Alanna Fairey

The urge to purge: dealing with bulimia nervosa

By Alanna Fairey Illustrated by Ariel Mitchell When she was 15 years old, Darcy Hale made herself throw up for the first time in her family washroom. At the time, Hale’s parents were going through a divorce and it was negatively influencing her academic performance. In addition, Hale’s boyfriend at the time was verbally abusing her, leading her to find solace in a frequent binge-and-purge lifestyle. Bulimia is an emotional disorder involving distortion of self-body image and an obsessive desire to lose weight that takes over the individual’s life. It manifests itself behaviorally in extreme overeating, followed by self-induced vomiting…

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