Essay Notes:
This essay was written late at night with minimal editing and written originally to be a YouTube script. It is written in an informal, to-the-reader type of style.
Introduction:
(hellos and whatnot)
Anyway, that’s not what this video is about. This video is about Centre Syracuse, so let’s get into it, and I’ll explain why I packed up and drove 2 hours home in the middle of the night because of a white board, and what I think was a predatory and incompetent system. This subject can be a little touchy for youtube, so I may try to censor myself in video, and even in the written essay as to not trigger anyone. Because i know I HATE the p word that goes with my particular disorder, so I don’t want to say it here and bother others with it, too.
So first off I want to make sure I say these are all my own opinions and personal experiences. I know some people have felt they were helped at the Centre, and this isn’t to invalidate their stories but rather to tell mine. This place is defunct now anyway, so I don’t think it matters but ya. These are my opinions, experiences, and feelings, allegedly. In my opinion.
Now I want do my best to explain Center Syracuse and what it actually is. First and foremost Centre Syracuse was, and I say was because it’s now closed, and we’ll get to that later… was an eating disorder IOP (Intensive Outpatient) clinic.
A lot of this is pretty new to me, I did as much research as I could for this video, but it’s been hard to find anything. They were privately owned so information is pretty limited. The Centre was in Suit 200 in a medical building in Syracuse. But from what I can find, they were a satellite location for the River Centre in Ohio, set up sometime around 2008 to 2009. River Centre Clinic was based in Sylvania, Ohio and was started by and centered (lol) around a model developed by Dr David M Garner. There was also one in Buffalo apparently as well, but I don’t know anything about that centre. His model focused on what is known as “Mechanical Eating”, which after researching, makes a lot of sense when I get to the rest of my actual story about this place. C.S. had several onsite medical team people there, like psychiatrists, nutritionists, therapists, whathave you, and our aids for when we needed to be watched while we ate or went to the bathroom, and we did different group therapies and one-on-ones. Basic IOP treatment center stuff I guess, Idk. This was my first and only encounter with one.
So, let me define mechanical eating a little bit, because I didn’t even know this had a name. But, mechanical eating is a way to take away the anxiety and stress of eating by having it predetermined by a clinic for the patient and everything is supposed to be temporary. Basically it’s supposed to help a new intake with refeeding, essentially. Again, this is something temporary to stabilize the patient and get their body back to a baseline and eventually transition to a more normal structure. However, this doctor, mr dr David Garner said oh no, that isn’t enough structure. The progtram was highly highly structured (WHICH MAKES NO SENSE TO ME). You eat a certain amount, at a certain time, in a certain time period- we were given an hour, no more and definitely no less either- again, I’ll get to that. At least in my experience, they were incredibly strict on calories, everything was freezer microwave food, processed, just gross food. For example, and I’ll say this here because this is just a silly complaint more than a real constructive one, one time they gave me something I actually liked, a frozen burrito…but then they put AMERICAN CHEESE on it so that the calories were exactly right. One of the grossest things I had to choke down there. Anyway, that’s mechanical eating and the general background of Centre Syracuse.
Now on to my story, and the issues I had with this place. So, I came across Centre online, late at night, after a really, really bad night. I was pretty much trying to convince myself I was ok, or maybe I was trying to convince myself I was sick, I have no idea. I don’t even remember exactly what I was searching- honestly it was probably like “ED quizzes” or something because I came to this website, and there was what I thought was a quiz. Now if you’re a millennial, then you know the chokehold online quizzes had on us. So I take this quiz, think nothing of it, go to sleep. Whatever. The next day I get a phone call, and it’s these people from the website I was just on, asking me about the FORM I FILLED OUT. Liiiiike what do you mean FORM? I filled out a silly little Quiz, an lol “Am I At Risk” quiz. I did not fill out a form, but now I do be feeling duped at this point. Like, this is PREDETORY, am I wrong? It was literally set up like a fun little quiz, fill in your info and get your result kind of quiz. Which, in my research, is a normally used tactic for places like this to funnel people in. But anyway, the person is like ya, we are really concerned about your answers, we really think you should be here, but we don’t have a bed right at this moment. Mind you, there are no “beds”. Its IOP, there are apartments, or you drive your ass home at night, but I get it, short hand. So there’s no “beds” for at least a few weeks or a month, something like that.
