Drunkorexia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkorexia

Drunkorexia is a colloquialism for self-imposed starvation or binge eating/purging combined with alcohol abuse. The term is generally used to denote the utilization of extreme weight control methods like the aforementioned starvation or purging as a tool to compensate for planned binge drinking. Research on the combination of an eating disorder and binge drinking has primarily focused on the patterns of college-aged women, but the phenomenon has also been noted among young men. Studies show that college students engage in this combination of self-imposed malnutrition and binge drinking to avoid weight gain from alcohol. A study by the University of Missouri found that 30% of female college students admitted that within the last year they had restricted food in order to consume greater quantities of alcohol. The same study found that men are more likely engage in similar behavior in order to save money for purchasing alcohol. According to the study, 67% of students who restrict calories prior to alcoholic beverage consumption do so to prevent weight gain, while 21% did so to facilitate alcohol intoxication.

Symptoms of drunkorexia

Drunkorexia consists of three major aspects: alcohol use/abuse, food intake restriction, and excessive physical activity. It is commonly summarized in the following activities:

Counting daily calorie intake (commonly known as "calorie counting") to ensure no weight will be gained when consuming alcohol.
Missing or skipping meals to conserve calories for consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Over exercising to counterweigh for calories consumed from alcoholic beverages.
Consuming an extreme amount of alcohol to vomit previously digested food.

Treatment of drunkorexia

Drunkorexia is not a medically diagnosed disorder therefore there is no specific treatment. However, as drunkorexia is a combination of two different disorders, binge drinking and eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia the treatment will need to address both.

Effects of drunkorexia

The combination of self-starvation and alcohol abuse can lead to an array of physical and psychological consequences. For example, drinking in a state of malnutrition can predispose individuals to a higher rate of blackouts, alcohol poisoning, alcohol-related injury, violence, or illness. Drinking on an empty stomach allows ethanol to reach the blood system at a swifter pace and raises one's blood alcohol content with an often dangerous speed. This can render the drinker more vulnerable to alcohol-related brain damage. In addition, alcohol abuse can have a detrimental impact on hydration and the body's retention of minerals and nutrients, further exacerbating the consequences of malnutrition and denigrating an individual's cognitive faculties. This can ultimately have a negative impact on academic performance.

These harmful consequences can be more easily induced in women, as women are oftentimes less capable of metabolizing alcohol than men. On CBS News, Carrie Wilkins, PhD, of the Center for Motivation and Change describes how women are more vulnerable to particular toxic side effects of alcohol consumption.

Drunkorexia can lead to short term and long term cognitive problems including difficulty concentrating and difficulty making decisions. It also increases the risk of developing more serious eating disorders or alcohol abuse problems. As binge drinking is involved there is a greater risk for violence, risky sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning, substance abuse and chronic disease later in life.
Who is at most risk

Drunkorexia is found to be most common among university students who are faced with the conflicting pressure of heavy drinking and maintaining a slim physique. Researchers from the University of Missouri who questioned college students found that 16% of those surveyed reported restricting calories to save them for drinking. This practice of restricting calories for drinking was found to be three times more common in women than men.

Motivations for drunkorexia

The motivations behind drunkorexia as a pattern of behavior is one of the lesser understood aspects of the condition. It is suspected that the predominant factors in the development of drunkorexia are a distorted self perception congruent with unrealistic standards of body image, peer pressure to assimilate to the norm in terms of social drinking and societal standards of beauty, as a coping mechanism for anxiety and depression and as a means of getting intoxicated rapidly in response to stress and or peer pressure.

A study undertaken in 1983 sought to investigate if individuals who regularly participated in binge drinking, or were alcohol dependent, had a more distorted self perception than those individuals who were not abusing alcohol. The study measured the relative rate of body image distortion by asking participants in both a control, non-alcoholic abusive group and a group of alcohol dependent individuals to estimate the length and width of 22 different body parts, including the shoulders, arms, chest etc. The results showed that those individuals who were alcohol abusers saw their body parts as much larger than they actually were, indicating a distorted perception of self. The results from this study indicate that there may be a link between those who are predispositioned to engage in alcohol dependent or binge drinking behavior and a distorted perception of self which would help psychiatrists and clinical practitioners establish an at risk population and further would aid in better understanding and treating drunkorexia.

Other motivations for drunkorexia include; preventing weight gain, saving money that would be spent on food to buy alcohol, and getting intoxicated faster which also saves money as they won't need to buy as many drinks.

Drunkorexia as a diagnosis

Co-existing, and self-reinforcing starvation and alcohol disorders are gaining recognition in the fields of dual diagnosis, psychiatry, and addictionology.

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