Why did I Drink Acidic Liquids?
One of the more obscure behaviours that developed alongside my eating disorder, and most likely linked to my skewed orthorexic mindset, was my tendency to drink vinegar and pure lemon juice.
Don’t get me wrong — I had always liked the taste of sour foods, which had been clear from my childhood party trick of eating lemon slices out of people’s drinks without a flinch. But once I developed anorexia and bulimia, my reaching for acidic and sour foods served a very different purpose, and that was to burn the badness from inside me, in both a physical and metaphorical sense.
As I downed vinegar and lemon juice straight from the bottle, I honestly believed it was burning away the remnants of the so-called ‘bad’ food particles that had been left in my stomach after binging and purging. It felt like I was physically cleansing my insides, which was a mythical belief my eating disorder had planted in my head.
In addition to the physical ‘cleansing’ of the food left in my stomach, I also believed that when I drank acidic fluids I was burning away the fundamental ‘badness’ in me as a person. It was categorically delusional and shows the extent of control and demonic influence my eating disorder had over my life and my mind.
Unfortunately, my distorted beliefs intensified in line with both my physical and mental decline, which allowed my anorexia and bulimia to brainwash me and pull me further into its destructive, deluded world.
It terrifies me to look back and see that my thinking became so distorted that I unequivocally believed the fabricated lies my eating disorder offered me as truth, and that drinking neat vinegar and lemon juice left me with the physical sensation that my body was purifying itself as the acid ran through my veins.
What I See Now
I now realise this whole ritual was merely a warped apparition manufactured by my perverse eating disorder, presenting almost like a mild form of psychosis. What I believed was burning the bad from within was actually a fast-track ticket to a stomach ulcer and tooth erosion.
