Kerry Washington reveals she contemplated suicide

Kerry Washington reveals she contemplated suicide

Kerry Washington has revealed she contemplated suicide during the height of her eating disorder battle during her college years.

The actress, now 46, detailed going into a cycle of ‘binge eating and endless exercise’ as she struggled to maintain a ‘perfect’ image in an emotional interview with Robin Roberts for a 20/20 special airing Sunday.

The Scandal star, who will release memoir, Thicker Than Water on September 26, writes that her life had ‘become a toxic cycle of self abuse that utilized the tools of starvation, binge eating, body obsession and compulsive exercise’.

‘I could feel how the abuse was a way to really hurt myself, as if I didn’t want to be here. It scared me that I could not want to be here because I was in so much pain.’

Asked if she had considered suicide, she responded: ‘Yeah. Yeah … The behavior was tiny little acts of trying to destroy myself.

‘The first thing that put me on my knees — like the first time I got on my knees and prayed to some power greater than myself to say like, “I can’t do this, I need some help” — was with my eating disorder.’

‘I was good at performing ‘perfect.’ I was good at control. I could party all night and drink and smoke and have sex and still show up and have good grades. I knew how to manage; I was so high-functioning and the food took me out.

‘The body-dysmorphia, the body-hatred, it was beyond my control and really led me to feeling like, “I need help for somebody, or something, bigger than me because I’m in trouble and I don’t know how to live with this.”’

The star said while she is now over the worst of her disorder, she still sometimes has to ‘check herself’

She said: ‘I wouldn’t say that I never act out with food, it’s just very different now. It’s not to the extreme. There’s no suicidal ideation, that is not where I am anymore. But I know, “Oh, I’m really in this chocolate, this is good information for me.”

‘The bottom has gotten a lot higher where just a little discomfort with it is enough for me to know this is a way to check myself. But it definitely looks a lot healthier. It’s a lot easier. It’s a lot saner than it used to be.’

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