The night before my junior year of high school, while my family slept, I stood over the kitchen sink and swallowed tiny, cut-up pieces of raw chicken as if they were medicine tablets. I chased them down with gulps of Clorox bleach mixed with Diet Coke—not to end my life, but in a desperate attempt to shrink my body overnight. I wanted to be violently ill, to wake up empty.
By morning, I was too sick to go to school. My mother took me to the doctor, and without hesitation, I lied. I told him I must’ve gotten food poisoning. He prescribed rest and fluids and sent me home.
Lying about food had become second nature by 16—skipping meals and insisting I wasn’t hungry, secretly spitting out bites, pretending I’d already eaten. But my relationship with food wasn’t always about deprivation. Before I’d learned to restrict, I’d learned to consume.
After my brother Ian died of pneumonia a week before my 8th birthday, I started to binge. After school, I’d sneak downstairs to the basement, grabbing whatever I could find—sleeves of graham crackers, Pop-Tarts, Triscuits. I ate quickly, shoving food down before anyone could catch me. By fifth grade, I was bigger than all my classmates. Food became my comfort and my curse.
For my high school graduation present, I asked my parents to send me to fat camp. I saw the summer before college as my last chance to finally get it right—to transform into the version of myself I’d always wanted to be. My parents agreed, and for six weeks I lived by strict meal plans and nonstop Zumba classes. I lost 12 pounds, but my obsession only grew. The weigh-ins, the rigid meal plans, the way counselors applauded every ounce lost—it all reinforced what I’d believed since childhood: My body was a problem needing solving.
When I returned home, weight crept back on slowly, along with familiar feelings of panic. The thought of starting college in a body I still hated sent me spiraling. I couldn’t stop bingeing, and I admitted to it. I entered an eating disorder clinic, postponing college. But the hospital didn’t fix me either. I endured nutrition lessons about the food pyramid and went through the motions of group therapy. The clinic provided survival tools, but it didn’t change how I fundamentally felt inside.
After treatment, I moved to New York City to pursue a career as an actor—a skill I’d sharpened through years of masking my struggles—and my compulsions worsened. Casting directors told me the same thing repeatedly: “You have talent, but if you lost weight, you’d have more opportunities.”
Again, I fell into a cycle of excessive exercise and starvation. I learned to survive on coffee, Diet Coke, and salads, training myself to ignore hunger and finding satisfaction—even satiation—in watching the numbers on the scale drop. With every notch tightening on my belt, a rush of triumph ran through me. And for the first time, it seemed as if the world had finally decided I was worth seeing. Men who’d never noticed me before suddenly asked me on dates. A photographer who’d brushed me off now wanted to shoot me for free. Thinness became a currency, and I clung to it.
To keep a firm grasp, I created a new “diet”: Monday through Friday, I barely ate, saving all my calories for the weekend. Then I’d binge on everything I’d deprived myself of—doughnuts, chips, cookies straight from the package. By Sunday night, I’d brace myself for another five days of near-starvation. It wasn’t long before people noticed that I always ordered the same meal and picked it apart with precision, that something about the way I ate seemed off. One night, before I could order, a friend told our waiter, “She’ll have the chicken Caesar—no dressing, no croutons.”
I panicked. The carefully constructed facade I’d built was splintering. What once felt like power was turning into a prison, and the thought of living this way forever terrified me. I started spending hours every night researching eating disorders, as if cramming for a test I’d already failed. I scoured the Internet, refreshing pages and hoping for answers that never appeared. Eventually, I began emailing psychologists, spilling out everything I’d been doing and hitting send before I could second-guess myself.
One day, a renowned eating disorder therapist, Melainie, wrote back. She told me she worked alongside an eating disorder psychiatrist, but I’d have to pay them both out of pocket. I was off my parents’ insurance and, as an actor, had no health benefits. Without hesitation, I put her fee on my credit card.
I started meeting with Melainie regularly, and before long, we formed a bond I trusted. Shortly after we began, she had me list every food I feared—pastries, ice cream, pizza. Then she told me to buy them all, lay them out like a meal, and try to eat slowly, without guilt. The exercise was meant to retrain my brain, break my rigid rules, and show me I could eat without losing control.
I did what she asked—bought the food and set it out in front of me. But I couldn’t do it. The sight of all the food—piled on plates, waiting—sent a bolt of panic through me. This was long before GLP-1 medications entered the conversation. But even then, I knew my brain processed food differently than other people’s.
