Starving for perfection

Jessica Garrison

Seven times a day, Alexis* slipped a Ritalin tablet out of her pill

box and into the palm of her perfectly manicured hand.

Usually, she crushed the little white pill, and then sniffed the

powder up her nose using a rolled $100 bill kept unspent in her wallet

for just that purpose.

Other times, she tucked the powder into the soft little crevice

between her thumb and index finger and ran her nose across her hand.

She did this every three hours. Every day. For 14 months.

The method of getting the drug into her body wasn’t important.

The point was, she had to have it.

It kept her thin.

She lost 20 pounds. She lost her period. She lost the ability to

distinguish between a craving for food and a craving for speed.

She kept snorting.

She got to the point were it was impossible to get up in the morning

without the drug. She wondered whether she was addicted, but she quickly

pushed those thoughts aside because she had become even more hooked on

the constant stream of envious praise from all the girls at school: “Oh

my gosh, you are so thin.”

She kept snorting.

She wound up so sick she couldn’t get out of bed, and her secret came

out.

It’s a secret shared by a lot of students at Corona del Mar High

School -- though few go to the extremes Alexis has. According to an

informal student survey, half the girls in the class of ’99 said they had

sampled the drug.

“There have been cases,” said Corona del Mar High School Principal Don

Martin. “But I would doubt very seriously that even 25% of the girls have

abused Ritalin. I think that’s extremely high, based on the number of

cases that I know of and doing a kind of multiplier effect of how many I

don’t know about.”

‘I must have paid him $500. ... We’d be pulling up at his house behind

each other, crying and saying, “Please get some for us.” ’

But Ritalin, commonly prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder,

is merely the newest technique girls at Corona del Mar use to keep

themselves thin.

At least eight students were hospitalized last year because of Ritalin

abuse or anorexia, said Corona del Mar student Chelsea Hover, a senior

who works on the Trident school newspaper and did a special report on the

Ritalin phenomenon last May.

The problem of eating disorders has been an open secret on campus for

years. The school has developed a reputation, within the Newport-Mesa

school district, and beyond, as the eating disorder capital of the

county.

“It’s a stereotype of our school,” Chelsea said.

School officials and parents -- sometimes reluctantly -- acknowledge

it’s a widespread problem. But it’s not one most of them seem to want to

talk about.

The idea that students are wrecking their health and dabbling in

illegal drugs in order to make their bodies conform to an unattainable

standard of beauty shatters the community’s perfect image of itself.

“We’re a very appearance-conscious area,” said Marianne Scott, a

Corona del Mar mother who is a member of a school-culture task force

whose mission, in part, is to raise awareness of eating disorders issues.

“We were aware of it last year. ... It’s just like any other abuse.

Nobody wants to talk about it openly.

“We can’t point the finger at the kids or the school. We need to look

at ourselves as a community and wonder why we emphasize appearance so

much, and how it trickles down to our children in horrible ways.”

Abusing Ritalin to lose weight is not a well-known phenomenon around

the country.

Officials at the National Assn. of Anorexia and Associated Disorders

have encountered the practice, said vice president Christopher Athis, but

they do not believe it is widespread.

Abusing Ritalin as a study drug, or a novel way to achieve the perfect

buzz, however, is on the rise. Medical experts say they are increasingly

worried that the drug, which was prescribed more than 10 million times last year in the United States, is becoming the drug of choice among

young, white suburban kids.

While some Midwestern school districts have taken aggressive steps

against Ritalin abuse, the Corona del Mar school community -- caught

off-guard by the problem last fall when students were stopped by customs

officials trying to bring Ritalin in from Mexico -- has made only halting

steps to identify and track the problem.

Alexis said she doesn’t know how the girls at her school got the idea

to snort Ritalin, which is chemically related to amphetamine. In the

1960s, amphetamine was used as a diet drug -- until doctors realized how

dangerous it is.

In her Trident article, Chelsea concluded that the drug was a presence

on campus, and that many at her school were sampling it in their quest

for the perfect body. She added that the majority of users graduated in

June.

Students at Newport Harbor, Corona’s rival high school, report --

often gleefully -- that they have heard Corona has a problem with

Ritalin.

The myth, at least, is that girls at Corona will do anything to be

thin -- although this thinking is probably colored by the deep rivalries

between the two schools.

