Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph Moon
Speaker 1: Never Told You. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: stories in the news about something called drunk arexia, which,
Speaker 1: if you don't know, is pretty much what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: depriving yourself of food so that you can get drunk
Speaker 1: or faster, and that you can save your calories for alcohol.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I have caught myself and
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends doing, and hopefully it goes
Speaker 1: without saying it is not a healthy thing to do,
Speaker 1: not a wise thing to do at all. In this
Speaker 1: classic episode, we take a look back at drunk orexia,
Speaker 1: substance abuse, and eating disorders. Welcome to Stuff I've Never
Speaker 1: Told You from House touff Works dot com. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And
Speaker 1: on today's podcast, we're going to talk about a term
Speaker 1: that has only been around for a few years, and
Speaker 1: it is drunk or rexio. Yeah, and it's appeared in
Speaker 1: a lot of trend stories about not only eating disorders,
Speaker 1: but like college students in particular, particularly those college students
Speaker 1: who are choosing to drink their calories rather than eat
Speaker 1: their calories. And I'm just going to start off by
Speaker 1: saying that the two are not equivalent. You are not
Speaker 1: getting any nutrients from that bud light. I can just
Speaker 1: assure you that is very true. Now, Caroline, before we
Speaker 1: get into this podcast on drunk Rexy, I just want
Speaker 1: to offer a trigger warning here that we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about eating disorders and behaviors associated with
Speaker 1: eating disorders. So for those of you who might be
Speaker 1: sensitive to those topics, just a warning of what is ahead.
Speaker 1: The term drunk arexia first popped up in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: mostly in celebrity blogs that were referencing ultra thin celebrities,
Speaker 1: usually women obviously, who appear to subsist on alcohol and cigarettes.
Speaker 1: But now it's popping up portraying a trend particularly among
Speaker 1: college girls, although this is something that guys are doing
Speaker 1: as well, and it is not a medically accepted term,
Speaker 1: and you could lump it though, together with things like
Speaker 1: manarexia or theorexia, which is the obsession with healthy food
Speaker 1: that can actually become unhealthy, or pregarexia when pregnant women
Speaker 1: will starve themselves in an attempt to not look pregnant.
Speaker 1: And drunk arexia though, even though um, it's a new term.
Speaker 1: It's an old habit there. There's really nothing new about
Speaker 1: the idea of the cutting back on food so that
Speaker 1: they can supposedly drink more and not gain the weight.
Speaker 1: And over at Jezebel, Lyndy West brushed it off as
Speaker 1: kind of pointless because she was like, wait, aren't we
Speaker 1: just calling anorexia by a different name. But the reason,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons though I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: it is because even though yeah, drunk arexia might be
Speaker 1: very headline grabby and yes, it can be a different
Speaker 1: name for a type of eating disorder because it is
Speaker 1: so attention grabbing, I feel like it could serve a
Speaker 1: useful purpose because it is highlighting a disordered behavior that
Speaker 1: I don't feel like has gotten as much media attention before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean a lot of people online I read about,
Speaker 1: you know, argue that it's really not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal, Like you should be cutting back on calories
Speaker 1: if you're going to be drinking a lot. But we're
Speaker 1: not really talking about you know, eating healthy all the
Speaker 1: time and then drinking in moderation when you're out socially. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're talking about an issue of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you're unhappy with your body, you know, maybe you're
Speaker 1: taking steps that are completely unhealthy, or maybe you're just
Speaker 1: you know, completely cutting out food the day that you
Speaker 1: decide you want to go out and party at night, right,
Speaker 1: because it's often associated with binge drinking in particular, And
Speaker 1: I do want to note though, before we go on,
Speaker 1: that I am I don't want to say that I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of the term drunk arexia. I understand that
Speaker 1: there are certain pitfalls to it in terms of maybe
Speaker 1: jazzing up what would otherwise just be called anorexia, but
Speaker 1: I do think it's useful as opposed to something like manorexia,
Speaker 1: where those are the exact same symptoms as anorexia. You're
Speaker 1: just calling it a funny name because guys are doing
Speaker 1: something that girls used to just do. But with drunk arexia,
Speaker 1: it's not that these people aren't eating all the time.
