Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT Eating Disorder #memoir Thin & I by Andrijka Keller

Today’s team review is from Robbie, she blogs here https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/

Robbie has been reading Thin & I by Andrijka Keller 

I have had a fair amount of experience with eating disorders in my life. Both bulimia and anorexia have impacted on my life in various ways from when I was a young teenager at school right up to the current point in my life.

I chose to read this book because I was very curious to read a first hand account of the experiences of a sufferer of bulimia. I have watched the struggle of sufferers from an external point of view and was keen to learn the other side of the story and try to understand what goes on in the mind of a person in the grip of this illness. I thought it would give me greater insight into the disorder and a better ability to cope with and understand it.

This fascinating book did not disappoint me. It did provide a very personal and detailed account of Andrijka experience. The how and why she developed this disorder are well explained. I liked the way Andrijka presented her disorder as a person, named ED, to who she was basically enslaved. She operated under ED’s instructions and found it extremely difficult to go against his viewpoint and thoughts.

The story is very comprehensive and takes the reader through the horrors of discovery, the writer’s experience in rehab trying to overcome her disorder and later, a much more traumatic experience in another facility.

What enthralled me the most was her thought process. It quickly became apparent to me that the greatest challenge faced by people on the outside is the sufferers massive determination not to get cured. Like all other mental illnesses I know of, the desire to be thin and to maintain the rituals of the illness overcome the sufferer’s rationality and desire to get better. The girls in the rehab collude to basically ensure that they don’t really get better. The effectively assist each other in remaining ill. This was a huge breakthrough for me in understanding a mental disorder. To effectively find a cure, you have to hit on an incentivisation that is so overwhelmingly important to the sufferer that they become determined to get better. That is the only way it seems. The sufferer has to do it themselves, outside people can only pray and encourage.

The book could benefit from a bit of editing and I was slightly disappointed in the ending which led me to believe that Andrijka’s cure could be undermined by the career path she chose. I don’t know how that has panned out for her.

A very powerful story.

When Andrijka (And-dree-kah) Keller was just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with Bulimia Nervosa Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder.

Her psychiatrist quickly prescribed her Prozac, to which she would eventually agree to. Shortly after, she was prescribed four more medications in hopes of ‘curing’ her. She believes it did the exact opposite.

Andrijka’s raw and edgy memoir takes the reader down a rabbit hole in a fast-paced, graphic, and darkly humorous depiction of recovery, self-acceptance, and what it means to be depressed as a modern teenager.

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