The Long Road Back, A Survivors Guide to Anorexia (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Speaking as a recovered anorexic and offering informed advice to others with the condition, Sargent presents a strong critique of the treatment she received during the 10 years she was afflicted with anorexia nervosa. She was first hospitalized at the age of 15, after it became clear to her mother that she was endangering her health by refusing to eat. The punitive behavior modification program she underwent (family visits were denied if she failed to gain weight) foreshadowed years of hospitalizations that she contends did nothing to ease her condition. Sargent vividly portrays uncaring staff who subjected her to painful tube feedings when she wouldn't eat. She also describes how she rebelled by drinking water to increase her weight, by running away and, with another patient, by playing practical jokes on a hated hospital physician. After other psychologists prescribed drugs and electroconvulsive therapy, Sargent twice attempted suicide. Not until she was admitted to a facility where the staff was supportive and non-judgmental did she begin to recover. Sargent also credits a therapist who treated her as an individual rather than an anorexic, her conversion to Roman Catholicism and the unstinting support of her mother as important to her recovery. Although her writing is at times awkward, Sargent honestly depicts herself, in the throes of her illness, as a young woman who was stubborn, manipulative and difficult to treat. Now a nurse, she intends to work with others who are afflicted with eating disorders.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Many people picture the anorexic as overly serious, but Sargent has a lively sense of humor that probably assisted in her cure and certainly brightens her worthwhile book. Her twin brother became autistic, and that, along with already strained relations between the parents, led to a stressful family life and, ultimately, separation and divorce. Feelings of guilt about causing her parents' problems and feelings about her brother may have pushed Sargent toward anorexia, for eating and her weight were about the only things she felt she could control. Only after four hospitalizations did she finally find a sympathetic doctor and a partial cure. More hospital stays and another understanding physician brought about final discharge. The comforting surroundings of a Catholic college led her to convert and to an education and a career in nursing. In addition to being highly personal, the book offers many practical suggestions to anorexics, their family members, and health professionals. William Beatty

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: North Star Publications (MA) (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880823195
• ISBN-13: 978-1880823194
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #968,946 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for current sufferers, November 25, 1999

By A Customer

While in a treatment program for anorexia, I read this book hoping that it would be an inspirational tale of Sargent's recovery from this possessing disease. While the book was a definite page-turner full of feelings and situations I could completely relate to, it unfortunately lacked adequate explanation of her path to recovery.

All in all, I think this is a great book for family members or friends who want to understand the mind of an anorexic however, I would not reccommend it to sufferers looking for answers or guidance.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The awful pain of anorexia, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

As an anorexic of several years, I was deeply affected by this book's account of another's suffering with the same disease. I alternately cried and was filled with anger by the descriptions of the often barbaric "treatments" the author was forced to endure. I have been in such treatment centers, where the people who are supposed to be helping instead make patients feel less than human, by watching them eat as if it were a circus sideshow and referring to them by numbers instead of names. These people think that the only thing an anorexic has to do to get better is to eat and gain weight, and that's it. Wrong, wrong, wrong, as this book shows, and it's high time people started realizing it. No one starves herself to make someone else suffer, or as a way of getting what she wants. Anorexia is a terrible, terrible disease that makes you want to just die. If you know someone who's suffering from this hell of a disease, treat that person with the utmost love, respect and compassion. Read this book to help you understand: No one CHOOSES to be anorexic, and no matter how many times the anorexic says, "Leave me alone, I'm fine," she really does want help, deep down. It just has to be the right kind of help.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Map of One Journey Back from Anorexia!!!, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

Sargent herself identifies the key to the story of her struggle against anorexia: "Probably the most important turning point in my recovery was my decision to become an active participant in the process." The truth in this proactive perspective of personal responsibility is all the more intensified by a history of being subjected to unenlightened hospitalizations that seemed bent on robbing her of all dignity as the means to a purely mechanical process of weight restoration. Without excusing the cruelty and destructiveness of those treatment programs, Sargent's description of her descent into the hell of anorexia makes it clear that the worst abuse she suffered came from the torment of the eating disorder itself, that the toughest struggle was not against the medical system but against the suffocating embrace of the python anorexia. I found myself regretting not having been at the meeting just before her college graduation where, finally gaining freedom from the negativity and shame of her past, she proclaims, "Just remember that you have the ability to achieve anything you set your mind to."

Like a well-rounded, nutritious meal, Sargent supplements her personal account with tender poems written by her sister, a message from her mother, and an appendix stocked with astute practical advice on dealing with eating disorders. She dreams of directing profits from the sale of this book toward the founding of an eating disorder treatment center. If I had the means, I would put this book in every high school and college library, as much to aid her quest as to make her wisdom as broadly accessible as possible.