At fourteen, Kelsey Osgood became fascinated by the stories of women who starved themselves. She would devour their memoirs and magazine articles to record details of their destructive routines.  She recorded how little they ate, their lowest weights, and their merciless exercise regimes, all this as a means to learn what it would take to be the very best anorectic.

When she was hospitalized for anorexia at fifteen, she found herself in an existential wormhole: how can one suffer from something one has actively sought out? Through her own decade-long battle with anorexia, which included three lengthy hospitalizations, Osgood harrowingly describes the haunting and competitive world of inpatient facilities populated with other adolescents, some as young as ten years old.

Kelsey Osgood spoke to Sean today about the modern myths of anorexia, examining the cult-like underbelly of eating disorders in the young and her own rehabilitation.

How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia by Kelsey Osgood