Getting drunk to lose weight: youth fads and follies
Published on 8/2/2013
They call it Drunkorexia, a lethal mix of two well-known addictions: alcoholism and anorexia. It is said to affect mainly the very young, predominantly girls, between the ages of 14 and 17. Around 300 thousand, according to estimates reported by the Ministry of Health.
These young people's diet consists of little or nothing: crackers, ice pops, sweets, medicines, diuretics and laxatives, but above all drugs and alcohol. Alcohol serves to keep them from feeling hunger, an anaesthetic. But drinking on an empty stomach, drunkorexics vomit easily and get drunk quickly, remaining in this state of intoxication so as not to suffer hunger pangs. And when this is not enough, drug use comes into play to make up for the empty calories of alcohol, one of the few sources of energy these young people take in.
Bodies "thought rather than lived", as Dr Ceccarelli describes them, a psychologist at the centre at Palazzo Francisci in Todi, where 17 of them are currently in treatment to escape this spiral.
The causes therefore appear to be eminently psychological, but the phenomenon represents an escalation compared with anorexia, a diabolical contrivance that in many cases causes irreparable physical damage.