It happens without fail, every time: Someone in eating disorder recovery tries to talk about how adopting veganism fueled their eating disorder, and a bunch of animal liberationists barrel in to tell us that sharing our stories is hurting their cause.
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Yes, veganism is a movement centered around the ethical and just treatment of all forms of animal life. But anything that involves limiting one’s dietary choices can be dangerous for someone with an eating disorder — and a lot of the culture around veganism uses language that mirrors harmful attitudes embedded in diet culture. No matter how pure your intentions, your movement is being used as a gateway to lethal mental illnesses — and without having THAT conversation, out in the open? It will continue to be misused this way, because those struggling will do so in silence.
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People in recovery need to have the space to talk about the myriad ways eating disorders have manipulated seemingly moral choices and turned it against them. We need space to talk about how we put ourselves in harm’s way without realizing it, convinced we were doing the right thing. And yes, we need to talk about how the inflexible, moralistic language of many vegans made us feel as though we had to choose between our mental health and our moral integrity.
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If that conversation makes you uncomfortable? Don’t participate. It’s as simple as that. There are many other spaces for you where you can talk about veganism. But do not deprive people in recovery the chance to process the struggles they’ve endured, and how their fraught relationship to veganism became a vehicle for their disorder.
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FYI: Your movement’s PR is not more important than the lives being lost to eating disorders, which are among the most lethal and pervasive mental illnesses today. Recovery communities deserve to own every part of our stories, and for many of us, veganism was (and for some, still is!) an important part of our journeys.
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Veganism is not safe for everyone. And not allowing this to be acknowledged means more people battling these illnesses will be fearful about opening up around their struggles, and will be isolated from the support they need to recover.
Since you died, I haven’t been able to stop sending you messages. They’re less frequent than before, but I think I get scared that you’ll somehow evaporate if I don’t keep reaching for you — not unlike how, when I let myself get distracted for too long, they kicked down your door in a failed attempt to save your life.
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I’d always thought you and I would fight this together. I imagined us burning the stigma down to the ground, and in its place, we’d plant a garden. A garden where safety, vulnerability, and care could bloom, unruly and wild and free.
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Is that where you are now? In the garden? Are you dancing on your own — or did you find your father?
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I didn’t know that grief could dismantle someone’s life so completely. But I do believe, when the first domino fell and you left this world for another, you left me with some of your light. And I’ve kindled it, magnified it, nurtured it — I’ve surrendered to it so completely, I may as well have shed my entire skin at once, leaving a shell of the person I once was to dissolve.
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It wasn’t just suicide. We both know that. It was the weight of being a transgender person in a culture that wanted you erased. It was the weight of being unseen, the weight of disclaimers and footnotes, the weight of every explanation you had to give and all the ones you just... couldn’t. It was the mornings when you had to decide if a lip stain was worth the unspoken cost — glares, remarks, or... worse.
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It was the unspoken cost of having to ask yourself a thousand times over, “Can I be myself today — or is that too much?” Which was a roundabout way of saying that maybe *I’m* too much, and truth be told, you were in the sense that this world didn’t deserve even an ounce of your magic, as it refused it over and over and over again.
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The truth is, there won’t be “suicide prevention” until there is “violence prevention.” Until there is “oppression prevention.” Until, as they say, we’re all free.
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Because until we are, we’ll go looking for liberation elsewhere, and on the dark, frayed edges of the universe, there’s a quiet, velvety promise of Nothingness — and while I will never again choose it, I understand why you had to.
The hardest part of getting sober wasn’t the “new normal” that being free of drugs and alcohol created. It was finding self-compassion in a world that characterizes addiction as a personal failing. It was moving through the shame and stigma so that I could truly accept help. It was rebuilding my self-esteem in a culture that dehumanizes addicts.
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Addiction isn’t chosen. For me, it was a compulsion in response to unresolved trauma. At some point in time, my brain created a pathway that said, “The way to disrupt this fight or flight response is through drugs and alcohol.”
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Our brains are wired to repeat these compulsions if they work. If you’ve ever “unwound” at the end of the day with a glass of wine, you know that it does work. The problem is, drugs and alcohol by their very nature don’t “work” this way for very long — because repeated use diminishes its efficacy.
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But our reptilian brains don’t know this, because they operate on a bodily level, not a logical one. These two parts of the brain don’t compare notes. So the prefrontal cortex, our voice of reason, has no say on whether or not we develop an addiction. It’s the complex interplay of this more “basic” sensory part of the brain, finicky reward centers, and our very activated nervous systems that ONLY know to repeat behaviors that deescalate fight or flight.
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Recovery is a choice, yes, but it’s one not everyone is prepared to make. If there isn’t a safety net in place to ensure that someone can cope with being triggered in this way without self-medicating, it can make things worse. Fight or flight activated our adrenals, flooding our bodies with cortisol, the “stress hormone.” This is our body sounding the alarm, activating those same pathways that tell us to react — and quickly. We aren’t neurologically designed to ignore that alarm. This is why addiction is so difficult... our brains are working AS DESIGNED... but the problem is, this particular code is now creating more problems than it solves.
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I wish someone had explained this to me early on in recovery. Addiction isn’t about “bad choices” or a lack of self-control. Substance use disorders are real — and deserve empathy, not judgment.
Since my thread about fitness and eating disorder recovery has made the rounds, many people asked me: "I see why that’s dangerous. But how, exactly, DOES someone get into movement/exercise after an eating disorder?"
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I can only speak to my own experience, as someone who is in the midst of that process right now. But here’s my own approach:
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(1) I WAITED. I didn’t do any kind of physical activity — except stretching and very light movement — for *nine months* as I was reintroducing food and nourishing myself.
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(2) I SET RULES. I worked with my therapist, dietitian, and friends in recovery, to make sure there was a lot of thought behind it.
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Some examples:
• I don’t exercise on days I’ve restricted — period. Including ignoring hunger cues or not following my meal plan.
• I don’t use exercise as punishment. I move in ways that feel good and only when I crave it. My body calls the shots.
• I don’t set fitness goals. My goal is to heal my relationship to movement and feel connected to my body.
• I don’t exercise on an empty stomach and I always eat afterward.
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(3) I ELIMINATED TRIGGERS. This meant only pursuing exercise in body neutral spaces. I use the apps @thebecomeproject, @letsjoyn, and @downdogapp!
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(4) I PRIORITIZED REST DAYS, TOO. I never prioritize exercise over rest. Self-care means I don’t value one over the other. My body can tell me when to rest and I commit to listening.
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(5) LESS IS MORE. I don’t aim for a lot of movement. Instead, I focus on enjoying what I’m doing and respecting the limits I (and my care team) have established.
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Folks in recovery: Is there a particular way you’ve brought movement back into your life that works for you? Feel free to share!
