It was plain and simple curiosity that made me try it. I was twelve years old, and I'd run all the way home from school to watch my favourite cartoons. I'd plonked myself down in front of the shiny new television set with a huge bag of crisps, zombie faced as I watched and ate mechanically; my version of indulgence after a day that had left my young mind stressed and exhausted. I was never good at keeping up with homework deadlines, and neither had I ever managed to fit in socially at school. Of course, my problems weren't unique. I had a relatively carefree childhood in comparison to many people. The difference, it seems, was in my curiosity; in my inability to allow a simple series of innocent thoughts pass by without my acting on them.
What if I hadn't eaten these crips?
The thought was sparked by the realisation that I had overeaten. I was beginning to feel nauseous from the sheer volume of food in my stomach and I began to wonder.
Is there any way to un-eat these?
I found myself rising from my chair, turning from the so eagerly awaited cartoons and heading for the bathroom.
Had I known then about the draining addiction that would follow, would I have let myself go through with it? Had I appreciated how terrible the answer to the question what will happen if...? would be, would I have avoided finding out for myself? These are questions that I will never know the answer to, because I did go through with it, and I lived the life of a teenage addict for something like 5 years.
As I bent over the toilet that first time aged twelve, and pressed my index and middle fingers firmly to the back of my throat, I expected it all to come up in one quick, clean go. You never hear about the pain and the mess of it all. The pain is relatively easy to suppress, but the sticky blend of saliva and vomit is more difficult to ignore. It runs down your arm and splashes from the bowl into your face, mixing with tears and runny snot. There is nothing about it that I would call dignified.
Even now, as I clean vomit from my face for the first time in over 15 years, I am struck by the indignity. I feel calmer now than I did an hour ago, as I knew I would, but the image of Sherlock's bleeding skull is etched into my mind, and the memory of our last conversation, of the goodbye that I was so unprepared for, lingers like the rancid taste of stomach acid that used to be so familiar. I drink tap water from my cupped hands to replace the fluid lost in vomit and sigh heavily as my thoughts dart backwards and forwards through the world of Sherlock Holmes, willing the pieces to fall into place and make sense, desperate for any kind of logic in the web of confusion he left me in.
As I make my way through to the living room, the sight of the empty food wrappers startles me. Did I really eat so much? In the end it has never been about the food for me, but about the release and calm that comes moments after purging and lingers for hours; a gentle hug in the midst of such stress. I learnt the word "purge" in a library book about a year after the cartoons and the crisps, but I never liked to think of myself as Bulimic. Later, as I learnt about the disorder during my medical training, it sunk in a little and I vowed never to return to my old ways. Of course that was before I watched my best friend leap to his death from the very building that I trained in.
I hear a knock on the door and a call from Mrs Hudson and quickly gather the wrappers together and hide them before letting her in.
"Alright dear?" she asks gently, putting a motherly hand on my shoulder and kissing my cheek. I nod as best I can and she squeezes my arm before stepping into the flat and beginning to unload a bag of shopping onto the kitchen table.
"I bought you some things, just to tide you over until you're a bit more... together."
"Thank you, Mrs Hudson"
"Gosh it's such a shock isn't it? Are you sure you're doing OK? You know I'm only downstairs if you need anything."
I nod and she gives me a tight hug before leaving. I stare around the quiet room, at the bullet holes in the wall, the science equipment on the sideboard and the violin case by the window; ghostly reminders of the man who used to be. And as I make my way over to the armchair in the living room, it dawns on me that the food wrappers so hastily hidden upon Mrs Hudson's arrival are ghosts too; ghosts of the boy that I used to be. Because I am not John the addict any more, and I haven't been so for a very long time. Though a part of me misses it, I know in my heart that I can never return to that place, because the process of discovering who I was without addiction was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do. And now I have a similar journey ahead; one of discovering who I am without Sherlock. The prospect is daunting to say the least. It will be tough. It will hurt a great deal. But I learnt a long time ago that with a little time and effort, even the most daunting of tasks can be achieved.