Puking our guts out: Incest survivors and the practice of disgust

(PLUS I WAS HUMAN AFTER ALL BOOK CLUB LINK AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS)

Scroll to the bottom to find the zoom link for the I was human after all book club today at 5pm EST to discuss How to Be Unmothered by Camille U. Adams (who will be briefly hopping on the call at the beginning) plus the questions which will guide our discussion, and the next book on our list. Book clubs are not recorded! Come to the live at 5pm, or we’ll see you at the next one.

Puking our guts out: Incest survivors and the practice of disgust

Many incest survivors find ourselves caught up in a practice of ritualized vomiting. Alcoholism and bulimia are two common practices in the incest survivor playbook. These both include a lot of vomiting, but the vomiting is seen as secondary, not the point of the behaviour. We might ask ourselves — why am I drinking? Or — what is causing my eating disorder? We are less likely to ask — does all this vomiting serve a purpose of some kind?

When I was drinking I spent countless hours on the bathroom floor, shaking and sweating and retching. What I considered a normal hangover was definitely alcohol poisoning. Drinking always came with its suffering, a price to be paid. Part of that was the hard work of my body trying to get the poison up. My body rejecting and expelling, saying no. I went through that ritual over and over again, countless times. The visceral and somatic expression of disgust, revulsion, rejection of the poison. These hangovers were a ritualized enactment of the repressed emotional experience of incest.