Speaker 1: It's more the connect and of not eating so that
Speaker 1: they can drink at least when it comes to these
Speaker 1: trend stories about what's going on on college campuses. For instance,
Speaker 1: there was a two thousand ABC News story which quoted
Speaker 1: a female sorority member who talked about how drunk orrexia
Speaker 1: is encouraged in her Greek system, and it was no
Speaker 1: big deal with if there was a social coming up
Speaker 1: the girls in her house. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: this is going on at all stories everywhere. This is
Speaker 1: just an example from one ABC News story taking one
Speaker 1: sorting house. But she said that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: assumed that you were gonna eat maybe just a salad
Speaker 1: or something very small, if anything at all, so that
Speaker 1: you could have all of shnaps you wanted. Right. This
Speaker 1: young woman talked about how it was basically a support
Speaker 1: system among her sisters, that they would trade methods for
Speaker 1: skipping meals, like working out late at night instead of
Speaker 1: eating having just one medium meal during the day, which
Speaker 1: I mean I would lose my freaking mind um and
Speaker 1: in some case throwing up before going out. And they
Speaker 1: quoted her as saying, I've done drunk arexia for years
Speaker 1: and I'm still healthy and I'm skinny. She said, that's
Speaker 1: the best of both worlds to me, so it's not
Speaker 1: likely that I'll stop doing it anytime soon. And I
Speaker 1: just I want to shake her and then transition it
Speaker 1: into a hug, you know, like shake, hug, hug, shake, um,
Speaker 1: because like that, it's just not healthy. You're doing something
Speaker 1: so terrible to your body when you're substituting alcohol. But
Speaker 1: I can understand though, from thinking back to my eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty year old perspective, where you see two things
Speaker 1: that are lauded on campus culture if you're a female,
Speaker 1: being fun party girl and being thin girl, you know,
Speaker 1: and and that way, like I totally understand her twisted
Speaker 1: logic of saying, well, it's the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: I can do all of these things and I don't
Speaker 1: have to really do it the hard way, even though,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about, you're actually putting your body through
Speaker 1: very hard things by doing this. But it's not just
Speaker 1: girls doing that. Although the motivations for guys practicing drunk
Speaker 1: orexia would would you call that practicing drunk rex male
Speaker 1: drunk orexix? Uh, their motivations tend to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more financially motivated, and for guys, their motivations tend
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more financial and also wanting
Speaker 1: to optimize their potential drunkenness. Right, yeah, money is definitely
Speaker 1: a motivator. Uh. This one guy they quoted said, when
Speaker 1: you consume on an empty stomach, you feel the effect quicker.
Speaker 1: He said, there was one Friday where I only ate
Speaker 1: a pint of ice cream all day, knowing I'd be
Speaker 1: drinking liquor later that night. So like this this money issue,
Speaker 1: like I get it, and I trust me. I used
Speaker 1: to live at a bar in college for a period
Speaker 1: and day to the bartender because it was just that
Speaker 1: convenient it. Um, Like, I get the whole thing of
Speaker 1: like if I eat less, I will get drunk faster.
Speaker 1: I remember having that thought. It was never like I
Speaker 1: literally like when I'm reading about drunk arexy, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: this logic literally never occurred to me because I love
Speaker 1: eating so much. Um, But I do remember having the
Speaker 1: same thought of like, well I can get drunk faster
Speaker 1: and they have money. Uh so yeah, that's awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that some listeners are thinking, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the eating aspect aside, doesn't this just sound like a
Speaker 1: lot of rampant drinking problems on the loose And and yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a substance abuse issue that's tied up
Speaker 1: with this, and that's why campus abuse counselors are more
Speaker 1: commonly warning against that drunk orexia combo. Trying to break
Speaker 1: this cycle, this logic, I should say in kids heads
Speaker 1: the eight it's a good thing to get as drunk
Speaker 1: as possible on an empty stomach and be that you
Speaker 1: You're you're striving to be thin. And at at what cost?
