Hi, I don't have an eating disorder, but I so feel for those of you who do. What a terrible struggle. I'm 51 years of age and the very first time I (and much of the world) heard of anorexia was when Karen Carpenter died...think it was 1983. Is there anyone here old enough to remember her death?

[NWgirl2013]

Yes, sad to see a young vibrant person waste away before our eyes. I read that her family tried very hard to help her. She was just so very ill. A tragedy at any age.

[0w6c379]

I love Karen's unique voice and songs. I'd rather listen to her than most of today's tunes. I did not understand anorexia then but if you listen to some of her songs, you can feel her pain as she searched for love.

Why couldn't a beautiful person like her find a man to love her?

[avlady]

i always wished i could just have a musical instrument she used , like her drums and piano. she was so sick mentally but didn't help herself, i wish i could have been there to help her

It hurts me every time I hear her magnificent voice...I think if only she could've lived for a few more years, ssri's and other meds became accessible and just might have saved her life.

[eskielover]

If I remember what I heard at the time (yep, I'm one of the old ones here at 60).....she was actually recovering at the time she died but had done so much damage to her body that it couldn't take it any longer....one of the reasons we can't just think that we'll be ok if we can just recover.....we always have to think of the damage we are doing to our bodies.....not something we think of when we are in the middle of the ED.....that's why so many keep reminding us.

[Yoda]

Originally Posted by eskielover

If I remember what I heard at the time (yep, I'm one of the old ones here at 60).....she was actually recovering at the time she died but had done so much damage to her body that it couldn't take it any longer....one of the reasons we can't just think that we'll be ok if we can just recover.....we always have to think of the damage we are doing to our bodies.....not something we think of when we are in the middle of the ED.....that's why so many keep reminding us.

true

I was in high school when she was popular. She had a one of kind voice. Such a tragic loss.

[0w6c379]

I can't resist posting my favorite song by Karen: (o.k. one of my top favs)

[eskielover]

These video's (part 1 & 2) are of the T she had the last year of her life talking about the chemical aspect of what she was dealing with. I'm summarizing in case the mention of her healthy weight at the time of her death is triggering.

Summary: She had been taking an extreme amount of laxitives.....Ipecac to make herself throw up....Ipecac in those large amounts she was using destroy the heart muscle.....& she was taking senthroid (sp?) a huge number of them when she didn't have a thyroid problem used to speed up her metabolism. All this put together = DEATH.

Add to that the sadness in her life at the time she died, she had just or was just going through the divorce from her husband that she had married in Aug 1980.

There is so much that goes into the illness of anorexia.....it's NOT just a simple matter of restricting.....& it is the chemicals that do the damage whether we want to admit it or not.....& it's the triggers in our life....for her she said her anorexia started when her brother went into Menningers in Topeka Kansas for treatment of chemical dependence......there is always some major trigger that is NOT necessarily body image in the first place.......while that's what it ends up being about, it's NOT what it's about in the beginning in most cases.

Eskielover...you're correct, I remember now. Word was Karen was recovering when she died. Documentaries I've seen nowadays indicate that the strain (bit of weight gain, etc.) of so-called recovery was just too much stress on Karen's heart and body. But, I'm not so sure she was really recovering, as at the time of her death she was consuming toxic amounts of Ipecac & the Synthroid.

[worthit]

My ex met David Carpenter and we both saw them in concert in the 70's. She had the most beautiful voice. I had an eating disorder in the 70's and spent 2 weeks in the hospital. Was very sad she passed even though seemingly to pull out of it.

Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk

[waggiedog]

Hello and Good Evening. Oh my word! It's so sad, what happened to Karen and I have to say, her family. I'm very sorry to say that unfortunately, I UNDERSTAND exactly what this illness did - - because I was suffering the disease at the time of Karen's death. Even worse, is the fact that I'm STILL suffering an eating disorder NOW, though it's not as dramatic these days as it was then. One important point is that it's not always apparent by a persons 'looks' that they have one of the ED's. Neither is it solely a disorder reserved for young girls, I'm a 55 year old woman and have had various ED's for over 35 years. Thankyou for your kind comments everyone. HUGZZ and LOVES, as ever. XXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Hi waggiedog, thanks for your awesome post

[willowbrook]

Like Waggiedog, I too was suffering an ED at the time of Karen Carpenter's death. I remember the announcement on the news and that it was the first time I'd heard the words 'Anorexia Nervosa' spoken on TV. I would have been 11 at the time, developed my ED at age 8, but I always felt I could relate and be empathic with people like Karen, and other Anorexics I would see in documentaries later on. It didn't occur to me until much later that what I was relating to in them, was what I had as well.

[Maranara]

Yes, from what I understand, she was well on her way to recovery, but the strain on her body had been too much and the damage had been done. She had weakened her heart and many other organs, and the damage could not be reversed.

[Douglas MacNeill]

Originally Posted by Sister Rags

Hi, I don't have an eating disorder, but I so feel for those of you who do. What a terrible struggle. I'm 51 years of age and the very first time I (and much of the world) heard of anorexia was when Karen Carpenter died...think it was 1983. Is there anyone here old enough to remember her death?

Truth telling, the first time any of us heard of anorexia nervosa was when
the coroner who performed the autopsy of Karen Carpenter cited anorexia nervosa as the primary cause of her death. When well-meaning people tried to force "the drummer who sang" (as she described herself) to be someone she wasn't, about the only way she could regain some sort of control over her life was through anorexia. Ever since then, people in my age cohort--our age cohort, Sister Rags--think of Karen Carpenter's fate as the price any of us could pay for giving in to other people's beliefs about what we should be or what we should become.

Yes, Karen's battle with her eating disorder certainly brought ED to the world as a very real, very deadly mental illness. Recently I watched a doc on The Carpenters and someone commented that the whole family was "an anxious family." Interesting.

[caseygirl]

I love "The "Carpenters" music to this day and prefer it over the stuff of today's music?? (I'm in my 50's). I watched a movie (think on YouTube) and it showed a part where they both performed, they were just new at the time, and a review came out the next day citing that they were "wonderful.....Richard on piano and his "chubby little sister".... She was extremely upset by those words and I wonder if that's what really set her off and was the beginning to the serious ED.

I was sad the day she died. You heard of her struggles, but back then they didn't talk about anorexia like they do now, and as the other posters have said, I believe she was in recovery at the time.

[eskielover]

Actually I was watching the YouTube I posted here of her T talking about what she had been going through & all the drugs/medications she was using that did the harm....but he also said that she said that her ED started at the point in time where she dropped her brother off at Menninger's (a psychiatric hospital in Topeka Kansas)....for a drug problem he needed to take care of.......sounded like it was that point that her world started to fall apart around her.....then once she got started.....& medications weren't something that didn't exists in her home.....she just got deeper & deeper into the ED.....I'm sure that those comments all weighed into her ED in the big picture.....but the actual point in time when it took hold was at that point with her brother.

ED's are very complex......there are so many things that go into the cause & each person is so individual that is why they are so difficult to treat because each one truly needs to be treated individually.