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Binge Drinking and Eating Disorders: Drunkorexia

There is a new trend on college campuses. While eating disorders continue to plague young women in the United States, there is a new concern that binge drinking is becoming a likely partner to bulimia.

A recent report for the Eating Disorder Center of Denver says that there has been an increase in patients who have eating disorders and also report participation in binge drinking. The unofficial name given for the combination of dangerous behaviors is drunkorexia.

The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reports that an estimated 8 million people in the U.S. are affected by eating disorders. This equates to about 4 percent of women suffering from bulimia and about 0.5 percent suffering from anorexia, while 1 percent has a binge eating disorder.

Drunkorexia is popular among college students because it combines two commonly esteemed behaviors in the college-targeted media: dieting to lose weight and binge drinking. Young women often starve themselves during the day to balance out the calories they will take in drinking at night, or they binge on food and drink while they party and then purge.

Some individuals that participate in drunkorexic behavior are anorexic, but anorexics are more likely to avoid alcohol in keeping with the practice of severely limiting caloric intake. When someone with anorexia drinks, they may drink in place of eating or drink to relieve tension.

A 2009 study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked at the prevalence of substance abuse among women with eating disorders. It examined the trends in 13,000 women, divided into five groups: anorexia, bulimia, anorexia and bulimia, binge eating disorder, and no eating disorder. The study found that those with eating disorders were more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs than those in the control group.

In addition, the same study found that those with bulimia or a combination of anorexia and bulimia were more likely to have an alcohol use disorder than those who were diagnosed with anorexia alone.
The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reports that the rates of eating disorders are very high among women who struggle with a dependence on alcohol. 72 percent of women who have an alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder.
Among mental disorders, eating disorders are some of the more difficult to treat, and they carry the highest death rate. When combined with an addiction to alcohol, the danger only increases dramatically.