The Monster Within: Overcoming Bulimia

by Cynthia Rowland McClure, Cynthia Joye Rowland

Cynthia Rowland was an award-winning television journalist who suffered in secret for more than twelve years. Obsessed with frenzied urges to eat, forced vomiting, and purges with laxatives and diuretics, she was close to death from an electroyte imbalance. She could consume up to twenty thousand calories a day and not gain weight. Suicide was often on Cynthia's mind. It seemed the only way to escape the hopelessness she left.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Psychology, Self Help

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mike, the therapist, is controlling, and the staff push too hard. They have tendencies to be abusive, as another reviewer stated. Seriously - accusing a rape victim (Carrie) of seducing her rapist, just so she'd admit the rape wasn't her fault?! That crosses a line. Mike also refers to Cynthia as 'damaged freight' throughout the book. She is a person, Mike. Not cargo.

Cynthia keeps playing therapist pretty much the whole book, even though she has her own problems to cope with. She consistently blames other people for her problems -- namely her family -- "... it's somebody's fault ... in many ways, it's your and dad's fault ..." Really, Cynthia? She needs to learn responsibility. Mike even seems to encourage this. Part of her blaming others, is her harsh treatment of her friends. She gets mad at them and takes her anger out on them, then feels guilty and wants forgiveness. She is very childish -- "you have never been desperate like me" -- as if she is the only one in her life with problems.

All in all, the book was interesting, but seemed a bit unrealistic. That may be due to the era the book was written, however -- so use your best judgement!

[Mags · Rating 3 out of 5]

i guess i can say i enjoyed this book? i found it heartbreaking at times and hit very close to home at parts. Certain aspects of the therapist and the staff came across as cold but overall i am glad i read it.

[Traceylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why

This is about a young women in a recovery program for her eating disorder. They helped her to realize what caused this and her family to cope with it.

[Isela Gutierrez]

A woman on a journey to attain better health and stop her eating disorder that has killed her life experiences. With the help of friends, family and God, she just might acquire her goal. Cynthia, a 28 year old woman has had bulimia for the longest time and has been binging and purging for 12 years. The Monster Within by Cynthia Rowland McClure, is a memoir that tells the story of Cynthia’s road to recovery from her struggles to learn what is causing it and the courage it takes to overcome it that emphasizes a lot on religion. Throughout the story, you will be memorizing the rehab center like the back of your hand because Cynthia, on most days, spends her time at this facility. The conflict of the book is trying to help Cynthia find a new way towards life without binging through her stay at the clinic. With the help of Dr. Gutierrez, she was able to come to terms with her life. In the end solving the problem and gaining her life back, but would she go back to binging? The solution to the problem was not as satisfying because things happen that she might have regretted or not. I believe Cynthia can overcome her bulimia and live the life she wants to live, but it is all up to her, she makes the choices.
The plot of the book stretches on forever and doesn’t actually end as you flip the pages. I feel like the conflict in the book just repeats itself over and over again. It's like you're making progress and then take two steps back and keep repeating the same process. It’s definitely an interesting story that I could have enjoyed, but I felt the sense of always reading the same segment. I started reading this book because it is informational and wanted to learn more about the people who go through bulimia. I enjoyed it at first, but during a span of weeks, my interest decreased, by then I was reading it by force. I would recommend this book to those who don’t mind Christianity and reading similar scenes each time you flip a page. After reading this book, I am going to keep on reading informational books with a story, but I will have to look at the reviews first before making a decision on what to read.

[Liralen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written -- and the author treated -- when there was a much narrower understanding of addiction and eating disorders that there is now. In some respects, it's a fascinating look back; in others, it's just frustrating. I have a hard time imagining that many of the theories presented as done deals here ('you're married to your brother!') would go over terribly well today. None of that is the author's fault, of course, but it did colour my reading of the book.

The bigger problem is in the telling. There's something of a manufactured distance to the way the author shares the parts of her story leading up to her illness. The book depicts her time in treatment, and she doesn't break out of that -- meaning that, to tell the story of (for example) being in hospital as a child, she tells the reader not what happened but how she told the others in the programme what happened. It's a significant difference, and we lose a lot of the detail, and a sense of immediacy, that way. It's impossible to know how much thought the author gave to structuring it that way, but for me it was a significant part of the difference between an okay book and a mediocre book.

[Max✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed by this book. I neglected to notice that this is a memoir about overcoming bulimia that is heavily influenced by religion. While Cynthia's emotions felt raw and genuine, I found the constant interspersions of prayers and bible verses distracting and took me out of the world of the inpatient hospital. I wish that the memoir was more focused, many chapters were notes on a similar theme; it doesn't seem like this book was edited at all. The book has a never ending middle and a nonexistent end. Cynthia purges mere days before she is released and then the book ends and she has miraculously recovered! I would have appreciated a follow up as to how she lives with the temptation to abuse drugs and purge on a daily basis or if these urges are gone. I was really let down my this book, it feels much more like a series of journal entries that need some cleaning up.

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated, at best.

Cynthia Rowland apparently suffered from bulimia for twelve years. The book opens with a brief description of her bingeing and purging routine and quickly moves on to a Christian rehab facility setting. The whole book is about Cynthia's experience in rehab. All she does is whine, cry, and blame others. She develops a crush on a married patient and forms friendships with several teenagers and otherwise acts like a child instead of a twenty-eight year old woman. Her therapist, Mike, is abusive and frankly I find his techniques disturbing. He repeatedly calls Cynthia "damaged freight" and encourages her to act like a child. He also encourages her to blame her eating disorder on her parents and her brother rather than taking responsibility for herself.

It's sad how misunderstood bulimia and anorexia were in the 1980s.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe it was the time or place, but this book was the first thing to push me onto the right track with my life. Sure, it wasn't a smooth easy track, and I jumped the track a few times, but it got me started so I owe a lot to this book. I didn't read it for quality or interestingness, but really was inspired, just a little.

[Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty decent book. Love the fact that she wrote it to help others. I also love the fact that she isn't one of the mopey people who feel bad for herself. She is a true heroine in my eyes.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hope this is the last memoir I read on eating disorders....yep. Moving on now.