Addicted to being addicted
By: Isabelle Ri
Tags: Depression, Eating Disorders, Addiction, Introduction, Awareness

,I am addicted.’

A simple sentence. Short. Concise. But with such subliminal melancholy that it resonates in the ears of the listeners for quite a while. Addicted to what?

Heavily affected by media, the term ‘addiction’ is prematurely associated with intoxicants. ‘Ah, he just takes drugs’, they think. Put the addict in a drawer with quickly faded stars like Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Johnson and whoever else was in their secret club and then no further thought is given to them. They do not divide into alcohol, cocaine or barbiturate. ‘He died of drugs’, they say. ‘Was just addicted’. But they do not see beyond. They don’t see that you can be addicted to love, attention or pain. Substance abuse is a symptom, but not a cause. Question before you randomly put someone in a drawer and throw away the key. Amy Winehouse did not join the glorious halls of the Forever 27 Club because she was simply addicted to alcohol. There is more to it than that. The question is: why?

Think before you judge.

I see a much too thin girl with her friends standing on the terrace of a well-known bar in Hamburg. She is wearing a tight-fitting black cocktail dress, her hair pinned up. She trembles despite the warm summer breeze. Wraps her arms tightly around her childish body, which has long forgotten how to keep her warm. She has hardly any energy left, is exhausted. Her body lacks the food that she so vehemently denies it. It lacks the sleep she no longer gets because her stomach growls too loud at night and the quality of life that was taken away by her eating disorder. Two men join her and her friends. Want to pay for their drinks. But the girl doesn’t want to. She wants to go home. She’s not having fun. She can’t do it anymore. And her friends? They don’t understand. They try to persuade her to stay, call her a spoiler. People watch her, while she is leaving the bar alone. They talk about her. But not because they are jealous of the body for which the girl has given herself up.

They think: ‘Poor thing should eat more. She is way too skinny.’ But that’s not it. There is more. The question is: Why? Why did she go so far as to starve her own body?

I see a girl at a party, dancing alone on one of the podiums. She is flying, hovering above the crowd. Lost in her own world. She feels the bass hammering through her bones. She is lost in the music und the after-math of the pill, she took in a dirty toilet stall earlier that night. Her ex-boyfriend dances behind her, slips her another half and convinces her to take more lines in the bathroom. Of course she follows. Her evening ends with an overdose. Her ex is nowhere to be found.

They think: ‘It’s her own fault, if she’s addicted to drugs.’ But nobody asks why she’s doing what she’s doing.

I see a chubby girl making her way home from work. She grabs a hot dog to go and sits down on a bench in a beautiful little park close to her house. She takes the first bite and gets caught up in her own thoughts. Thinking about her day and enjoying her very first meal of the day. This time she really wants to stick with her diet, no binges, no relapses. This time will be better! She takes another bite.

They think: ‘Look at her! She shouldn’t be eating that. She would be prettier if she was skinny.’ But nobody asks, why she can’t stop eating. Why she eats away her pain and tries to make up for it by kissing the toilet seat.

I see a girl that gave away her whole being to a boy, who didn’t deserve her. She let herself be hurt over and over again until nothing but a broken pile of fragments was left of her.

They think: ‘Why is she that stupid? A blind man would’ve seen that the guy was a jerk.’ But nobody listens to her. Listens to her pain and asks why she can’t let go. But why? Why do people ignore the truth and put people in drawers they don’t belong in?

It’s simple.

Because it’s easy. That’s why.

It’s easier than confronting yourself with the real problem. It’s easier than questioning what went wrong. It’s easier than seeing that some people are longing so deeply for love and attention that they lose themselves along the way. Longing so much for being somebody, that they forget what makes them who they are.

Mary is addicted to attention. Addicted to the attention she receives because she is so skinny. Fragile. A unheard cry for help. A cry for being seen. Her parents stopped seeing her a long time ago. They simply do not care. They are caught up in their own issues, their own little bubble. So Anna seeks for attention elsewhere. Starving. Losing more weight. And finally receiving the attention she so desperately needs. Finally being seen.

Alice is addicted to love. Addicted to being loved. Always falling for the wrong guys, forgiving to easily and loving too hard. Desperately trying to get half of the love back she is giving so carelessly.

Izzy is addicted to food. She is addicted to filling the void inside of her that has been cut in her shattered soul by all the people that have left before. Taking pieces of her with them when they walked out of her life. She learned from a young age that food equals love and food will replace the love that they took when they left.

Rica is addicted to being needed. She gives away too much and receives nothing in return. But she is not giving up. She just wants to be needed and feels that she is of value.

I am Mary.

I am Alice.

I am Izzy.

I am Rica.

“Hi, my name is Isabelle. And I am addicted to being addicted.”, I say, leaning back in my uncomfortable plastic chair.

“Hi Isabelle”, they echo back. And the first time in my life I have the feeling that I finally came home. In this place I am finally being heard.