From the outside, it probably looked like my childhood was perfect. My mother was a columnist and author who went on to found The Huffington Post, and my father was a congressman who once ran his father’s oil company. And I wasn’t one of those kids who got money but was ignored, either — my parents showered me with attention and love.
So why did I self-destruct? Why did I spend seven years lying to my family about using cocaine? How did I come to find myself running barefoot through the streets of New Haven, Connecticut, one chilly March morning, my coke-addled heart racing so fast I had to be hospitalized? And why are so many young women going through exactly what I did?
This piece is my search for the answers.
A childhood disrupted
I was always a happy kid. But everything changed the year I was eight and my little sister, Isabella, was six; my parents got divorced, and I was devastated. Then, the summer before I started eighth grade, my mom and dad decided to run for governor of California—against each other. I hated the idea. Their divorce was painful enough in private; seeing it hashed out in public would be even worse. They both ultimately dropped out of the race, but the experience was so upsetting that I decided to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible. So in 2004 I enrolled at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire.
Boarding school wasn’t the new start I’d hoped for, though. At home I’d been the “smart” girl; at St. Paul’s,everyone was smart. And I missed my mom. We were always close—we look alike and share an interest in journalism and politics. Now she was all the way across the country, and I was surrounded by blond lacrosse-playing girls. To cope I started eating pints of ice cream from the campus convenience store alone in my room every night; then, horrified by the 20 pounds I’d gained, I’d live on gum and sugar-free Red Bull. By the time I got home for the summer after my freshman year, I was hardly eating.
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