Celebrities Tell Their Real-life Stories of Eating Disorders and Recovery
By Gary Stromberg
and Jane Merrill
(Hazelden publishing)
Supermarket tabloids regularly cover the addiction beat with heightened attention lately on eating disorders.
“Wasting Away. Stars Risking their Lives to be Thin” trumpets the front page of the National Enquirer supported by five pages of photos featuring rail-thin Nicole Richie, Keira Knightly, Sienna Miller and “manorexics,” Marc Anthony and Carson Daly.
Enquirer coverage, while mildly titillating, lacks substance which is something Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill provide with their newly published book, “Feeding the Fame,” about celebrities who have dealt with their eating disorders and are recovering.
“Fame” celebrities are a different lot than the Enquirer subjects. Less shallow comes to mind. They are generally insightful persons who have shown great courage, and their identities will be familiar to many who read their introductory biographies.
Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas and author of “Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork” is on the list. He dropped 100 pounds—the result of eating southern fried foods and desserts in huge quantities since childhood—and began running marathons. A healthy life-style is his latest obsession.
Psychic Uri Geller is serene now but when overwhelmed with his early fame he became bulimic. At parties with the likes of Andy Warhol and the Beatles, he would consume a dozen desserts before heading out to his limo where he vomited into a paper bag until he was senseless.
Playboy super-models, the Barbi Twins locked themselves into an apartment to fast in a desperate effort to lose weight, but after a few days of starvation they knotted together sheets and lowered themselves to the street where they went on a frantic search for junk food. Now they are activists for animal rights and live healthy lives.
Metropolitan opera star Andrea Gruber is svelte and sober after decades of disordered eating and substance abuse because she didn’t want a huge sick body anymore after her experience at a New York firehouse during the 9/11 attack on America.
J.D. Salinger, the literary lion clothed in mystery, not only went on a weird fad diet but severely damaged the eating habits of his teenage girl friend by bullying her to join him. Today Joyce Maynard is a healthy mother of three and an established author/journalist.
Then there is Hall of Fame jockey Shane Sellers who describes how jockeys eat and vomit to the point of death to make weight.
There are 11 other celebrities in the book—mainly actors and writers—and many of them with more than one addiction.
Molly Jong-Fast, a writer and the daughter of author, Erica Jong, is a case in point.
“My eating disorder,” she says “is all about being a drug addict and an alcoholic. So the only times I’ve really been hot on my eating disorder have been when I’m sober.”
Molly’s story, which comes first in the book, is a terrific read—funny, outrageous, smart, wistful and courageous. Here are some samples:
“I never thought that I would have an apartment, a co-op, or a child. Those were never the things I wanted. I wanted to live over someone’s garage and shoot heroin.”
“Having gone through the anorexia and bulimia, I do have a sensitivity about these hidden shame filled disorders. I feel now that my job being sober, as long as I am abstinent, is to be a good influence.”
“My family didn’t remark on what was happening with me. They tend to be both very into dramatics.”
“Everyone in my family tends to be so consumed by their own horrible childhoods, even well into their sixties, that I don’t think anyone can see the woods for the trees.”
“So much of a lot of these things is a sort of rage gone sideways, where I couldn’t express it. Curiously, once you express it—and this came years later for me—it’s not such a big deal. But for so long the abiding anger is like a ghost at your back. That’s the big joke of addiction. Your feelings are so raw and fisted up that you can’t deal with reality. You feel you got to do drugs, you got to kill yourself, and do this purging and starving, and then when you do let go of the rage, you’re like, “What the hell, that was it?”
Both Stromberg, once a world-class alcoholic and drug addict and many years sober now, and his co-author Jane Merrill have struggled with eating disorders and they know their subject well. It shows.