But they want me to get my intake stuff started, so go ahead and get some blood and urine and whatever else tests I had to do at my GP, and send it to the centre. So I do that, it gets sent in, they receive it, pretty freakishly fast now that I think back on it. Like, girl blood tests are not that fast but ok. They call me I swear to god, in the same week, honestly it was probably next day. This all literally happened in a single week, and tell me that my vitals are shit. They’re supposedly SO bad that they’re MAKING a bed happen for me, and I need to come in. Except it’s Friday, and they’re not open on weekends, so I had my intake that Monday. There’s a lot that went on between all that but that can be another story at another time, this is about centre, not me. Anyway… It was literally a week and I was in this eating disorder clinic that, mind you, insurance didn’t take. I was on my mom’s nice fancy insurance, and it did not take it. It was something crazy, I don’t even remember because my mom paid it, a couple hundred dollars a day or something, and this is 2010, so thats a lot of damn money. It is now, but it definitely was back then too. And honestly, letting centre slide on this one, but that was a part of the reason I felt like I had to leave. Like my mom was paying for this crazy place for no good reason, out of pocket, because I can’t keep my food down. Anyway, so my vitals are bad, I get brought down to Centre on Monday, learn how to find my way around this little part of Syracuse. My mom stayed with me the first night or two I dont remember, but she stayed with me for a bit to help me get settled in. And boom, now I’m there.
So, here’s where the mechanical eating part starts. So, at centre, when you are first admitted, you have 0 privileges at all. You can’t even eat outside of Centre time, I wasn’t even allowed to drink redbull. Literally no calories. So Centre started at 11am, so I had to wait for 11am to go to centre, and then we had to do weigh ins first thing….Which, I understand. From a medical standpoint, I do understand. But as someone who’s life was already ruled by a scale, it was pretty ridiculous to have to immediately step on one. We weren’t of course allowed to know what it said, but still. It dictated your day and your meal plans. Then we finally got to eat, and here’s where it really was awful. So we would eat at 11:30am, and then sometime in the afternoon, and then we would have dinner at like 5pm, and we would eat until 6, decompress for a half hour (so we would be less likely to engage in symptoms or whatever they used to call doing ED things). So when I got there they had me on an 1800 calorie diet, which I had to fit in in that time span as someone who normally fasted, or did the complete opposite. And we had to eat in an hour. Not in a half hour, not ten minutes, not 45 minutes, not 1 and a half hours….1 hour. Too fast, you got called out for displaying symptoms (I really wish I could remember the actual term they used, maybe thats it, idk), too slow, you also got called out for it. This was difficult for several reasons, one being I have eaten fast my whole life and still do. Is it ED related? No idea. My family always ate fast, thats how we eat. So trying to make something stretch an entire hour was absolute torture. I HATE when my hot food gets cold. I cannot handle it, its so gross to me, and we weren’t allowed to microwave it because it probably was a symptom or something i have no idea. And the craziest part, besides being absolutely meticulous about calories, was they did not care where those calories came from. Like they had us eating straight up TV dinner type meals. The most ultra over processed, awful bad for you food. And I’m no orthorexic, I don’t care about that stuff, but like, come on. Not a real vegetable anywhere? Really? A slice of barely melted american cheese on my lukewarm frozen burrito????? Eff off with that nonsense. Literally. The new intakes couldn’t make their own meal plans, and I never got to that part, but I do remember the younger girls that were there, sitting together on one chair, going through the list on the computer and making their meal plans to the exact calorie. Because that’s super duper healthy for anorexic teenagers who are obsessed with counting calories. See where I’m going here? All of this was so unintuitive. Like, I’ve been spending the last 16 years deconstructing my teeny tiny small ass stay there, but even back then, I knew this shit was FISHY. It was uncomfortable, it made absolutely no sense to me, to have us obsess over calories when we’re literally in there for being obsessed with calories. But I digress. So we would eat in this tiny window of the day, an entire 1800 calories. Which was fine when I was just going to (finger/mouth motion) it up anyway. But doing it there and having to keep it down was HARD. Like I would be trying to swallow a bite of food while the last bite was working its way back up my throat. Like they were meeting in the middle. It was AWFUL. Like by the end of the dinner, it was so so hard for me to physically eat this food, especially when it was so gross and not even hot. Hindsight it could have been a lot because of refeeding type stuff but idk. I was a bulimic, I could eat food no problem. Like I didn’t do it after every single meal- But then so, I go and I tell my therapist during a session, who was also like, the head lady there, and she looks at me dead in the eye and says “I can eat that much. It’s no problem for me.” and