Past Ate Away At Bulimic Author Explains How Treatment Can Overcome One’s Addictions

Critically burned on her legs, thighs and stomach, 4-year-old Cynthia Rowland was scared and hurt because her parents wouldn’t visit her in the hospital.

She buried the memory. But it haunted her. It was one cause of a 12-year eating disorder that nearly killed her after she’d grown up to be a television reporter.

“On the surface, I was a career-oriented, assertive newswoman,” she said. “Underneath, I was dying. I wanted to put a gun to myself.”

She overcame bulimia when she was 28. Now 41, Cynthia Rowland McClure makes her living telling people how they can overcome their addictions.

McClure has written three books, including the “The Monster Within,” now in its 10th printing. North Idaho College counselor Donna Runge recommends the books to people struggling with addictions.

“She gives people hope,” Runge said.

McClure said she had no hope left 13 years ago. She couldn’t stop binge eating and purging.

“I’d been to 18 different doctors,” she said in an interview last week. “No one knew what to do.”

A friend’s suggestion led her to a Texas psychiatric hospital. There, she was kept away from laxatives, diet pills and diuretics. She began having flashbacks to traumatic times, such as her stay in the hospital after being burned by a homemade bedroom vaporizer.

“My parents didn’t come to see me. The things that the nurses and doctors did to me, in my 4-year-old mind I interpreted as rape.”

Her parents were horrified that she thought she had been deserted. They hadn’t been allowed in the burn unit.

There were other problems. “My father was a workaholic. My mother was passive.” Their daughter became a perfectionist who buried her feelings.

“I’m a firm believer that the person who has an addiction or eating disorder has something wrong inside them,” she said. “Why would someone want to hurt themselves to the point they just want to die?”

Many have been sexually abused, she said. Eating disorders get attention these days, McClure said, but a lot of treatment is superficial.

“There is more information, more awareness. But I still get horror stories from people who go to therapists who don’t know what they’re doing.”

Insurance companies are becoming less likely to pay for in-patient treatment, she said.

Breast cancer struck McClure two years after her bulimia cure. She’s convinced that the eating disorder, and a traumatic divorce at 18, weakened her body.

But she overcame the cancer, and is about to celebrate her 10th wedding anniversary. She has two sons.

“A person can get well if they’re sick of being sick,” she said, “and if they find a professional who will help them deal with the cause.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LECTURES Cynthia Rowland McClure will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene. The free lecture in Boswell Hall is open to the public. She’ll talk later this week to students at Coeur d’Alene’s two high schools. Her public lecture is sponsored by Pinecrest Hospital, the Coeur d’Alene School District and the Center for New Directions.