College Life – Alcohol as a Method for Purging

Contributor: Dena Cabrera, Psy.D., CEDS, is the Clinical Director of the Rosewood Centers for Eating Disorders.

College is a time of unlimited potential. It’s a time when young adults have the opportunity to prepare for their dream career, form relationships that last a lifetime, and explore new experiences. Unfortunately, it’s also a time for drinking, and lots of it.

A Culture of Alcohol

Alcohol has become so embedded within the college experience that many students have come to expect that the majority of college social events will include tremendous amounts of alcohol.

Despite the efforts of college administrators to tackle this public health crisis through information and prevention strategies, students remain undeterred and continue to consume alcohol at alarming rates. The tailgates continue, the fraternity and sorority parties go on as planned. The social acceptance of drinking, including drinking with the purpose of getting drunk, has remained firmly intact.

Alcohol is not just a common theme in college social gatherings, it’s also a common theme in the majority of student problems. Poor grades, violence, trouble with the law, sexual assaults, and mental health issues all routinely share alcohol as the common denominator.

Destructive and Devastating Outcomes

The alcohol-related statistics are truly startling and demonstrate that students are not just drinking, they’re binge drinking and they’re becoming dependent on alcohol at an unprecedented rate.

A 2013 national survey¹ showed that nearly 60% of college students ages 18-22 report drinking alcohol in the past month and almost 40% report binge drinking at some point in the past 30 days.

What’s more is the risk of physical harm that they are subjecting themselves and others to. Every year, almost 600,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are injured while under the influence of alcohol, 1,825 die from alcohol related accidents, and nearly 100,000 become victims of alcohol-influenced sexual assaults².

Combining Impulsive Behaviors

While the abundance of alcohol consumed on college campuses and the problems it creates is far from news, another destructive behavior quietly plagues college students alarming rates: eating disorders.

An Additional Challenge

Millions of college students suffer from an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder and the college party scene adds an additional challenge for those who are affected. Eating disorders are characterized by abnormal attitudes toward food and weight that become obsessive. Those who suffer from an eating disorder employ drastic measures to maintain control over their weight to the detriment of their health.

The Dangerous Role of Anorexia

For those who suffer from anorexia nervosa, a disorder characterized by withholding calories in an attempt to control weight, alcohol is sometimes consumed in lieu of food. These individuals are essentially drinking their calories, putting them at risk for malnutrition and a host of other serious health problems.

Particularly dangerous is the combination of bulimia nervosa and alcoholism. For these individuals, purging is used to void calories consumed and when those calories are alcohol, the damaging effects of this disorder are severely compounded.

Shared Risk Factors

Eating disorders and alcohol abuse overlap in several different ways. They both tend to arise from many of the same underlying risk factors including:

• Genetics. Those who who suffer from alcohol addiction are also more susceptible to certain eating disorders such as the binge eating and purging habits associated with bulimia nervosa.
• Environment. Both alcohol addiction and eating disorders are compounded and strongly influenced by environmental factors such as stress, abuse, and cultural pressures including an obsession with being thin or fitting in.
• Dual disorders. Mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and personality disorders routinely overlap with compulsive disorders like alcohol addiction and eating disorders. Drugs, alcohol, and addictive behaviors such as binging and purging disorder are often coping mechanisms used to help mitigate the effects of an underlying, unaddressed mental health disorder.

Common Genetic Risk Factors

The connection between eating disorders and alcohol use has been firmly established. Researchers have determined that this connection is based largely on genetics.

Until recently, substance abuse and eating disorders were treated separately with few people being screened for both disorders simultaneously. Successfully treating one disorder may inadvertently make the other hidden disorder, worse so the importance of identifying both cannot be underestimated.

As the genetic correlation between the two has become more understood and recognized, those who suffer from an eating disorder are more likely to be screened for alcoholism and vice versa. This is a critical step in providing the comprehensive treatment needed to tackle the presence of both disorders in order to break the vicious cycle and allow healing to begin.

About the Author:

Dena Cabrera, Psy.D., CEDS, is the Executive Clinical Director of the Rosewood Centers for Eating Disorders.

Dr. Cabrera oversees all clinical aspects of patient care, leads program development and directs staff training and supervision throughout the Rosewood system.

Dr. Cabrera is the author of Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life after Pregnancy. This is the body image book for every woman struggling with body image.

References:

1. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). Results from the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings, NSDUH Series H-48, HHS Publication No. (SMA) 14-4863. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014.
2. Hingson, R.W.; Zha, W.; and Weitzman, E.R. Magnitude of and trends in alcohol-¬related mortality and morbidity among U.S. college students ages 18–24, 1998¬2005. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs Supplement.16:12–20, 2009. PMID: 19538908

The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on August 8th, 2015
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com