TOTAL MAKEOVER NOW! From the current inhumane and controlling method to a caring and loving approach to treating eating disorders…let’s make the change!

This is my dream, to see this happen…to see this change.  And yet, I don’t see anything anywhere.  When I look on the boards at MindFreedom International, I see no postings about eating disorders.  Nothing.  This breaks my heart. Why is no attention given to this horrible abuse in these wards, where there is total control over bodily functions, especially when the patients are often minors and visiting hours are quite often limited or even completely restricted to next to nothing?  These places often cost an arm and a leg as well.

To date, there is no humane, non-coercive “cure” for eating disorders.  It is my dream to see such a “cure” come to pass.  Will it happen?  Can this be?  Can we, together, work for it?

It will take all of us working for it together perhaps.

It means honesty.  It means facing it head-on.  This is what I think.  Telling it, “Gotcha.”

And, informed consent.  No more giving pills and lying about the side effects.  We all know what bullshit that is.  Or lying to get someone into a hospital.

No more telling grandma she’s going to Disneyland just to get her to the nursing home.  In my world, that won’t cut it.  Yeah, you do hear stories about how someone was lied to and they went to “treatment” and it was the best thing for them.

You  know something?  My parents thought and thought about what kinds of lies they were going to tell my grandmother to get her to the nursing home where she eventually ended up.  Finally, my mom went to my grandmother’s home.  My mom smiled at my grandmother and said, “Dottie, do you know where we are going today?”

My grandmother said, “No, where?”

My mom said, “Dottie, we are going for a ride to the nursing home!  Let’s go!”

My grandmother said, “Okay, let’s go.”  And off they went.  Simple as that. After all that hemming and hawing, that awful trek was not so painful after all.  My grandmother resigned herself and knew it was time.  I guess that little story tells you something.

Anyway, one thing I’d like to do is to just totally change things.  I wish I could.  I feel like my hands are tied.

I feel like there is just no AWARENESS.  Like, why does nobody KNOW that these abuses are going on and why does nobody know that these places are so HORRIBLE?  There are children, minors at these places!  Wrongful deaths happen at these places and these deaths are covered up!  Why is no attention paid to this?  Why am I screaming about this and why does no one listen!  How much longer do I have to go on saying these things and how much longer am I going to be labeled “crazy” for saying this stuff?

I am not crazy.

Okay, enough.  Goodnight.

Advantage to the DSM-5’s inclusion of Binge Eating Disorder as an actual diagnosis

Okay, having just read an excellent dispute of this….Well put….

Of course, there are subsets and different mindsets of binge eaters.  I have no clue what it’s like to have been overweight since early on, and be fighting a lifelong weight issue and of course, perhaps the worst of it, the bullying and horrible weight bias from I mean like day one that goes along with being the least bit chubby or accused of having even one part of you that’s even imagined as chubby.

This is another world and it’s a world I’ve stepped into very briefly in my adult life.  Let’s say I tested the waters, then quickly yanked my big toe out as if the pool was filled with sharks.  I was fucking terrified.

Oh yeah, I do remember struggling with my weight, begging my doctor to take me off the darned pill that had gotten me to that point.  In other words, this is a trait that never really happened to me except by artificially-induced means, I’m talking true extremes.  Like you had to force me into that mold.

Okay, so if a person is of that mold, then, is it a different disorder than if they are my type that is the restrictive type, that started their disorder because of a diet?

See, so many people I know of with ED started with a diet, maybe schemed to get skinny, then developed further bad habits such as binge eating cuz their bodies were so starved.  Then, say, they panicked, saying, WTF? what’s this? and purged out of terror for what they had done.  Then maybe they looked up “laxatives” online and said, “hmm, maybe this will work,” and decided to go that route. Or whatever.  By then, the whole thing is incredibly unstoppable.

Okay, what of this diet…why go on a diet to begin with?  Low self esteem?  I mean, most of us weren’t even fat to begin with, right?  Most of gained “the freshman 10” maybe, or something very, very negligible and were still within range and could very well have exercised it off during summer break instead of going on that 300 calories a day crash diet we went on.

Agreeably, this is not the same as the pattern of the person who has been overweight since childhood.  I am wondering to what extent the dining commons, the Freshman Ten, or any of this…none of this means the same to the entering freshman who comes in say, already clinically obese and most likely the instant target of bullying.  Or maybe not.  You hear about the stereotypes.  The “fat kid” who is the “life of the party.”  Or, the “fat kid” who is, conversely, the “depressed loner.”  Either may be a secret binge eater.  Or maybe the kid never does have what we now will know, officially, as this painful disorder, Binge Eating Disorder, but the kid overeats at many, many meals, enough to sustain a larger body than he or she should have.