“Everyone at Corona sniffs Ritalin, and almost no one at Harbor does,”

said Andrew*, a student at Newport Harbor.

Andrew suffers from attention deficit disorder and has taken Ritalin

to control it for years.

His brother, a Corona student, used to pilfer it and sell it to his

classmates.

“These girls would come over to our house to buy it,” Andrew said.

“And I’d be like, ‘Eat.’ ”

“I must have paid him $500,” said Alexis. “We’d be pulling up at his

house behind each other, crying and saying, please get some for us.”

“It’s like somewhere in their brain, a switch gets flipped, and they

have the disease.”

“Anorexia and bulimia are jumping by leaps and bounds,” said Deborah

McCarthy, a Newport Beach nutritionist who specializes in the treatment

of eating disorders and whose name occupies a prominent place in the

school nurse’s Rolodex.

McCarthy was quick to add that she does not believe eating disorders

are any worse at Corona than they are among any other population of

highly affluent, pressured, image-conscious girls.

“It’s not all the girls at the school,” said school board President

Serene Stokes. “But even if it’s a small number of girls, we need to help

them. It’s very important.”

The chief symptom of anorexia is self-induced starvation, accompanied

by obsessive, excessive exercise. Bulimia involves binge eating and

purging.

But that doesn’t mean that every young girl who diets is anorexic or

bulimic, or that every girl who sniffs Ritalin has an eating disorder and

a drug problem.

Eating disorders “are on a continuum,” McCarthy explained.

At some point, in some girls, dieting “crosses the line” into

“obsessive, ritualistic, compulsive and habitual behavior.

“At that point, said Meg George, a Newport Beach counselor who

specializes in eating disorders, “you’re looking at anorexia or bulimia.”

“It’s like somewhere in their brain, a switch gets flipped, and they

have the disease,” she said.

Like McCarthy, George treats girls from Corona del Mar High School,

but she also emphasized that she doesn’t think Corona has any more of a

problem than any other school with similar demographics.

Newport Harbor High School, for example, also has students who suffer

from eating disorders. Last spring, Harbor’s school nurse called Debbie

Norman, Corona’s nurse, for advice on how to treat eating disorders.

“People have it [at Harbor], but it’s not like a schoolwide problem

the way it is at Corona,” Andrew said.

Student Body President Claire Duggins said Ritalin was a huge presence

on the Corona campus last year, and her friends at Harbor were barely

aware of it.

“I’ve never figured out why it was so big at Corona,” she said. “I

think it’s the pressure.”

‘I don’t think the eating thing comes from pressure from guys to be

beautiful. It’s the competition from girls.’

At many Orange County high schools, mixed in with the band geeks, the

stoners, the jocks and the latchkey kids are large populations of

affluent, high-achieving, image-conscious girls from high-powered,

image-conscious families -- the population that psychologists believe is

most likely to suffer from eating disorders.

At Corona, most girls fit this profile. Many students say their high

school community -- perhaps unwittingly -- fosters an extremely

competitive and high-pressure environment.

“Each year, it’s getting even more competitive. It’s a really good

school. But it’s really competitive,” said Senior Class President Sarah

Parker, ticking off pressures she and her classmates face. “The pressure

to get into a good college. The pressure to get a good job. The pressure

to be on top. Parents want to be able to brag about their kids.”

Those bragging rights are hard to come by. Corona is one of the

highest-achieving schools in the state. There are legions of students

with stellar grade-point averages, high SAT scores, and lists of other

accomplishments. Corona del Mar often sends more students to Ivy League

schools than Newport Harbor, Costa Mesa and Estancia high schools

combined.

The pressure sometimes shocks outsiders. In 1994, in an effort to give

their children an extra nudge at getting into college, parents of Corona

students wrote letters to Stanford University’s admissions office,

informing officials there that other Corona students did not deserve to

be let into the school ahead of their children, and ratting out various

infractions other applicants had committed.

“Stanford admissions called the school district and said ‘What the

hell is going on,” remembered Jim de Boom, who was on the school board at

the time. “The competition for success is absolutely fierce.”

The affluence, too, is incredible. The parents own major corporations,

work in prominent law firms and entertainment companies, and live in

giant estates overlooking the Pacific.

Their children are used to private college counselors, summer trips to

Europe, and clothes from fancy designer stores.

