Everything I called survival was slowly becoming my prison.

If you had met me as a teenager, you probably wouldn't have recognised how much I was struggling.

Like many young people in the 1980s, I laughed with my friends, obsessed over fashion, bleached my hair far more than was sensible, smoked cigarettes, fell in and out of relationships and tried to look as though life was unfolding exactly as it should.

From the outside, I looked like I was simply growing up.

The truth was very different.

By then, bulimia had become part of my daily life. Compulsively overeating numbed the relentless ache inside me and making myself sick afterwards gave me a brief, almost intoxicating sense of relief. It wasn't really about food anymore. It had become the only way I knew to cope with emotions that felt far too overwhelming to carry.

When my parents eventually discovered what was happening, they responded the only way they knew how. My father would wait outside the bathroom after meals, hoping he could stop me from making myself sick. I know now that he was acting out of love and fear, but addiction doesn't disappear because someone is watching. It simply finds another place to hide.

I became remarkably inventive. I hid among the bushes in our large garden, digging holes so our dogs wouldn't find the vomit. When I couldn't get outside, I hid plastic bags until I could secretly dispose of them later. It is an ugly reality that people rarely speak about when they talk about eating disorders. There was nothing glamorous about it. There was only shame and secrecy.

Around the same time, another coping mechanism entered my life.

One winter morning, I had tonsillitis, and my dad handed me a measure of Scotch whisky to gargle with. He genuinely believed it would help. I still remember the warmth as it travelled through my body and, with it, something I had never experienced before. For the first time in a long time, the constant emotional pain eased.

Dad had no idea what that moment would awaken.

Neither did I.

Before long, alcohol had become another way of surviving. A drink before school helped me face the day. Another at night softened the emotional exhaustion I carried everywhere. Relationships soon joined the list. If someone wanted me, I felt valuable. If they desired me, I believed I was lovable. Looking back now, I can see that I had no idea how to distinguish between being wanted and being loved. I confused attention with acceptance because I had never learned the difference.

When I read those chapters of my own life now, I don't see a reckless young woman making terrible decisions. I see someone desperately searching for relief.

Every addiction, every unhealthy relationship and every destructive pattern was an attempt to silence pain I didn't yet understand.

People often ask why someone doesn't "just stop."

The better question is this.

What pain are they trying to survive?

Until we understand that, we rarely understand addiction at all.

Standing on the Edge - A Fight For Freedom tells the story of how God patiently led me beneath the behaviours and into the deeper wounds that had been shaping my life for years. The addictions were never the whole story. They were symptoms of a heart searching for healing in places that could never truly satisfy.

If you've ever found yourself returning to coping strategies you know are harming you, I hope my story reminds you that there is always a deeper story beneath the behaviour, and that is often where true healing begins.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough and would encourage any and all to take the time to experience the author’s story.

— Amazon Customer

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