, and even if I was eating compulsively I would at least be able to stop before it became painful.

A few older friends introduced me to pot when I was 14, which naturally made my appetite grow even larger. In the beginning I didn't smoke very often, but then I introduced two of my good friends to smoking, and eventually we were smoking together at least a few days a week. We'd all eat; we'd get up early, get high and go out to breakfast. I'd order three enormous chocolate-chip pancakes, smear them with butter and syrup, hot chocolate with whipped cream, maybe home fries or sausage. Or we'd go to the convenience store a few blocks away from my house, I'd always get one of those mini-apple pies and a big bag of Reece's pieces. We'd raid our kitchens and walk through negative temperatures to stock up on junk food. One time we had a picnic and I made lemon tarts. After eating for quite a while, my two friends asked where the lemon tarts were...I hadn't paid attention to whether they'd eaten any or not and I'd finished off the whole batch... by this time I was smoking daily by myself. I felt unhealthy and somehow I hadn't yet connected my behavior with how unhealthy I felt every day... but I was always the first and last one smoking and eating...after a year or so I gained 15 pounds...which may not sound like a lot, but it was the beginning.

I don't remember what sparked the change, I think I gradually realized that I felt like shit all the time and the solution was simple...so I stopped smoking. It started with the rejection of weed, but I soon realized that my friends, and food, and drinking, and shitty decisions that I had made, all contributed to me feeling like shit, so with weed went friends, food, drinking, everything. I quickly became a recluse, refusing to associate with any of that, and not really knowing how to identify myself with all of this changed. I became obsessed with being healthy, perfect. Working out every day, before and after school, restricting hard core, studying all the time but unfortunately was so preoccupied with losing weight that the studying didn't really pay off. But, off came 30 pounds in about two months.

I remember that summer, before my friends had given up on me completely, going to a friend's house, another huge house with a pool, a pool table, a huge kitchen full of food... the perfect place for entertaining friends. The group would get high and eat their munchy food - at this point I had long since been sober and pretty dedicated to my righteous healthy lifestyle - but I'd still get caught up in it. They were high and didn't pay much attention, so I just binged my face off. I was thin, and everyone would say "god, you eat so much and you're so thin!" but that was about all they noticed. I remember going to driver's ed. classes: every other morning we'd drive for a few hours, always making a stop at Dunkin' Donuts or someplace similar for the teacher's coffee. It was very weird - the other girl would regularly buy a donut and literally pressure and beg me to have a donut. At first I said no, but she did it every day, and after a while I just got the damn donut, and I don't care how ridiculous it sounds, I swear that donut completely shattered my good habits and routines. That one donut. It became a routine - I'd get a donut in the morning and eat it like a bird in front of everyone else, but when there were some left over in the classroom I'd take three, leave and shovel them into my mouth on the way home. I'd get home and make pancakes, then walk down to the convenience store and buy candy or peanut butter.

Getting my driver's license was no help at all. Jumping at any excuse to get in the car to drive around to different stores, buying junk at each one and finishing it by the time I got to the next one, three blocks away. All I'd do was think about how I'd eat the food: what will I buy next? How many? How quickly will I eat it? Should I eat it in the car? Maybe at home? Save it for later? Buy something to drink along with? Maybe I should just go home now, maybe I should just stop. Sometimes I'd still be trying to answer those questions by the time I realized I'd finished the food and I'd spent all my money.

A lot of this went without any significant purging, but surprisingly I've never hit the 160 lb. mark. I used laxatives until I found out how bad they are for the body. I started vomiting, and I didn't need to read about that - I felt how bad that is for the body. I tried exercising, diet pills, fasting...you name it. I always end up back where I started. It's sad how I can say "I'll stop binging tomorrow" every day for months, stopping only for days or weeks at a time and then falling back into my old ways at the drop of a hat. Ah well. I guess the best I can say is that I'm still hopelessly optimistic.