I was just like…stunned? Like…Ok? And I can’t so….? What do we do here? And she absolutely just dismissed me, downplayed my feelings, and honestly at the time felt like, damn she’s challenging me wtf? It was all around just…kind of mean, idk. Another point for why I do not participate in or believe in talk therapy….but anyway. So then we’d go home, or to our apartments, and I was new so I couldn’t eat again until 11am the next day. Like, that’s full-on just intermittent fasting. So that was basically it for the mechanical eating. And from what I see online, that’s the general thoughts on this method. It’s just completely unhelpful, and is honestly just…gross microwave food. Which i love, dont get me wrong, if I didnt have a husband that made me food, that’s what I’d be eating. But that’s not sustainable, that shouldn’t be something we’re taught to use. Honestly researching for this essay/video, really popped a bubble for me in the sense that I did not know this was an actual named and formal type of eating structure for ED patients. Like it had a name and a reason, and idk that was sort of a moment of “oh shit, this shit WAS fucked up on purpose”
I dont want to get much into like, the regular people there and stuff. I really liked my one lunch aid, and that was it. But, the medical staff was very unprofessional. And not just with me, from what I saw online, there was too much boundary crossing in the therapy sessions. I never experienced that, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. I did have some weird things that I went through with the medical staff there. Mainly the psychiatrist, and eventually the nutritionist. So my psychiatrist. LOL. Wow, that was the craziest, most stupid thing I had ever been apart of. Mind you, at this time, I am currently enrolled for my 2nd semester of college for psychology. So honestly, already not a fan of the psychiatrists in general, but I freshly know what is going on here. Like I just had a class on this shit, you’re not fooling me. In her assessment, which lead to a very very improper diagnosis of BIPOLAR TYPE 2, was asking me if I ever stayed up the entire night, EVEN JUST ONE NIGHT. Again, I am like, 21. Yes. I have pulled an all nighter. So I answer, like well, ya, of course, everyone my age and as a teenager all the time, like, of course I’ve stayed up til the sun rose. And she goes OH! That’s HYPO MANIA. ……
Now, she didn’t ask me if I was TIRED during that. She didn’t ask what I was doing at those times, or what kept me up. Otherwise she would know that I was dead tired doing it, and was usually just being a teenager on the internet, or at a sleepover. Or out drinking with friends. Like what do you mean staying up all night means i’m manic?????? That’s not how it works???? So then, here’s the big one. This one honestly is one of the main reasons I am making this, but also the white board, but we’ll get the board. But this woman told me I had two options. Option A, is take wellbutrin, but that it will, and remember this part, that it will make me GAIN weight. Again, option A is wellbutrin but it will make you gain weight. Option B, is Lamictal. And for anyone that doesn’t know, lamictal is a very temperamental drug. You have to take it at the exact exact exact time every day, you cannot miss a dose, you can not take more or less, etc etc, its a very serious anti psychotic and anti seizure medication. She tells me, you can either take the gain weight pill, or, you can take the pill that MIGHT give you a DEADLY SKIN RASH and you must text me a photo of ANY redness on your skin at any point on this medication. Obviously I chose the death rash. And back then, my train of thought, having no idea about what side effects are for these things, idk, i wasnt a big fan of meds at that point bc so many had been really bad for me, and she said oh that’s because you’re BIPOLAR so anti depressants wont work. In reality I have pretty severe OCD, and its treated VERY WELL with my anti depressant, fluoxetine/prozac. But again, I digress. So back then, I’m thinking this dumb bitch just asked me, a person with an eating disorder, if I want to take the fat pill or the other pill. Obviously I’m not taking the fat pill, woman. But ok, here’s the kicker ok. Years later, guess what I get put on? Wellbutrin (and prozac bc my depression and OCD and everything was that bad, i was closely monitored, this is NOT a normal or usually accepted mixture but my depression was untouchable at the time)- and don’t you know it, a side effect of it is actually…weight loss. And I did in fact lose weight. So, I’ve had a really hard time deconstructing this one. Because on one hand, that is a fucking weird way to offer medicine to someone. Like, literally weaponizing one of an ED patients biggest fears?? Is that normal? To be like, here’s two choices, two completely different medications and applications, its up to you, the patient? But then on the other hand, when I learned that wellbutrin does not in fact make you gain weight, its like oh, was she trying to make sure I didn’t get triggered or whatever, that it didn’t make me lose weight and enjoy it and abuse it etc etc etc. So I’ve really been kind of struggling with that whole thing in my head. Like, what was her aim here, why did she do it like that? So that was psychiatry. Super fun. Never saw her after that, and (stupidly) stopped the lamictal immediately after I left. Blah blah. Like, I have OCD, I don’t need an antipsychotic. Not then. Maybe now lmao but not then.