Matthew was the psychiatrist Melainie worked with. Every doctor I’d seen before him had prescribed antidepressants, but after evaluating me, he explained that my condition wasn’t depression. These obsessions weren’t something I could simply will myself out of. Finding the right medication would be a process of trial and error, adjustments and patience.
During this time, I was also doing my own research, desperately digging online for medications that might help. Then, on a visit to my family, I noticed that my younger sister had lost weight. She’d struggled with migraines her whole life, and her doctor had prescribed topiramate (Topamax) to help. When she mentioned that weight loss was a side effect, I was a detective on a lead—not entirely out of hope for healing, but because it felt like an escape hatch, a way to stay in control without having to fight my body so hard.
I looked it up and was shocked to discover topiramate was sometimes prescribed for binge eating disorder—something no doctor had ever mentioned to me before. At my next appointment, I suggested it to Matthew. He hesitated, saying it showed promise for some but carried risks for patients with histories similar to mine—such as potentially worsening my obsessions. But all that mattered to me was the weight loss. I didn’t know if it would fix my compulsions, but I was exhausted and worn down by my cycle of trying and failing. Half-joking, I threatened to buy it off the black market, and he relented. We cautiously introduced topiramate to my SSRI, Lexapro, on a trial run.
At first, the change was subtle; a moment of quiet between my usual barrage of spinning thoughts. Then I felt a deeper shift, like a ringing phone finally silenced. For the first time, food wasn’t the first thing I worried about when I woke up or the last thing I fixated on before bed. After 15 years, I started to experience relief.
Matthew was astonished, calling my response remarkable; he made a point to emphasize that he’d never had a patient respond to the medication as well as I had. As with any medication, topiramate isn’t universally effective—and why it helps some people with eating disorders and not others remains unclear. It seemed to happen by chance, a lucky break. But I felt differently. I needed something tailored to me, something that fit the intricate puzzle of my mind. It took years to find that specific piece—one as rare and specific as I am, as we all are. And in a clinical health care system that sees only in black and white, it was up to me to wrestle the answer from the gray.
Months later, Melainie and I revisited her therapy exercise, and I sat in front of the same table covered in the same foods. Again, the sight sent a wave of anxiety through me. I braced myself for the familiar loss of control.
But something unexpected happened this time: The hunger I’d feared for so long had a natural stopping point. I didn’t have to force myself to stop eating because my body told me when I’d had enough. I’d found a medication to help me, like a radio stuck on static finally tuning into a clear signal.
In the 20 years since I first met Melainie and Matthew, I’ve remained in therapy, stayed on medication, and never relapsed. That doesn’t mean unhealthy thoughts don’t creep back in—they still do, occasionally. But now, I recognize them as echoes of a past that no longer controls me.
On two occasions, years into my recovery, I felt ready to stop taking medication, convinced I’d outrun my past. But both times, my mind unraveled quickly, and those quiet echoes grew louder until they became shouts. What I’ve learned in my ongoing research is that topiramate can regulate impulsivity and obsessive thinking. For me, it seems to create just enough space between the urge and the action—like a pause button I didn’t have before.
Today, I run a successful company, and an outsider would never guess the battles I once fought. For much of my life, I kept my struggles private—partly out of shame, partly because I was determined to become someone new. However, as the conversation surrounding weight, GLP-1 medications, and mental health evolve, so has my perspective. People’s struggles with these issues are widespread and deeply complex, and solutions remain elusive. Health decisions are highly personal; there are no universal truths, and we are not to judge. I worked hard to find my own answers and fought for my well-being, and I wouldn’t have it without medication. I no longer feel the need to apologize for that. It’s the truth of who I am.
Recently, I hosted a dinner party. Sitting at my table with friends and sharing stories, I felt something I’d spent years chasing—an absolute certainty that life was exactly as it should be. That night at my parents’ kitchen sink belonged to another person, another reality—one I no longer inhabit. But I still carry that girl with me. I honor her. And most of all, I’m proud of her—for holding on, pushing forward, and believing, even in her hardest, darkest moments, that this life was possible.
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Jillian Sanders is a writer based in Denver. You can find her at www.jilliansanderswrites.com or @jilliansanderswrites on Instagram.