Speaker 1: Anyway you cut it. The amount of drinking and the
Speaker 1: not amount of eating. Both of those things are harmful
Speaker 1: for your bodies. And you put it together and it's
Speaker 1: even more harmful. Right. And one study that looked at
Speaker 1: that combination was study out of the University of Missouri, Columbia,
Speaker 1: which looked at that relationship between alcohol abuse and eating disorders.
Speaker 1: They found that six of the college kids they talked
Speaker 1: to reported quote, saving meal calories to spend on drinking,
Speaker 1: and of those, three times more women than men admitted
Speaker 1: to drunk orexic behavior. The National Center on Addiction and
Speaker 1: Substance Abuse echoes this stuff, saying that fift of individuals
Speaker 1: with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drug compared to only
Speaker 1: nine of the general population. And I think it's interesting because,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we've talked about eating disorders a lot,
Speaker 1: and and the motivations behind it that it's not just
Speaker 1: necessarily I don't want to be fat when you when
Speaker 1: you are suffering from antorexia or boliemia. That there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like you know, emotional and mental things that
Speaker 1: go into it too, as far as like perfectionism, obsessive
Speaker 1: compulsive disorder, and so you know, some studies have talked
Speaker 1: about how perhaps women and men with some type of
Speaker 1: eating disorder are also binge drinking to maybe calm some
Speaker 1: of that anxiety that drives them. Uh. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: really get down to the clinical level, if we get
Speaker 1: off of college campuses for a minute and get into
Speaker 1: eating disorder treatment centers that are really looking more into
Speaker 1: the substance abuse factors, we can see how those two
Speaker 1: things can be really intertwined. For instance, there was an
Speaker 1: article in the New York Times talking about this and
Speaker 1: they interviewed Douglas Bunell, who is the director of outpatient
Speaker 1: clinical services for the Renfrew Center based in Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: he talked about how there are women who are afraid
Speaker 1: to put a quote grape in their mouth, but they
Speaker 1: have no problem drinking a beer. And part of that,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's a motivation of calming those nerves
Speaker 1: um that might be associated with eating disorders and uh,
Speaker 1: just to drive home some more statistics, The New York
Speaker 1: Times article also cited a two thousand three Columbia University
Speaker 1: study which found that people with eating disorders are five
Speaker 1: times more likely to become substance abusers, and on the
Speaker 1: flip side of that, substance abusers are eleven times more
Speaker 1: likely to have an eating disorders. So clearly there is
Speaker 1: a strong relationship going on between ween the eating disorders,
Speaker 1: whether it be anorexia, bulimia, or eating eating disorders not
Speaker 1: otherwise classified and substance abuse, right and not all jibes
Speaker 1: with a two thousand seven study from Biological Psychiatry which
Speaker 1: found that to thirty three percent of bolimics and anorexics
Speaker 1: do have substance abuse problems. And since this was really
Speaker 1: highlighted on college campuses, Adam Barry, who was a professor
Speaker 1: of health, education and behavior at the University of Florida,
Speaker 1: published in two thousand and ten the most comprehensive study
Speaker 1: on drunk arexia came out in the Journal of American
Speaker 1: College Health, and he looked at twenty two college students
Speaker 1: at forty different universities, and he found that controlling for
Speaker 1: factors of race, school year, Greek affiliation, and on campus living,
Speaker 1: vigorous exercise, and disordered eating uniquely predicted binge drinking, so
Speaker 1: clearly that relation ship has been established. And for researchers
Speaker 1: for substance abuse counselors and eating disorder researchers, now the
Speaker 1: psychological and neurological links between eating disorders and substance abuse
Speaker 1: is something that researchers are looking deeper into because they're
Speaker 1: starting to understand how they put They fit so closely
Speaker 1: together because food can function addictively in the same way
Speaker 1: as drugs and alcohol. But for treating someone who is