And folks, are we ever, ever going to find out?  For freaking years and years and years?  Sure, the presentation is that this is the fat kid.  Sure, the other young college folk assume maybe the kid “likes” to eat.  They dismiss this.  No one wants to talk about it and it ends up an uncomfortable subject.  Like, forever.  This is a painful path to walk on.   Even doctors don’t tread this ground.

Well, folks, they should.  And now, they will.  Binge eating is real and it’s serious.  Just as serious for someone overweight as it is for me who has anorexia with binge eating and does not and is unable to throw up, or someone with anorexia who does throw up, which is the one written up somewhere, the “binge-purge” type.  Do we have to talk about these stereotypes even?

Binge eating is serious for anyone who does binge eating and should be treated seriously, as seriously as is the behavior.

Binge eating itself causes massive damage in our society and of course to each and every individual sufferer. 

And yes, you can indeed die directly from the act of binge eating alone.

Never mind the suicides, car accidents, financial ruin, wrecked marriages, night after night of lost sleep, shattered sex lives, multitude of health concerns, legal issues, and troubled children.

Yep.  I’d say BED is right up there with severe alcoholism.

I’ll throw homelessness in there, too.

And yes, you CAN smell it on a person.  Not all the time, but some of the time.  Try a whiff of donuts or chocolate or the smell of dangerously high blood sugar on a person’s breath.  Or the scary drop in blood sugar some folks experience afterward.

I’m going to put out a poll and I hope it posts related to binge eating.  I believe these polls are anonymous.  Or I hope so.  I myself that I know of will be unable to track folks who answer.  (Don’t panic yet…no obligation to answer but it will help change the world…well, maybe.  I hope in my own little delusion of grandeur over here that everything I do makes its footprint on the world.  Well, everything we do, sorry, does a carbon footprint thing, they say, right?)

If you don’t want to answer the poll, and I’ll bet most of you won’t, or if you have never or generally don’t engage in binge eating, then just think about the questions and what your answers are or what someone else’s answers might be.  And think about tomorrow.  Goodnight.

Okay, see ya later, done with polls…I hope, again, I did this right.  Best of luck answering them.

Father’s Day Doomers and Gloomers Beware: Looking on the Bright Side for a Change

Hey, are you talking about sexual abuse today AGAIN?  I hear they have parades and stuff where folks, probably not all that many cuz I can’t see this being a wicked popular event, yap on and carry signs about how they were sexually abused by their dads and they can’t do this Father’s Day thing and how there should be AWARENESS…

Well, today I’m going to talk about awareness of keeping your money in your wallet.  Of course I take sexual abuse seriously.   But every human on this earth needs to learn to quit taking life so seriously.  Just for one moment, and make that moment right here, right now.   Hallmark charges a darned fortune for those Father’s Day cards.  I’ll bet our pals getting rained on with the signs marching down the street on Father’s Day aren’t spending a cent on Hallmark cards.

In fact, after the parade, they’ll railroad to Starbucks or something, and talk about how fattening those Starbucks drinks are.

Hey, pals, get them without the cream and foamy stuff.  You’ll save a few pennies, and it won’t gather around your waist.  Not that anyone listens to me these days.

I don’t normally look on the brighter side of life.  I’m just here to make you, or someone, laugh their ass off.  See ya later, alligators.

I went to town hall

I reported our “beeping building.”  Something should be done soon.  I promise.

I hope, even if I die, that I go down in history as the person who ended that awful horrendous beeping once and for all.

Julie Greene

1958-20__ (Fill in the blanks with whatever you’d like.)

Two local community health centers have NO therapists who know anything about eating disorders

Yes, I have asked.   I was just on the phone with one of them and told flat out no, they would not even bother putting me on their waiting list.  They had no one on their roster that knew anything about eating disorders.  And this is a community center that has a lot of young clientele.  Say what?

Oh please.  No wonder there are so many suicides and suicide attempts in the high schools.

I guess you are supposed to be rich and have private insurance or something.

I told them, “Well, this is why so many people with eating disorders die.” And I hung up.

I am telling you, I am going to do something about this someday.

Beep, beep, beep…I’m going to take action!

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say.

So the Housing Authority’s maintenance department has been hard at work.  It took them since Hurricane Sandy, or the hurricane before that I think, I forget the name of it, to get the huge pile of branches out of the yard.  I think it was last Friday, the 3rd of May, that they finally cleaned up the mess.  And our fence has been crashed into for about a month and they have not fixed it.

However, they were hard at work, apparently, planting flowers over by the side door at the end of last week I believe.  These flowers will probably be stolen, rolled over, picked, or vandalized within a week.  Furthermore, I believe the maintenance department should have left it up to the residents to plant flowers.   I think it would have given the residents something to do besides watching TV all day playing it at triple volume, or pacing the halls with their walkers, or sitting in the front hall doing nothing but talking about the people who walk by.