So that I guess leads me to just a few general grievances I had while I was there. This is probably truly just a me problem. But the group therapies. That was… That was rough. I think group therapy could be really really good for literally any other disorder except the one that is literally half a competition in a way. Like, let’s take a room full of girls, 15 to 63, and have them talk about our eating disorder experience. Our oldest person there was a binge eater, and the rest of them, like, 4 teens and 3 women that were in like, their 40s or 50s, were all anorexics, and then my roommate was like, 30 I think, and she was a mostly recovered anorexic as well. And then me, the EDNOS turned bulimic 21 year old, and we have to sit there and talk about our disorders. It was honestly the most triggering part of my entire day, listening to the young girls talk about how they cant eat, and the older woman saying she just can’t stop. I don’t know what good that was supposed to be for any of us, it really was an awful and triggering time. And the really hard part was I was the only one my age. So, we’d have group with everyone, and then group with our age group. So I was actually bouncing between the adult group and the teen group depending on the area of focus that day. Like I was talking about adult things in one room, and literally making a macaroni and yarn face of my mother in the other one. Absolutely wild. I’m sure it would have been different if there were more people my age, we’d probably have had our own thing. But I dont know.
Something as triggering and awful though was movie time! It was like, either after first meal or first group, either way, we had movie time. And at movie time we watched…You guessed it. Every single video that all of us in the eating disorder communities on livejournal were passing around as thinspo. I’m not going to name any of them, I don’t want people searching them out and potentially triggering themselves. But if you were in the ED scene in the early to late 2000s, you know the videos and documentaries I’m talking about. Yes, even that one (in the video I should show my finger with the NEDA symbol tattooed for a iykyk moment). Like, I dont even have to expand on that, or why that’s bad. Basically it was just videos about girls with eating disorders. Like iykyk.
So, all this goes on for a few days, we get to like, day 4, and I’m getting weighed. And the nurse looks pissed. I’m like, ok whatever. I hate this too, lady. Later I get called into the nutritionist’s office. And she looks disappointed. So I sit down, and she tells me that I have lost weight. And instead of using her brain and realizing that taking a bulimic who would intake thousands upon THOUSANDS of calories in a single sitting, that yes while I tried to get rid of it, we all know you’re still absorbing most of it, like it really is a stupid disorder to have honestly. Like it doesn’t do anything for your weight, but my OCD loved it. So anyway, take a bulimic, and put her on a strict 1800 calorie diet, make her intermittently fast…Like ya, I’m going to drop weight. And, just an aside really, but that made me super fucking happy??? So I went and bought a contraband scale to weigh myself and I had in fact lost like 10lbs. Insane. But anyway, so she’s sitting there, blaming me, saying i MUST be doing something. I MUST be working out when I’m not supposed to, or engaging in symptoms. And now I’m pissed. Like you people literally listen to me pee and poop, you know I’m not taking laxatives, or the other thing, I was following everything so closely, except when mom left i started to get the non sugar free red bull BUT STILL. Everything else I followed. So later they upped my calories, i cried into my rice pudding it was a whole thing. But guess what they put in my meal plan? A freaking single poptart. And it had to be the strawberry specifically because of the nutrition facts? Like what? Number one, still cant believe i cried over a poptart, i always have and still do love a good poptart. Hot, cold, whatever, love them. But also, I can’t believe they added a POPTART of all things.