Speaker 1: dealing with an extreme eating disorder and with a substance
Speaker 1: abuse problem, it can be challenging to unravel because with
Speaker 1: eating disorder, you're telling them to start consuming something, but
Speaker 1: to treat the substance abuse that you're telling them to
Speaker 1: stop consuming something. So it's a challenging set of things
Speaker 1: to overcome. And um, when it comes to bulimia, for instance,
Speaker 1: they might be using alcohol to purge, or for anorexics,
Speaker 1: they might be drinking to calm anxiety. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: this is one of the newer aspects of of these
Speaker 1: treatment centers. Yeah, very multifaceted treatment that you have to
Speaker 1: definitely be careful with. Now we've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of like contributing factors to why it's happening. You know,
Speaker 1: people wanting to save money and get drunk faster, people
Speaker 1: wanting to save calories so they'll be thinner. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: soothing social anxiety. And you know, it's all part of
Speaker 1: a binge drinking culture on campus. But it's also part
Speaker 1: of a huge disgusting weight loss industry. Like inexcusable diet
Speaker 1: alcohol marketing. I can't stand up marketing marketing. It promotes
Speaker 1: the connection between drinking and wait, and this was discussed
Speaker 1: in an article in the Atlantic by Yacoba Urus. Then
Speaker 1: the theory is that diet alcohol adds encouraged teens and
Speaker 1: college students to engage in this troubling behavior that more
Speaker 1: and more experts are referring to as drunk orexia. And
Speaker 1: so it's actually getting more and more uh, actual academic
Speaker 1: attend show. Yeah, and for women especially one to start
Speaker 1: referred to these new marketing tactics as like Virginia Slims
Speaker 1: all over again, because they're saying for years, if you
Speaker 1: think about beer advertisements, for instance, uh. A lot of
Speaker 1: times the legacy advertising for that cast women in a
Speaker 1: more objective light, shall we say, But now it's like
Speaker 1: marketers are just finally figuring out that, oh wait, women
Speaker 1: like booze so but women also want to be slim,
Speaker 1: so we can open up this whole new market for it.
Speaker 1: And they usually distinguish between two different types of these,
Speaker 1: diet or healthy I don't even want to call it
Speaker 1: healthy alcohol, where you have like the fitness kind of
Speaker 1: ab where you have the fitness ads such as something
Speaker 1: for like um, the low calorie beers where it will
Speaker 1: usually be and these always make me laugh because it's
Speaker 1: usually showing someone who is still sweaty from working out
Speaker 1: and pounding a beer, which which I'm like, I if
Speaker 1: I don't, I can't think about alcohol after I finish
Speaker 1: a jog um. But then you also have the more
Speaker 1: straight up diet marketing four things that are a lot
Speaker 1: of times targeted to women as local pre mixed options
Speaker 1: like Bethany Frankel's Skinny Girl cocktail mixes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah Yeah. Jacoba Rus in the Atlantic called out that
Speaker 1: that brand a lot, because it mean it is one
Speaker 1: she's She's made a ton of money off of it. Obviously, Um,
Speaker 1: it's working. And I have had a skinny girl margarita
Speaker 1: and it was wasn't It was refreshing, it was acceptable. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had it right after I got done jogging. Now
Speaker 1: you were running a race and somebody handed a cup
Speaker 1: out instead of water, it was and that skinny girl. Well,
Speaker 1: I poured the first one all over my face, like yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I and then I drank another one to
Speaker 1: make the my cramps go away. Well. David Joern again
Speaker 1: had a really pragmatic attitude about this. He's the director
Speaker 1: of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said, there's no
Speaker 1: question that the alcohol industry is presenting their goods to
Speaker 1: women as their their diet products, because that's what sells well.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing too, We've talked a lot in
Speaker 1: this podcast about how, oh, this is something happening on
Speaker 1: college campuses. These young women, they're being duped into drinking
Speaker 1: locale things. This is not just on college business, Caroline.
