CROSS ADDICTED written by Frappa Stout It's a muggy, hot day in the San Fernando Valley, and 10-year-old Camille sits sprawled on her bedroom floor listening to the chorus of delighted children tearing around outside. She hears them through the haze of her hangover, but doesn't care. She does not share that childlike freedom in her world of adult issues, where she drinks alone to escape her mother's religion and blacks out to ease the fear of death that haunts her. She didn't want to be babied when she split her head open and nearly died at age 5, nor does she today, with the news that her best friend is dead of cancer. As she slides into numbness, Camille tells herself that if she controls her death and goes slowly and quietly, there will be no fear. Camille deals with her teen-aged fears on an artificial high of caffeine, speed and over-the-counter pills, alternated with days spent smoking pot and selling black beauties and other uppers. "At 16, my life goes to hell," she says. She fails out of school and fights violently with her parents and two older brothers. She knows she is an addict, but she doesn't see it as wrong because it gets her by. But darkness follows her. Again a good friend dies, murdered by a lover who later commits suicide. Camille painfully recalls her friend's last words, "I like who you are because you have such a love for life." Four days after the funeral Camille returns home to find her brother's best friend, Bill, whom she is secretly dating, was killed by a drunken driver. "I only want to know who's next," she says. "I can't feel anything anymore." By the age of 20, Camille Svastics attends the funerals of 12 of her peers, with the causes being murder, drug overdoses and drunken-driving accidents. "The crux of who I am as a human being is an impending fear of loss," she says. She feels she doesn't have anyone to talk to, because her father is never around and her mother is a strict Jehovah's Witness who can not relate to her problems or the intense devastation she is feeling. She doesn't want to be a burden on her parents, a feeling which develops when she is 12. She feels guilty when her appendix bursts and her parents must pay for expensive surgery. At the time, she wishes she would have died, a recurring theme in her life. In her solitude, enveloped by feelings of self-hatred, Camille abuses drugs and alcohol and later starves herself to the point of sickness. She says she would never commit suicide. Camille knows what death does to people. But her drug addictions and anorexia are a type of slow suicide, one she can control. Many of the feelings associated with drug and alcohol abuse, such as low self-esteem, guilt and a history of physical abuse, can also trigger eating disorders according to Marsea Marcus, program director for Begin From Within, a nonprofit program for those with eating disorders in San Francisco. Substances are abused for many of the same reasons as food, to numb emotions and block out pain that has not been dealt with in a healthy fashion. "It is really common for people to get clean and sober and then realize or remember an eating disorder that was hidden by the drug use," Marcus says. She says she sees many people who have already recovered from another type of addiction. "The overeating or starving is a signal that they need help with the emotional aspect of recovery," she says. About 30 to 50 percent of bulimics and a slightly lower percentage of anorexics also abuse substances, according to the Mirror Mirror web site on eating disorders. In some cases, drugs may be initially used to control weight, Marcus says. Substances may also be used to relieve feelings of guilt and shame about the eating disorder, writes Coleen Thompson on the Mirror Mirror web site. Camille develops her eating disorder after becoming sober, making her a "cross-addict," a person who substitutes one addiction for another. After polishing off the two beers that are her limit, Camille leaves the club before her friends to make it to work by 2 a.m. The thick Los Angeles darkness veils her vision and the drugs shake her frail body as she speeds up Laurel Canyon Road. At the top, she is confused by the headlights of an oncoming car and reactively slams on the brakes, causing the car to spin out of control. "God, if it is my time, just take me," she thinks to herself, stepping on the accelerator. After crashing through three fences and ending up in someone's back yard, Camille walks away from the accident with a back injury. She later survives a drug overdose and a "bad trip" on PCP. At the lowest point in her life, she is homeless on the streets of Hollywood, bumming cigarettes from vagrants and stealing food to survive. Finally, she meets two recovered addicts who allow her to stay with them and invite her to a 12-step-recovery-program meeting. Reluctantly, and high on speed, she goes to the meeting and listens to the story of a 50-year-old man, Donald M. He describes the voices in his head, his knowledge that he is dying and his regret at spending his whole life "chasing that first high." Finally, Camille hears what she needs to hear. Three days later she is sober for the first time in 10 years. "I realized in that moment that if I could relate to the story of a 50-year-old, then I could save myself 30 years of misery," she says. By attending three meetings a day and moving into the Felicity House, a halfway house for women, Camille finds the support to stay clean for the next two years. Until she begins dating Daonne, a recovered anorexic who deals with her emotions by getting high on pot, Camille is happy. After suffering a month-long contact high induced by Daonne's marijuana smoke, the addict in Camille one day grabs the pipe. She's stoned everyday for the next two years. "In the 12-step program, they say 'you are only as sick as your secrets,'" she says. "I become sick from lying about my sobriety, and still taking the recognition for recovering." In her shame, Camille begins starving herself and in less than nine months drops from 128 pounds to 90 pounds. Her anorexia is about deprivation -- she refuses to nourish herself because she feels she is not worthy to be alive. Her lover is verbally and physically abusive, but because she was hit by her mother as a child, Camille sees the abuse as a form of "sick love." Daonne projects her anorexic tendencies on Camille by telling her she is too skinny and not good enough. "I see food as a waste of time -- I feel limited in my body and to feed that limitation bothers me," she says. "Anorexia shows a need for control and a major fear about losing control, and it goes way beyond the body," Marcus says. After going through hours of therapy and several 12-step programs for her eating disorder, 29-year-old Camille still struggles today with the fear of losing control. "I have to remind myself that I will always be an addict, that's not going to change," she says, "And not eating is like an addiction, because it makes you high and numbs your body." She has a subconscious hatred of her body, and wears baggy clothing because she hates when people say she's skinny. Twenty-one times a week, she's faced with the anxiety of eating. Today, Camille works two part-time jobs in San Francisco and wants to pursue a career in acting. She plans to go to school in January to get a bachelor's degree in psychology because she wants to counsel adolescents who are struggling with addictions. "I would teach them that recovery is constantly cultivating your mind to be healthy," she says, "That it is a lifelong commitment." Even after the pain and hopelessness she has faced alone, there is a light in her blue eyes, courageous and intent. "I would have been dead five years ago if I didn't stop doing what I was doing," she says. "But no matter what I've been through, I still love my life." |ISSUE #1|FEATURES|A&E|INVESTIGATIVE|GREEN WATCH| |NAKED TRUTH|IN MOTION|HEALTH|LIFESTYLES|FYI|INDEX|