Teachers at Corona del Mar joke that it’s easy to tell the student

parking lot from the staff lot at school: The student lot is the one with

all the BMWs and SUVs.

And, like loving moms and dads everywhere, the parents care

passionately about their children’s success and education. The Corona del

Mar Foundation, a private group formed to raise money for the school,

raised $2 million in its first four years.

This pressure and affluence seems to make Corona a particularly potent

breeding ground for eating disorders.

From the moment students enter in seventh grade, it is a race to see

who can get the best grades, be the best at sports, date the cutest guys,

and do it all while looking beautiful and unruffled.

Now it sometimes seems they compete for who can be the skinniest, the

most like the models on the covers of Seventeen magazine.

The competition among girls at the school to look like fashion models

is intense, say students.

Don Martin said he has taken to warning girls new to the school that

the style of dress at Corona is different from most other schools.

“There’s no law that says you have to dress Nordstrom’s,” the principal

said. “But our girls like to dress the part of the Southern California

girl.”

Girls agree that the pressure to look a certain way often comes from each

other.

“I don’t think the eating thing comes from pressure from guys to be

beautiful,” said Chelsea, the author of the Ritalin story in the school

paper. “It’s the competition from girls.”

Students said the prevalence of rail-thin women on campus puts

pressure on everyone.

“Today, because of the fitness rage, people think that being thin and

tan equals healthy,” Chelsea said. “But when girls are starving

themselves and ditching school to go sleep in tanning beds, there’s a

problem.”

Chelsea said she thinks the problem is worse at Corona than it is at

other schools. A few of her friends have struggled with anorexia, she

said, and a couple of times -- anguished over how to help them -- she

asked volleyball players from other high schools how they coped with the

problem.

“They said only like one or two people at their schools have eating

disorders,” she said. “At our school, it’s almost everyone.”

Another student, who did not want her name used, said the cult of thin

at Corona upsets her most not because she sees friends suffer or because

everyone talks about food all the time, but “because I am compared to

them.”

‘They are typically high-achieving, perfectionist girls, from

high-achieving families.’

Although eating disorders cut across class, race and geographic lines,

George said over the years, she has developed a profile of the typical

anorexia patient -- a profile that can also be found in the DSMIII, the

bible of psychiatric disorders.

“They are typically high-achieving, perfectionist girls, from

high-achieving families,” she said. “The families are often very

critical, and there is a lot of focus on appearance and achievement.”

From the outside, Alexis and her family fit this profile. Alexis’

father has a high-powered corporate job, and her mother does not work

full time.

Alexis said she believes the climate at her school contributed to her

problems.

Full of some of the highest-achieving and highest-income students in the

state, and arguably one of the most close-knit and cliquish, Corona del

Mar was a shock.

“Everybody’s perfect. Everybody’s thin,” she said. “If you’re not

thin, and you’re not pretty, it’s basically useless. You don’t fit in.

“Nobody really cares how you look or how you dress at other schools,”

she continued. “But here, it’s like ‘Beverly Hills 90210.’ You dress up

every day. Hair perfect. Makeup perfect. If you come in and you look like

crap, you’re going to be treated like crap.”

Through much of high school, Alexis concentrated on trying to fit in.

She went to parties, which -- like high school parties everywhere --

were full of kegs and pot, made-up girls, and drunk, imperious boys.

But the kids at Corona del Mar may be less afraid of -- and more able

to afford -- hard drugs. Heroin, some students said, has become an

increasingly popular drug at Corona and Newport Harbor, along with other

favorites like Ecstasy, marijuana and cocaine.

Alexis gravitated toward the party crowd.

And those girls let her in on their secret: Ritalin is highly

effective as an appetite suppressant when crushed and snorted.

“All the girls were talking about it, and I didn’t even know what is

was,” Alexis said. “Randomly, one of my friends asked if I wanted to try

it, and I thought ‘What the heck.’ ”

At first, she said, it didn’t seem that great: “I snorted it. It

tasted really bad. And it just made you not hungry.”

But like a smoker who is initially repelled by the vile taste and

smell of tobacco, and then develops a two-pack-a-day habit, Alexis was

soon crushing and snorting one of the little pills at least seven times a

day.

Sometimes she didn’t crush the pill at all, but merely placed it under

her tongue. If she was going to a party, or feeling particularly fat, she

took two pills.