Now this building needs more than flowers.  I mean badly.  The first thing that badly needs attending to that I have spoken of plenty of times before is the damn beeping.  I’m talking about the carbon monoxide detector batteries.  These are supposed to be replaced every six months.  If they are not replaced, the detector will “remind” the user by beeping about every 20 seconds or so, very loudly and obnoxiously.

The Housing Authority maintenance department never bothered to change these batteries.  I believe this is a state requirement.  I believe it’s been about a year now, possibly a year and a half, and they have been completely negligent.

The first time my detector went off, I had no clue what was going on.  I phoned 9-1-1, wondering if maybe there was some leakage or something in my apartment.  If I recall correctly, they came and disabled the detector, explaining that the batteries had gone dead.  Then I don’t recall what happened, but a bunch of detectors went off over that weekend, because the Housing Authority had not replaced the batteries as they should have.

The next time my own detector’s batteries did the beeping, I had batteries (I always keep a supply around) and replaced them myself.  I had to get on a ladder or step on something to reach the detector and get it off the wall.  A bunch of them on my floor went off all at once, too.  Most folks just let theirs beep and it was a nightmare listening to the sound of it.

Now imagine: a person with even mild OCD cannot tolerate the sound of a ticking clock.  I believe a person with learning disabilities also might have difficulties with sounds like these, or someone on the autism spectrum.  This beeping sound is far, far worse than a ticking clock.  In fact, it’s driving me crazy and I do not have OCD or fall into any of those above categories.

Currently, a detector is going off in apartment 214 or 215.  I can’t figure out which one.  It has been going off since I think sometime late Friday or early Saturday, I can’t recall.  The residents are all home, blasting their TV’s, and obviously not wearing their hearing aids.  Or just putting up with this noise.

Now folks, this noise is meant to wake the dead.  I can hear it out by the dumpster, which is at the far end of our parking lot.  In fact, I believe if the people across the street on Summer Street are sitting in their living room with the window open, they can hear this beeping.  If I am at the intersection of Summer and Forest I can hear this beeping.

I have complained to the Housing Authority several times about their neglect.  Guess what they told me:

They told me my hearing was “abnormal.”  They told me to purchase a TV (I do not own a TV) and blast it just like my neighbors do, so that I will not hear the beeping, or purchase a stereo and blast it.  Furthermore, they told me that if I phoned during off hours or weekends to complain about a detector going off in even in someone else’s apartment, I would be charged for “overtime” work just for making the call.

Folks, I went to an ear, nose, and throat doctor about three years ago for an inner ear thingy, and it wasn’t all that big a deal, looking back, but I had my  hearing tested twice, and I in fact have in writing the results of my hearing test.  There is nothing “abnormal” about my hearing.  I do not have supersonic hearing.  If I did, I’m sure this very nice doctor would have informed me.

So, tomorrow, Monday, I think I’m going to be a squeaky wheel.  I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do this, but I will.  I might actually call Town Hall first, to find out where I’m supposed to go, but I will go where I am supposed to go and speak with someone in person and if I can.  Surely, someone on the Town Council should know that this is happening.

Maybe someone in the neighborhood has already complained about the constant beeping sound coming out of our building.

Of course, there is more.  Those maintenance guys must do nothing all day long, because nothing is being done here.  Our parking lot has needed to be re-paved since the day I moved in.  The kitchen floors are a disgrace as are the counter tops and cabinets.  I read all this on a state report.  I should take a photo of my toilet seat.  You would not believe it.  I’m scared to ask for a new one, for fear that they will give me something worse.

I want to be famous: the 2013 Boston Marathon massacre in Watertown, MA from the point of view of a Watertown dog owner living in low-income housing nearby

I am writing this Friday night and it’s pretty much all over.  They’ve got the guy (don’t ask me to spell his name) in custody and there are tweets all over the place.  I don’t have a Twitter account cuz Twitter seems dumb to me, but that’s what I hear.  Yep, tweets.

Imagine: Two kids stopped our transit system and had the cities of Boston, Newton, Belmont, here in Watertown, and I guess even further out in Waltham in lockdown, all the hospitals and college campuses too.  Now have even any of our sports teams done that?  Of course not.   Not even when the Red Sox won the World  Series in 2004 for the first time since God-knows-when…oh yeah, that even got me in tears…but no, that didn’t stop our transit system or lock down hospitals.  There may have been crazy parties, but these guys are freaking famous.

I’m jealous.  Yeah, I think I am.

I’ve always wanted to be famous, ever since I was a tiny child.  Always loved to be in the limelight.  I’ve never been scared to get up in front of an audience.  I guess that’s why it didn’t take long for me to love performing in plays when I was in elementary school.  I always wanted to be a star.