Speaker 1: I can speak anecdotally in that absolutely there is this
Speaker 1: connection in our brains. I mean, just think about the
Speaker 1: term beer belly, about how I mean, obviously, if you
Speaker 1: drink a lot, you are going to gain weight, because
Speaker 1: it's the same thing is if you if I drink
Speaker 1: a six pack of Coca Cola every day, I'll have
Speaker 1: a coke belly and I will always smell very surplus.
Speaker 1: It's cute. I don't know, I feel like that I
Speaker 1: would always have burbs. But it's not the idea of
Speaker 1: drinking on an empty stomach or like a little happy hours.
Speaker 1: You know, if you leave work and if you stop
Speaker 1: by a bar before you get to dinner, that can happen.
Speaker 1: Um and things like skinny Girl margharite is. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like it's so much marketed to younger girls on campus,
Speaker 1: but women are age, it's not it's it's not just
Speaker 1: a college thing, which is the only reason why I
Speaker 1: find drunk orexia being now spun out into something that's
Speaker 1: just a phase that college kids will go through, because
Speaker 1: it's I feel like it's far more wide reaching than
Speaker 1: just that. Yeah, but there there are some serious implications.
Speaker 1: I mean we've we've mentioned the health stuff and the
Speaker 1: eating disorder stuff, but I mean, you have to think
Speaker 1: about what you're doing to your body when you're not
Speaker 1: putting actual vitamins and minerals and drinking a mimosa doesn't
Speaker 1: count the O janet now, although I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it's better to drink a mimosa than like just straight
Speaker 1: gen or something. But uh, you know, I mean we
Speaker 1: have issues of drinking on an empty stomach, that there's
Speaker 1: a faster absorption rate of alcohol into the bloodstream, which
Speaker 1: leads to that higher level of impairment and intoxication, which
Speaker 1: has some definite health implications. It could actually make you unhealthy,
Speaker 1: but it also puts women in particular at higher risk
Speaker 1: for sexual assault and things like d U. I yeah,
Speaker 1: researchers often worn women, especially against things like drinking on
Speaker 1: an empty, empty stomach just because we tend to metabolize
Speaker 1: alcohol faster a lot of times, we have less body
Speaker 1: fat than men do, and so our level of impairment
Speaker 1: might be even higher. We're at a higher risk of
Speaker 1: something like blacking out that can according to research. There
Speaker 1: was a two thousand eleven in University of Missouri study
Speaker 1: which highlighted this which puts us at a higher risk
Speaker 1: for violence, for engaging in risky sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning,
Speaker 1: and chronic disease later in life. If we're doing this
Speaker 1: a bunch, we're beating our bodies up the inside, no
Speaker 1: matter what our waistline is, because this puts us at
Speaker 1: high risk of gas, stritius, ulcers, and malnutrition down the road.
Speaker 1: And yeah, sure, sometimes you know, you might not eat
Speaker 1: a big lunch and you might go have a martini
Speaker 1: after work, and that's gonna happen. But it's it's this
Speaker 1: whole chronic issue, the chronic binge drinking and also motivating
Speaker 1: yourself to do so, telling yourself it's okay to do
Speaker 1: that if you did intentionally not eat as much during
Speaker 1: the day, right well. Another study from the Journal of
Speaker 1: American College Health looked at students at ten different universities,
Speaker 1: and of more than four thousand participants, thirty nine percent
Speaker 1: of students who drank within the past thirty days reported
Speaker 1: restricting calories on days they planned on drinking. They looked
Speaker 1: at the gender aspect of it of these four thousand
Speaker 1: participants and found that women drunk or x X were
Speaker 1: more likely to experience those negative alcohol related consequences such
Speaker 1: as memory laws and unwanted sexual advances, whereas men who
Speaker 1: reported this behavior were much more likely to get into
Speaker 1: fights oh yeah, And there was anecdotally In one article
Speaker 1: they were talking to a couple of college guys about
Speaker 1: binge drinking on an empty stomach and the blackout aspect,
Speaker 1: and they weren't happy about it. I mean, they still
Speaker 1: did it. They did had no plans to stop, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I I knew guys like this. I was
Speaker 1: in you know, social circles like this when I was
Speaker 1: in college, where it's totally accepted and expected it On
Speaker 1: the weekend, you're going to go. And even though so
Speaker 1: many times it ended up with just not feeling good
Speaker 1: about yourself, you still did it. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: the question. It's like, we know we're doing things that
Speaker 1: are harmful to ourselves, Why why do we continue doing it?