‘It lasts like four hours. When you came off, you just wanted more, so

you wouldn’t come down.’

Alexis developed a morning ritual: She would rise and immediately

snort Ritalin. Then, after emerging from a hot shower, she would spend

the next 90 minutes preparing for the “daily fashion show” of her school.

“I blow dry my hair. I do my makeup. I pick my clothes,” she said. “I

get up at 6:30, and I’m still late for school.

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

Once at school, Alexis and her friends would meet at least once during

the morning to snort more Ritalin, often in the bathroom.

Despite the School District’s zero-tolerance policy on drugs and

alcohol, Alexis said the bathroom during breaks was like Studio 54 during

the ‘70s.

“Everyone is in there doing it,” she said. “I swear, our school is

like a movie.”

Principal Martin disputed this depiction of the school, as did Stokes,

who represents Corona del Mar.

“Our restrooms are cleaner and more devoid of illegal activity than

any campus I’ve been on in 28 years,” Martin said, noting that the school

has three security guards and “kids are frightened to do it.”

Sarah, the class president, said she had never seen anyone snorting

Ritalin at school.

“But it wouldn’t surprise me,” she added. “A lot goes on.”

According to Alexis and some of her friends, lunch was a diet soda and

another hit.

“It lasts for, like, four hours,” she said. “When you came down off

it, you just wanted more, so you wouldn’t come down.”

Alexis said she had been dieting for years and had periods of

bulimia, but when she found Ritalin, she found the answer to her prayers.

At first, Alexis felt the drug gave her energy, helped her focus, and

best of all, killed her appetite.

And because it is prescribed for millions of children, including

countless numbers of her friends and their brothers and sisters, it

didn’t seem as scary as street drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, which

Alexis said she and her friends have also tried.

But medical experts say the notion that Ritalin is safe because it is

prescribed to millions of children is a dangerous fallacy.

“That’s a myth,” said Larry Diller, an associate professor of

pediatrics at UC San Francisco Medical School and the author of “Running

on Ritalin,” a new book that warns against overprescribing the drug.

“If used properly, Ritalin can be helpful,” said the pediatrician, who

prescribes Ritalin in his practice. “But these drugs have a dark side,

too.”

“It’s essentially a form of speed,” he said. “Once you start using it

chronically and overusing it, you deplete your dopamine stores.”

Translation: “You crash. Depression, craving and even psychosis can

result.”

Claire, the student body president, said she has seen this among her

friends firsthand. She watched horrified as friends progressed from

snorting Ritalin to snorting cocaine and then became obsessed with where

their next Ritalin fix would come from.

“You see them totally change,” she said. “They lie. They steal.

They’ll do anything to get it. A lot of girls have gone to doctors,

gotten prescriptions, and they say they’ll be on it the rest of their

lives.”

This was a lesson that Alexis and her family learned this year -- with

some help from a very bad scare.

‘Lunch for a lot of people consists of a Diet Coke and fat-free

pretzels. It’s hard, walking around school with stick-thin girls. It’s

hard to see that they’re killing themselves inside.”

Alas, say students and parents, the story of Alexis, though horrible,

is by no means unique at Corona del Mar High School.

Sarah, the class president, notes that her older sister had two

friends die from complications of anorexia.

Sarah added that, although she knows “half a dozen girls” at her

school with “really serious” anorexia, she doesn’t know anyone who has

died.

Perhaps this is because parents, school officials and students are

becoming aware of the eating disorder issue on their campus and are

taking steps to combat it.

Alexis’ mother said she has been a part of this evolving awareness.

As Alexis’ health spiraled downward, her worried mother tried to talk

to school officials about what she perceived to be the eating disorder

her daughter had brought home from school.

School officials eventually listened.

“They said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to take care of it,’ ” she said.

And school officials have taken tremendous steps to help students with

eating disorders.

“It was something our counseling staff felt was worth spending some

time on, to warn other girls of the problems,” Martin said.

Board President Stokes said she wanted school officials to work with

the community to continue to combat the issue.

“Home and school need to work together on this issue,” she said. “Can

we stress that grades and sports are more important than just being

beautiful?”

Stokes added that she thinks the problem is a societal one that the

school must take steps to address.

But she said she takes heart from the fact that so many girls at

Corona participate in sports.