Now that brings me to the day I left. Again, I’m leaving out a lot, this was supposed to be more of a commentary and criticism of the program (everyone called it “The Program” there, it was weird.) So we get to or 2 pm, and we’re in mini group therapy, it’s me and the teenagers, and the therapist is up front, in front of the white board, and she draws a line down the middle, and then aline across up top. And she writes… I’m literally not kidding. She writes, “Pros and Cons” and she turns to us and says now, give me some pros and cons of having and eating disorder. Now again, hindsight, looking back. This could possibly, if done carefully and responsibly, a good exercise. You could give a pro, the therapist could contest that, and discussion can ensue. That was not this. Oh no no no. This was straight up, pros and cons. And after about 10 minutes, we had like idk, I want to say 15, thats a number that sticks with me, so 15 pros. And I shit you not, we had THREE cons. And one of them was that YOUR JEANS GET TOO BIG AND THEY DON’T FIT. Literally. I don’t even think we had death on the list. It was literally all very superficial, I think one of the others was it makes people sad. Like give me a fucking break. I sat there and looked at that list. No pushback from the therapist, no conversation, nothing. And man, I am almost positive my ass literally asked her whats the point if there’s only 3 cons. Like wtf are we doing here? And like, in my head it was like no seriously, wtf am I doing here, looking at 3 stupid unimportant cons, while my mom is paying god knows how much to have me here, I put my bank account into overdraft by like $4,000 because the ATM just kept working and I just kept….being bulimic, and I have been nothing but triggered this entire time. So I came up with a quick excuse to leave, said I’d be right back, whatever.
Now like I said, I left a lot out of the story, but during the weekend my finger had gotten infected from a cat bite that none of us knew you were supposed to IMMEDIATELY seek medical care for but…again I digress. So I had to get intravenous antibiotics for a second time that day, but the ER said I could wait until after program. But they didn’t know that. So I was like, oh, shoot and darn it. I have to go to the ER and get my antibiotics for my finger, which was in a little finger brace all bandaged up lol. So shes like oh ok bye, and I left. I packed up my apartment, and I literally fled lol. Like BYE SEE YA. I took off. I did not in fact, come back. I went to the ER, did my thing, and I started to drive home. I think I got half way there and was stopped at walmart to get ~contraband~ I hadn’t been allowed in 2 whole weeks, and got a call from my one-on-one therapist asking where I was because I missed the end of program and my roommate told her my shit was gone, and I told her like ya, the program isn’t for me I had to go. I have to go home. And like, that was that. I do remember trying to call the older lady at one point. We had to have these binders, and part of the binders was all the contact information for everyone there, so we could call each other if we needed support or felt someone else needed it, whatever. I was worried about her because she just found out her dad wasn’t her real dad this whole time, she was having a ROUGH time with it, and I ya I was worried, so I remember trying to call her like, the next day at home but I don’t think she answered, honestly I dont remember. I don’t remember talking to her so, I probably didn’t, who knows.
And ya, that’s it. Centre Syracuse shut down in 2019 when the parent company was bought up by a new company. I didn’t look into that company at all, so I don’t know why it was shut down, there was no official announcement or anything. It was probably just because it was bought by new owners, and they terminated the satellite centres. I feel like there’s a lot more. And mind you, I think I was there 2 weeks, with weekends off. Like, I was not there very long lol. And this was 16 years ago now, going to be 17 years next april, So like, I really don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but these are the things that have just… Stuck with me. I’ve always been so curious about anyone else that participated in the program. Like, especially the girl that also left, except she left after taking my book I lent her. Like hey, that was my book, damn it. But no, on a serious note, I have always been curious of anyone else’s experience. Like it was an actual fever dream to me, it felt insane to me, and I have been trying to really deconstruct this whole thing. Like it probably sounds stupid, but like when you think about it, that was at one of the most horrible times of my illness, like ya I really DID need to be in treatment, but not that one. That one was awful. But as I get older, I’ve been mentally trying to parse through and really like I said, deconstruct everything from my past, and what I went through, and who I was. I have been wanting to write this down for…years. I had done a small video on it once before, but it was really under prepared and I didn’t do any type of research, or script like I am now, I just, did it. Actually, this is my first “script” for youtube, and it was going to be just an outline, and it turned into more of an essay to be honest. Hopefully when on camera I don’t sound too robotic, but I do really want to start making more structured videos like this. I very obviously have been having a hard time lately with filming on the fly after not doing so for many years, and I feel like scripting can help solve this. I’ll also have something else to put on my website, so that’s fun too. I was going to actually like, annotate this, and put in my references where I mention them, but instead I’m just going to list them at the end of this written doc, if anyone actually cares to read them lol.
If you made it this far into the essay/video, I want to thank you, remind you to hit subscribe if you’re hearing this on youtube, hit like, hype it if you wanna, idk. I hope this essay/video was at the very least, somewhat entertaining. And let me know if you went to CS, or if you went to one of the other centres they have. Or really if you had a similar experience anywhere. Like, the food thing, did anyone else have to go through mechanical eating in IOP? Anyway…
Thanks for listening to my ramblings and I hope to see you again soon!