Television mogul Kerry Washington has revealed that she contemplated suicide while battling an eating disorder.
In a clip from an upcoming Good Morning America interview for her memoir Thicker Than Water, out Sept. 26, Washington tells Robin Roberts about her past issues with food and body dysmorphia that led her to an extremely dark place.
“I was good at control,” Washington tells the GMA anchor. “I could party all night and drink and smoke and have sex and still show up and have good grades. I knew how to manage. I was so high-functioning. And the food took me out. Like, the body dysmorphia, the body hatred, it was beyond my control, and really led me to feeling like I need help from somebody and something bigger than me or I am in trouble, because I don’t know how to live with this.”
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She continues, “I could feel like the abuse was a way to hurt myself, as if I didn’t want to be here. It scared me that I could not want to be here because I was in so much pain.”
During the sitdown, Robert asks the actress if she ever contemplated suicide. Washington responds, “Yeah, the behavior was tiny, little acts of trying to destroy myself.”
The Scandal star has previously discussed her struggles with food and exercise, telling Oprah.com in 2004 that she began to use “food as comfort” after moving to Manhattan to pursue her acting dreams. In a 2009 Essence interview, she claimed that she would “eat anything and everything until she passed out.”
It seems like she’ll divulge more details about her health journey in Thicker Than Water.
“By the time I got to college, my relationship with food and my body had become a toxic cycle of self-abuse that utilized the tools of starvation, binge-eating, body obsession, and compulsive exercise,” Washington writes in a preview of her book.
Fortunately, the actress says her days of struggling with her diet are now behind her, as she’s learned to monitor her eating habits. She tells Roberts that “the bottom has gotten a lot “higher.”
“I wouldn’t say that I’d never act out with food,” she admits. “It’s just very different now. It’s not to the extreme. There’s no suicidal ideation. That is not where I am anymore.”