“They’re healthy,” she said.

Sarah, the class president, agreed with Stokes that the community

should work with the school on the problem, but she questioned the notion

that just because a girl is involved in sports means she is free of

eating disorders.

“That’s 100% not true,” she said. “Sports don’t make it worse, but

they don’t help, because then the girl says she’s skinny because she’s

been working out, not because she doesn’t eat.”

Experts agree. Many coaches unwittingly contribute to girls’ eating

disorders by insisting they adhere to rigid diets, and by urging them to

lose weight, McCarthy said.

“There are some super coaches out there, but there are some who are

giving quite a lot of misinformation,” she said. “When you’re involved in

a competitive sport, you’re trying to get that edge, and a lot of

athletes are taking very extreme measures.”

Those extreme measures, said Sarah, might include going to afternoon

practices on an empty stomach.

“Lunch for a lot of people consists of a Diet Coke and fat-free

pretzels,” she said. “It’s hard, walking around school with stick-thin

girls. It’s hard to see that they’re killing themselves inside.”

‘I also felt like it was time to reach out to people who had not

opened up and admitted they had a problem, and get them help before it

was too late.’

In the last two years, school nurse Norman and counselor Kathy Hath

have convened special assemblies and invited girls who had suffered from

anorexia, or girls whose friends or sisters had died from anorexia, to

come and speak.

Nurses, physical education teachers and counselors have been on alert.

Girls who look dangerously thin are called into the office; their

parents receive phone calls; their friends are urged to keep an eye on

them.

Glenda Rynn, a teacher who retired last year, said on a few occasions,

she reported girls to counselors because they looked dangerously thin.

“The counselor was usually already on top of it,” she said.

One student, junior Ann Hatfield, has become a heroine at the school

for her willingness to speak out about her eating disorder, and to show

others that it is possible to get well.

Ann nearly died of anorexia, and then fought her way back and became

not only a member of the school’s cheerleading squad, but also an

outspoken advocate for girls and their families to confront their

problems with food and seek help.

Ann’s mother, Gretchen, credits Norman and Hath with helping to save

her daughter’s life.

Ann developed anorexia over the summer, and the first day back at

school, Hatfield said her phone was ringing off the hook with school

officials calling to express concern.

After a yearlong ordeal in which the 5-foot, 6-inch Ann dieted and ran

herself down to an angry 83-pound stick, the now-vivacious student came

before the school and told them her story.

The assembly was optional, and ironically was held during students’

nutrition break.

School officials were expecting a couple dozen students, Assistant

Principal Robert Cunard said last spring.

Hundreds turned up, filling up the seats in the auditorium and

flooding down the aisles and out the door.

Ann credits her 25-minute speech as a milestone on her road to

recovery, showing her that she had the power to help others.

“This was my chance ... to make teenagers aware of how dangerous it is

to have an eating disorder,” Ann wrote. “I also felt like it was time to

reach out to people who had not opened up and admitted they had a

problem, and get them help before it was too late.”

For the school, it was a watershed moment as well. Because of Ann’s

testimonial, many students realized that they -- or their friends’ --

quirky obsessions with food could be the sign of serious health problems.

School officials realized that students were desperate for information

about eating disorders.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Cunard said.

‘There’s a perfectionist image in this area that is not the best thing

for raising kids. ... There’s a lot of denial.’

Thanks in part to her mission to help her classmates, everyone knows

Ann’s epic tale of loss and redemption. But like any epic, not everyone

at the school agrees on its meaning, or on how Ritalin fits into the

picture.

Senior Jessica Edwards believes the problem is confined to a few

students and is now “getting better.”

“Our grade [Class of 2000] is much better,” she said. “And anyway, if

someone does have a problem, people are quick to act on it and get them

help.”

Jessica, like many students, said the Ritalin-snorting trend graduated

with the girls in the Class of ’99. The girls at the school now, she

said, don’t do that.

Most girls at the school are “health conscious,” she said. “But that’s

not necessarily anorexia, but it may seem that way because everyone

always talks about what they’re eating.”

Claire, the student-body president, said she thought her class had

learned from the Class of ’99 to stay off Ritalin.

“We don’t want to end up like them,” she added.

Katie Alston, a sophomore who is on the cheerleading squad with Ann,

said she believes students at the school, shocked by all the tales of

near-death and destruction, are hyperconscious of eating disorders.