Speaker 1: And even though again drunk orexia might sound like a throwaway,
Speaker 1: buzzy term, Dr Harris Straightener, who was the vice press
Speaker 1: and of the Care and Treatment Centers, told Glamour magazine
Speaker 1: that he thinks it should get a nod in the
Speaker 1: d s M, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, because he said,
Speaker 1: quote in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Speaker 1: we look at different factors that influence other disorders and
Speaker 1: I think it's time to give this trend a paragraph
Speaker 1: in the manual. It's a definer of a particular eating disorder.
Speaker 1: So you might think, oh, well, but you know, Monday
Speaker 1: through Thursday, I'm eating plenty and I go to the gym.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just Friday, Friday and Saturday. You know.
Speaker 1: But still I feel like that's you know, it's uh,
Speaker 1: if it's happening every weekend, every week, then it's something
Speaker 1: to think about. Yeah. He also pointed out that this
Speaker 1: chronic behavior, this chronic drunk corexia, can deplete your potassium
Speaker 1: and have such an incredibly bad effect on your heart
Speaker 1: that it could eventually lead to cardiac arrest. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: so if you're doing this constantly, even if it is
Speaker 1: just on the weekend, I mean, if it's every weekend, ah,
Speaker 1: that's the it's really really bad for you. And I
Speaker 1: mean also if you're a student, or if you're just
Speaker 1: a person who sits at a desk and looks at
Speaker 1: a computer, I mean, it can cause a lot of
Speaker 1: difficulty concentrating, studying and making decisions. And we're not trying
Speaker 1: to be alarmist over this. I just think, at least
Speaker 1: for me reading it It was a good reminder. Even
Speaker 1: though I am years away from being in college, it's
Speaker 1: still a good reminder to think about what we put
Speaker 1: into our bodies and how how we treat ourselves. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh, Without getting too personal, this past weekend, I
Speaker 1: accidentally was drunk or xx. Yeah you know, I went.
Speaker 1: I went out for for cocktails, didn't you know? Had
Speaker 1: it had been a while since I'd eaten, had a
Speaker 1: little too much to drink, went home and just fell asleep,
Speaker 1: didn't eat dinner. And you know, it's like I felt
Speaker 1: so much worse the next day than I would have
Speaker 1: had I just done the normal pattern of like have
Speaker 1: a good dinner, go out and have some cocktails, go home,
Speaker 1: drink some water, and have a good night's sleep. It
Speaker 1: was awful. It like me up for the rest of
Speaker 1: the weekend. Oh yeah, and drinking on an empty stomach too.
Speaker 1: It's a thing of how it hits you so much faster,
Speaker 1: at least it does with me. It's like I'll have
Speaker 1: a glass of wine or a cocktail and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there's no in between of say, oh well,
Speaker 1: I feel a little more relaxed. It's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I I hope I am walking in a straight line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just, you know, it's just not a good
Speaker 1: thing to do to your bodies. But I want to
Speaker 1: hear though about this because I have a feeling there
Speaker 1: are probably people in college you're listening who know exactly
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, and people out of college to
Speaker 1: the whole idea of saving calories for drinking instead of eating.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I guess how do we make
Speaker 1: sense of all this? What is your experience with it?