I love being funny, reading my writings (hence this blog) in front of audiences and making them laugh.  Or cry.  Or moving them or disturbing them in some way.  I feel that shaking the world and making my footprint on the world, that’s my job as writer.

I want to make a damn big footprint.  I want to shake the world in its boots like these kids did.  I want to scare people good.

So I am sitting here in my little apartment that I pay one-third of what the government has decided I “deserve” because some thirty-some-odd years ago I developed, of all things, an eating disorder, and ask myself, “How the hell can I be as fantastic as these two brothers, who have these wonderful odd names I can’t even spell, and my name is so ordinary, Julie Greene?”

Wow, was that ever a run-on sentence.  I sure broke some writing rules there.  But the writing gods don’t bother with us here in this complex.  We’re all invisible here.  I’m sure all the attention is focused on Franklin Street, a few blocks away.  The kid needs all the gods to help him, now, even the lowly writing gods.

Eating Disorder Rescue Lesson One is finally finished and up on the site

I finished Lesson One at last.  Of course, all the writing part was done ages ago, and the filming I did all at once in one evening, but the editing took so darned long.  But tonight, or, rather should I say last night (I was up all night doing this, I must admit) I finally finished Lesson One.

Oh boy oh boy, I did not want to wait you guys.  I was dying to get this up on Vimeo.  But as you know or may not know, uploading takes ages.

Yes, a watched pot does boil, and I watched the darned pot from beginning to end.  I enjoyed watching it boil, and yeah, seeing that 100% on Vimeo is great.  But then Vimeo had the nerve to tell me I had to wait some 45 minutes for the darned thing to queue and then “convert.”  Huh?

Well, I suppose I should not act like a spoiled child.  You can’t always get what you want right away.  However, it was something like 4am,  or maybe later, maybe 5am by then.  And then, you know, I guess you could say the night had rolled over for me.

So before you know it, the video had “converted” and all was fine and dandy in all-nighter land.  I was determined to do everything just right.  So I figured out how to do html and get the Vimeo embedded into my site, www.eatingdisordersrescue.com.  And yeah, it’s there all right.  Lesson One is right here.

I love you folks.  I worked so hard to get this right.  Take care.

NEVER, EVER SHUT UP Julie Greene and Puzzle not allowed into the NEDA/MEDA eating disorders awareness walk

So…

It was rather a predicament, wasn’t it.  No, I was  not going to get bossed around by some girl who resembled “staff,” half my age, who told me dogs weren’t allowed, who told me, like I was being “supervised,” to take Puzzle home and come back and walk like everyone else.

No, I am not “everyone else.”  I am not a number.  I am not a statistic. This is why I am alive today and glory be, 55 years old today.  I am me.  So I stood outside with my Puzzle.  And my sign.  My sign said,

NEVER, EVER SHUT UP
Julie Greene and Puzzle

Just those two lines.  I had it made at Staples.  I thought it was a rather cool message.  I think some other folks thought so too, and some folks just passed me by like I was some crazy old lady.

I suppose I am.

I remembered well my hitch-hiking days when many cars would pass me by, and I would get to liking the space where I was standing at the road, the tiny waiting-space where the cars entered the highway off the exit ramp.  We hitch-hikers learned the exact places between exits and enter spaces.  I don’t recall exactly how I would do this, but I had my system worked out.  Today,  Puzzle and I learned to love the space we carved out for ourselves as if it were a hitch-hiking space.  But nobody picked us up.

I told some people that I remembered the day Karen Carpenter died.   I don’t know if what they thought about that.  I am three times the age of most of the people that showed up for this benefit walk.

In the end, they gave us a shirt.  I suppose that was my signal to go home.  Yeah, give up, Julie, go home.  Call it quits for the day, huh?

And so, in the end, I walked home carrying my sign, with Puzzle, bumbling along.

We walked a bit.  Maybe we looked like fools, maybe not.  I didn’t care.  I ran into some folks from church.  They asked me about the sign and I told them and they said, “Good for you, Julie.  Thank you for doing that.”

This is why I am alive today.  I have not shut up.

News about eatingdisordersrescue.com, my new site

from the site:

“I have finished filming Lesson One at last and it is in the editing stages.  As expected, it is taking me lots of time to get the movie just the way I want it. The writing part took about a week.  Reading it in front of the camera in fact went quite smoothly.   I am rather clumsy with the “effects” part of putting it all together, but am slowly learning.  I expect to have the entire Lesson One up here on the site by Saturday night, that is, the 30th of March, 2013.  I will also be providing a link that you can click on, which will be supplementary reading.  It goes along with the movie, to read afterward if you want to learn more.  You will see.

Till then,

Julie and Puzzle”

PS: the film will be posted on Vimeo rather than You-Tube due to time constraints.  I’ll get all this figured out by tomorrow night.  Boy do I love being a techie.