Katie is naturally thin and says friends and acquaintances became

obsessed with the idea that she, like so many other girls at her school,

had an eating disorder.

“People are jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers,” she said.

“It was awful.”

Like Calista Flockhart -- the famously skinny star of Ally McBeal, who

was featured in a People magazine article on anorexia -- Katie took to

eating large meals in public, and pointedly not going to the bathroom

afterward so no one would think she was bulimic.

Others believe the school is facing a serious health issue, but that

the best way to handle it is quietly, away from the glare of publicity

and the shame of exposure.

Especially since some perfectionist parents may have trouble with the

idea that their children are facing serious problems.

“It’s an area that really needs to be explored and worked out,” said

Scott, of the campus school culture group. “We haven’t discussed it yet

as a school family.”

Scott wants school counselors and parents to find ways to approach

parents of students who have problems with drugs, eating disorders, or

pressure in general, and offer them support. In so doing, she hopes to

subtly change the culture of the school.

“School culture would like to get parents to focus on other things

besides being perfect, the prettiest. We need to look at the destructive

elements of competition. There are more than 10 places to go to college

in the United States,” Scott said. “A lot of people are hurting really

badly because of this.”

The fledgling group is still trying to “figure out the best way to

approach parents,” Scott said.

“It’s really threatening to be called in,” she noted.

Many students and parents pointed out that some in the community are

in denial about how serious the problem is.

“There’s a perfectionist image in this area that is not the best thing

for raising kids, or for ourselves,” said Scott. “We don’t want to admit

that something’s not perfect. ... You’ve got a lot of denial.”

Ironically, one of the major obstacles therapists and family members

face in trying to combat eating disorders is the tremendous denial of

patients and their families, said George.

“There’s a lot of guilt and a lot of shame,” said counselor George.

Girls with eating disorders typically come from families where

appearances and image are paramount, she said. Such families are often

very slow to admit there is a problem.

Sarah Parker agreed with this, noting that everyone at her school is

aware that there is a problem with food issues, but many girls and their

parents are reluctant to talk about it.

“Admitting the truth,” she said, means looking at yourself and

“admitting that you have a problem, too.”

It’s also hard to interfere in someone else’s life, she said, noting

that many parents, seeing their daughter’s dangerously skinny friends,

hesitated before taking direct action.

“The parents see it, too, but they’re not going to talk about it. No

one really wants to criticize anyone else’s parenting,” she said.

And, said school nurse Norman, it’s hard for parents to accept the

painful truth.

“There will always be denial,” Norman said. “No one who loves their

children wants to believe their child could be doing that.”

She said she wishes she had more time and money in her budget to

address the issue of eating disorders on campus. She would like to offer

groups for families and girls, as well as individual monitoring.

“A lot of parents think it reflects on their family and their

community,” she said. “They’re ashamed.”

Another reason parents may be slow to take action, said George, is

that “being thin is part of being successful” in Newport Beach. “You know

that old saying, ‘You can never be too rich or too thin?’ ”

Ann told students about the power of denial firsthand when she gave

her speech.

“One day, my mom came to me crying, ‘Just look at yourself, you are

nothing but a bag of bones,’ ” Ann said. “I had no clue what she was

throwing a fit about. I stared hard at my figure in the mirror. No matter

how skinny people said I was, all I could see was a pudgy stomach and

fat, cheesy cellulite legs. I was still unsatisfied with my appearance,

and was determined to look like the girl on the cover of Seventeen.”

‘It’s not a high school problem. It’s a societal problem. ... It

wouldn’t be fair to say that Corona del Mar High School is the seedbed.’

Many parents and students say another reason people aren’t

broadcasting the eating disorder issue is they fear the flack the school

will get for it.

Students and parents are proud of their school, and wary of what they

perceive to be a tendency in the community to point fingers and take

potshots at Corona.

Martin said he was “deeply concerned” that people not jump to the

conclusion that the high school fosters the problem.

Nationwide, 12% of all high school seniors -- the vast majority of them

women -- suffer from eating disorders, according to the National Assn. of

Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders in Illinois. Six percent of

these sufferers will die from the disease, from starvation, or from

complications such as heart failure or liver failure.

