Note: Trigger warning for eating disorders.
What happens when you combine college-aged girls, thin privilege, and an alcohol-fueled hookup culture?
Nowadays, we call it “drunkorexia,” but this is not a new phenomenon. It sounds so simple, elegant even: eat less to drink more. You’ll save money, get drunk faster, and avoid gaining booze weight. Maybe you’ll even be able to squeeze into that two-sizes-too-small-bodycon dress in a few weeks. Perfect solution, right?
An easy one, maybe. But a smart one? A safe one? In case you don’t already know deep down, the answer to that is a hard no.
I will admit that I’ve skipped meals more times than I should have because I was in class, busy, not hungry, or too lazy to leave my room to buy food. So to some small extent, I understand that drinking on an empty stomach happens occasionally, sometimes unintentionally. But the fact that as many as one in six college-aged women in the US habitually and consciously restrict their eating habits to avoid extra calories and get more bang for their booze should raise more than a few red flags.
All of alcohol’s short-term harmful effects – poor judgment, vomiting, passing out, coma, even death– are in full force here, and even more so because the alcohol is hitting faster and stronger. But when the swap of solid calories for liquid ones becomes a recurring choice, you’re also looking at malnourishment and damaged organs besides just your liver. Alcohol calories and food calories are not interchangeable; drinks are empty calories with virtually no nutritional value other than sugar. You know that adorable quote “A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand”? As much as I agree, this is a situation in which you cannot replace “cookie” with “Solo cup”. Woman cannot live on liquor and mixers alone (please don’t try and prove me wrong), because our brains and bodies do, in fact, need actual nutrients to function.
“Drunkorexia” is, of course, not a medical term. It’s slang for a pattern of what doctors call disordered eating, combined with excessive drinking habits. Drunkorexia is already very normalized in many social circles, even if it isn’t always nicknamed as such, and some people even praise it as an efficient and economical way to spend a night. But while drunkorexia doesn’t automatically equal an actual eating disorder, it’s important to acknowledge the gravity of anorexia, the disease that gives it its name, and the unavoidable connection between the two. Being anorexic is not a temporary dietary choice. It is not glamorous or poetic. It is an oppressive and haunting mental condition that has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness and can be easily retriggered for the rest of someone’s life.
As a society, we don’t really make anorexia jokes anymore, but we trivialize drunkorexia as just something that college girls do because they like to have fun and look good while having fun, because young women are an easy target for jokes and mockery. If we casually call someone “drunkorexic,” it’s funny and cutesy, so we’re implying that it’s totally fine to skip meals. A girl who regularly goes out empty-stomached and blacks out as a result could be grappling with a life-threatening mental illness, but we only know her as a girl who “goes hard,” “is so fun,” and “knows how to party”. When we tell stories about the friend who “was so trashed last night because she didn’t eat dinner,” we laugh and tell her that we love her – but no one, even after seeing this happen several times, will show concern for the not-so-small fact that she did not eat. “Drunkorexics” can be our closest friends, our family, even ourselves, but as long as they – and we – come home safe every night, it can’t possibly be an eating disorder. Until, for some of us, it is.
I’m well aware that many drunkorexics are just weight-conscious students who drink alcohol and are thus not a cause for concern. But there are going to be people who come to college already battling eating disorders, and they might not get the help that they need because drunkorexia’s pervasiveness lets them fly under the radar. There are others who might develop a stress-related eating disorder later and use drunkorexia as a way to rationalize it to themselves and their peers. It just doesn’t seem right that people should turn a blind eye to a blatant glorification of disordered eating, because I don’t want to watch people that I care about put their mental health, bodies, relationships, and lives in jeopardy.
If you recognize any part of this article in yourself or in a friend, please (1) be honest with yourself, (2) be careful, and, most importantly, (3) don’t be afraid to take action or let someone know if you think things aren’t right or could get out of hand. Drunkorexia , and, by extension, anorexia, are not and should not be funny to anyone. What starts out as a few “accidental” nights could be a coverup or a precursor to so much more.
All this being said, please realize that eating normally, drinking, and having a good body aren’t mutually exclusive by any means. You can eat another slice of pizza if you want to, and you can drink the punch if you want to (as long as you know what’s in it and you’re not already blacked out). And if you really want to lose a few pounds too, instead of ditching dinner, consider wearing your Nike Frees for their intended purpose and pushing yourself an extra few minutes on the treadmill instead.
The moral of this story is that everything you do should be in some semblance of moderation. Classwork, calories, Crat, climbing the social ladder: None of these is worth giving up your life or well-being.