Speaker 1: Do you think that it's being overblown? Do you think
Speaker 1: it's just something that you know, kids will be kids
Speaker 1: and do what they want to do on those crazy
Speaker 1: college campuses, or is this something that, like Dr Harris
Speaker 1: Straightener told Glamor magazine that it needs to get more
Speaker 1: clinical recognition. Is something that is going on. Let us
Speaker 1: know your thoughts on drunk orexia. Mom Stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com is where you can send your emails. You
Speaker 1: can also message us on Facebook or tweet us at
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of letters
Speaker 1: to read for you when we get right back from
Speaker 1: a little break. And now back to our letters, Kristen,
Speaker 1: I have a message here from Cody, who was struck
Speaker 1: by something that was said in our John Rock Inventing
Speaker 1: Birth Control episode. Cody says, I will buy and then
Speaker 1: proudly wear a shirt that says, quote, keep coke on
Speaker 1: ice and not in your vagina. Thank you ladies for
Speaker 1: making my drive home pleasant despite the other incompetent drivers,
Speaker 1: and you were so welcome. And if somebody wants to
Speaker 1: make us that shirt, I also will wear it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's like an epitaph in the making. Two Karen
Speaker 1: the Irvan quotes keep coke on ice and not im
Speaker 1: your vagina. More brilliant words have never been spoken. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean really like for so many reasons, one of
Speaker 1: which is just like, I mean, you want a cold
Speaker 1: Coca cola, right right, and and so many reasons, so many. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got one here in response to our episode on
Speaker 1: Plan B, which I mean, I really think that President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama must listen to stuff I've never told you.
Speaker 1: Because the day that our episode on Plan B restrictions,
Speaker 1: in which we advocated for the White House to remove
Speaker 1: age restrictions from access to Plan B, Barry said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, christ and Caroline said, take him away.
Speaker 1: Let's take him away. So so that's um, that's not
Speaker 1: what actually happens, but I like to think it is.
Speaker 1: But this email, though, is coming from a listener who
Speaker 1: would like to remain anonymous, and she writes, I'm a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old who became sexually active at four teens,
Speaker 1: and luckily I was already on birth control. While I'm
Speaker 1: very lucky to have understanding parents in a good support networks,
Speaker 1: some of my friends are in more difficult situations. A
Speaker 1: lot of them did not have easy access to birth control, condoms,
Speaker 1: and other products that keep sex safe. However, many of
Speaker 1: them still have sex. And you are correct in saying
Speaker 1: kids are gonna do what they're gonna do, because currently
Speaker 1: I have two friends who use a double dose of
Speaker 1: birth control in the morning and at night the day
Speaker 1: after they accidentally have unsafe sex as an emergency contraceptive,
Speaker 1: which is effective but not well regulated. It's very very
Speaker 1: important for plan being other forms of birth control and
Speaker 1: emergency contraceptives to be readily available for teenage girls. Teens,
Speaker 1: even young teens, are more sexually active than adults want
Speaker 1: to accept, and these products would not increase the amount
Speaker 1: of sex teens have, but decrease the rate of unwanted
Speaker 1: pregnancies and unsafe sex. I also wish that more people
Speaker 1: would listen to the voices of those that these changes
Speaker 1: would affect the most young teenage girls when talking about
Speaker 1: this controversy over Plan B. Unfortunately, many do not value
Speaker 1: the opinions of women and especially young girls. So thank
Speaker 1: you for covering this topic that affects many women and
Speaker 1: trans men. She nets so good news that those restrictions
Speaker 1: to Plan B have been lifted, the age restrictions. So
Speaker 1: I also like to credit the moment I shared with
Speaker 1: Kathleen Sibelius on an airplane from Detroit to Traverse City, Michigan,
Speaker 1: where we we shared a look that was probably it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's probably like, oh my god, remember that time that
Speaker 1: Caroline and I rolled our eyes together at that sixteen
Speaker 1: year old who was talking loudly on our phone. I
Speaker 1: need to make Plan B more available to that sixte
Speaker 1: year old. Really appreciate it. Well, thanks to Kathleen Sebelius
Speaker 1: and Barack Obama and everybody else for listening to this podcast. Mom.
Speaker 1: Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
Speaker 1: letters or you can message us on Facebook. Like I said,
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