“It’s not a high school problem,” Martin said. “It’s a societal

problem. It affects young teenage girls from upper middle-class

communities, and the fact that we have large numbers of these kinds of

people, it’s going to show up at this school more. It wouldn’t be fair to

say that Corona del Mar is the seedbed.”

Last spring, in response to an article in the Daily Pilot, the Orange

County News Channel came to the school to interview students about the

practice of snorting Ritalin.

The principal chased the cameras off campus, but a football player

followed them and gave an interview.

He was glad the girls snort Ritalin, the football player said. He and

his friends like thin girls, he explained.

This was broadcast verbatim around the county, despite the fact that

many people felt the football player was both idiotic and out of his

depth.

Parents and students were outraged at the publicity, and Martin asked

his staff not to discuss the issue any further with the press.

He should be the point person, he explained, because he is practiced

in dealing with the media, and many of his staff would prefer not to talk

to reporters.

Last spring, Martin banned a Daily Pilot reporter from coming on

campus to talk about food with students. Many students called the paper,

enraged that a story on Corona del Mar’s Ritalin problem had run the same

day as a complimentary story about Newport Harbor High School.

Counselor Hath said she thought talking to a reporter about the

problem would be “counterproductive.”

Despite this, Hath has been a source of endless comfort and support

for students and parents as they struggle with eating disorders,

organizing several campus forums on the subject and even calling mothers

to warn them that their daughters are dangerously thin.

“We all know there is a problem. We just don’t like to be reminded of

it,” said one senior who asked that her name not be used because the

subject of eating disorders is so controversial on campus.

Parents and students are wary of anything that could put their school

in a bad light, said Chelsea, the author of the Ritalin story in the

school newspaper.

“I approached the article as like ‘The Secret of Corona,’ ” said

Chelsea. “I don’t think the administration was very happy with it.”

While she was reporting the piece, school officials refused to discuss

the issue with her at length and accused her of “sensationalizing” a

serious topic, she said.

Martin said it was not that he was “afraid to talk about it.”

“The reason we don’t want to talk about it is confidentiality,” he

said, noting that laws prevent him from discussing private student

matters with anybody.

“No. 2, we have to be very careful that we’re not misquoted ... or

taken out of context, particularly with student reporters,” he added,

explaining that being misquoted could result in two weeks of angry phone

calls from parents upset about something in the article. “So the path of

least resistance is to avoid discussion of sensitive issues, beyond the

statistics that we all know.

“It’s like the question: ‘Do you still beat your wife. If you answer

no, it implies that you once beat your wife.”

Martin said he was reluctant to discuss the Ritalin issue in-depth

with Chelsea because he did not want people to misinterpret what he said.

“There have been cases [of Ritalin abuse],” he said. But he said he

“strongly disputed” the student survey that suggested half the Class of

‘99 had tried the drug.

He said he had serious doubts about the accuracy and methodology of the

survey.

‘It’s called making a T.J. run.’

Alexis, however, said the drug was increasingly prevalent in her and

her friends’ lives.

Though they primarily relied on the drug as an appetite suppressant,

Alexis said she and her friends also began to use it to make parties and

outings more fun.

“We wouldn’t go out without it,” she said. She and her friends bought

the drugs on the flourishing, student-operated black market.

Originally, she said, the pills came from students who had it

legitimately prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder, or from

pharmacies in Mexico willing to sell to teenage girls who do not have

prescriptions.

Last spring, Mexican pharmacists posted pictures of girls from Corona

on a wall in their Tijuana pharmacy. They had made so many trips down

there that pharmacists adopted them as mascots. Last fall, girls from

Corona were stopped by U.S. Customs officials trying to bring a load of

black-market Ritalin across the border.

Since then, Alexis said, the girls send their boyfriends.

“It’s called making a T.J. run,” Alexis said.

At Corona del Mar, the price of the magic pills varies depending on

the seller and the source. Alexis estimates it averaged out to about 50

cents a pill, or $4 a day -- a middling amount of money for the average

Corona del Mar student’s wallet to bear, and incidentally, a lot less

than the going rate for black-market Ritalin around the country.

“Four dollars. That’s nothing,” Alexis said contemptuously when asked

where she got the money. “There’s a lot of money here. Our parents,

they’re doctors, or lawyers, or stockbrokers. It’s so easy for the kids

to get anything. Whenever I need money, it’s there.”

