Two decades later, stability is within reach

I've often thought that if my stomach were my brain, I'd be the smartest person alive.

That perpetually grumbling thing beneath my ribs has always been a master manipulator that, unlike any other part of my body, has the ability to control. It's like some mad scientist kidnapped my body, carved out the nerve center of my brain and inserted into my digestive tract.

How my stomach reacts to stressful events, high levels of anxiety, hectic work schedules and my occasionally erratic diet will usually dictate how things go over a period of days – or, in some cases, even weeks.

Indeed, for much of the past two decades, I've suffered from anxiety that's turned some days – and many meals – into spin-the-wheel carnival games. Many times, I've woken up, my head spinning, wondering what stomach ailment would dictate my mood for the day: Acid reflux? Diarrhea? Gastroenteritis?

The residual effect has been on-an-off bouts with eating disorders that – while now manageable – have been debilitating and self-destructive. Feeling anxious and obsessing about what I'm about to eat – as well as the potential bloated side effects of eating and digesting a hot, fat-laden meal – has only added to stress that has caused me to, at times, withdraw from reality.

Not until I was about 30 years old – married, ready to have kids and accept responsibility – did I determine that the connection between my brain and stomach was too much to overcome. The realization forced me to seek help from a psychologists and psychiatrists who, through a combination of therapy and medication, have helped me feel as close to comfort as I've ever felt.

I also looked at my family history – three cases of alcoholism, combined with obsessive compulsive disorder that affected my great-grandfather, grandfather and mother – and saw a genetic line of mental illness that, very likely, did not skip my generation.

The best thing I can say about it is, thanks to therapy and willpower, I'm alive.

Indeed, it's been 20 years since I first experienced symptoms of eating disorders. The signs first appeared in the summer of 1988, after a break-up.

I'm of British descent, so I tried to keep a stiff upper lip. That’s how I was taught to handle a personal crisis. But being a rock is not in my DNA. Instead, I crumbled to the point that I couldn't eat or sleep for days at a time.

I ran five miles each morning, skipped my Rutgers classes so I could wallow in my bed during the afternoon, stare at the ceiling and cry. At night, I shoved my fingers down my throat, losing whatever bird-food-size portions of bread and crackers I ate for dinner.

Eating anything, in fact, gave me stomach gas and acid reflux so bad that I spent hours combing local drug stores in search of the right cure. I popped anywhere from 8 to 15 Tums and Gas-X tablets each day, hoping that some sizeable combination of antacids would calm my gut down.

As the months went by, however, things just got worse. It wasn't until one of my roommates literally pulled my out of the bathroom, forced me to sit in a chair and talked me out of my misery that I finally summoned up my strength, and pulled myself out of the abyss. By that point, I was 6 foot 2 inches tall, 132 pounds.

I never forced myself to throw up again. In the years after that initial bout with bulimia, I only forced myself not to throw up. But each time I faced some kind of crisis, I also had to summon up that same personal strength that forced me to face the immediate, as well as the long-term, future.

Still, life was a struggle, and marriage in 1996 finally brought stability my very unstable state-of-being.

Until then – just like my stomach – my work as a journalist was very erratic. My social behavior was also unsettling, and downright scary. I spent many weekends in Belmar, N.J. drinking until I was totally numb. I slept with various women who were so tanked up with tequila shots and beer that they passed out before we even left the bar.

But it was my wife who introduced me to therapy, where I finally learned - in 2000 - that there was something about me that was different. From there, we were able to work with what we have.