After her mother’s death, Jennette wrote that she was glad she was too upset to eat. “At the very least I feel thin, priceless and good in my body,” she wrote, “my littleness.” But when she went out to dinner with friends shortly after, she ate every little thing she ordered and drank a bottle of sake. Realizing later that she could have given all of it up, she recalled feeling “victory”, considering it was “the beginning of something good”.
Heavy drinking to help bulimia has turn out to be a habit. While filming Sam & Cat was liquidated in 2014, she just began to assume she was going to have a bulimia-induced heart attack. “Hard to confess it,” she wrote, “but part of me would like to do it. Then I would not must be here anymore.”
She realized that she bingeed and defecated five to 10 times a day and drank eight or nine glasses of alcohol each night. Identifying red carpet fear as one of the triggers, her eating disorder therapist began accompanying Jennette to parties, which for some time followed a pattern: binge eating backstage and crying within the automotive on the best way home.
She ended up firing this therapist over a text message, still feeling uncomfortable delving into her childhood trauma. The bulimia continued and Jennette’s teeth began to rot. Spitting out a molar in the lavatory on a flight to Sydney, Australia to do press for Netflix – followed by an Uber driver playing Ariana’s “Deal with Me” within the automotive upon her arrival – was a wake-up call. Her next therapist reassured her that relapses were normal on the road to long-term recovery.