Alexis’ drug use, on the other hand, went largely undetected by her

parents, teachers, and most of her fellow students. She didn’t stagger

around burping, as a drunk would, or have eyes narrowed to red, spacey

slits, as might befall a chronic smoker of marijuana.

“I’d be just the same ... only a little more hyper,” she said.

Sometimes Alexis’ mother would point out that her daughter was losing

a lot of weight.

“I would say I was exercising a lot,” she said. “Your parents believe

what you say.”

Many parents, she noted, are “naive about their children.”

“A lot of parents don’t want to be bothered by it,” she said. “I guess

they’d rather be the kid’s friend than be the parent. Everybody just

tries to ignore the facts.”

Some of her friends’ mothers, she said, even collude in their

daughter’s eating disorders.

“In Newport, all the mothers are perfect and have plastic surgery,”

she said. “They want their kids to be just as good.”

Alexis’ mother tells a different story. She didn’t know about her

daughter’s Ritalin habit, but she knew something was wrong. Her daughter

was wasting away.

“I was losing my mind with worry,” she said.

But like many mothers whose daughters suffer from eating disorders,

nothing her mother did -- not cooking special meals, or ordering her

daughter to eat -- seemed to work.

“Families feel very powerless,” said George, the Newport Beach

therapist who specializes in treating eating disorders. “They see their

daughters just withering away, and they’re saying, ‘Come on, just eat a

bit of pizza,’ and the daughter will not touch a thing. It tears a family

apart.

“A lot of feelings get generated. ... You can’t believe the pain.

Parents will say, ‘My little daughter was so happy, and she had so many

friends,’ and then they’ll describe this evolution into the

eating-disordered child.”

Alexis’ journey back to health did not begin with intervention from

parents or school officials.

It began with a bad run-in with the drug that had become her

salvation. Eventually, the magic pills took a toll. One morning, Alexis

couldn’t get out of bed. She wound up at the doctor, and her secret came

out.

Her parents hired a personal trainer to help her lose weight “the

right way.” Now, at every meal, they urge her to eat. Her father watches

every bite that goes into her mouth. She herself just looks forward to

the day when she can “leave the bubble.”

She says it often, as if it is a proven fact that Newport Beach is

sealed in by a clear, glassy, impenetrable layer that renders reality

here different from other places.

She wants to go to art school in New York.

“It won’t be like this in the real world,” she said. “I will probably

just laugh at the extent people go to here.”

She means, she said, the pressures. To get good grades. To look

beautiful. To be thin.

“Everybody here is supposed to be perfect,” she said. “My parents want

me to be perfect.”

‘When people tell me I look healthy, I want to cry. I think they’re

telling me I look fat.’

Though Alexis has sworn off the drug, her food issues are not

necessarily solved. It’s been nine months since her parents discovered

her habit and helped her to give it up. Her family and friends think her

eating disorder is all better.

“How do you classify an eating disorder?” she muses. “Do you classify

not eating to stay thin as an eating disorder? I skip meals sometimes. It

just depends.”

This day, an afternoon nine months since she last took Ritalin, Alexis

is sitting in her car in the parking lot at Corona del Mar High School.

It is lunchtime, but she is not eating at all, only sipping chilled

water out of a clear, plastic cup.

Although dangerously skinny, she said she still tries not to eat very

much and obsesses over whether she has grown fat.

“When people tell me I look healthy, I cry,” she said. “I think that

means they’re telling me I’m fat.”

Many of her friends, she said, continue to snort Ritalin.

Fearful that when they go off to college in the fall they won’t be

able to get the drug as easily as they could at Corona, some have “gone

to the doctor, faked ADD and gotten prescriptions.”

They are hostile when approached. They don’t want to talk about food,

or eating disorders, or the things they do to stay thin. They fear a

parent crackdown, Alexis explained, if the lengths she and her friends go

to to stay thin are exposed.

Summer has made the pressure all the more intense, she said.

“Summer is here, and everyone is freaking out even more,” she said.

“You have to be in a bathing suit at the beach. And they won’t do it.

“One of my friends, she weighs 100 pounds, and she looks in the

mirror, and she says she is just disgusted with how fat she is. I just

laugh and say ‘Shut up.’ ”

* The names Alexis and Andrew are pseudonyms. The names of the other

sources are real.