"Girls" actress Zosia Mamet is opening up about her own personal struggles with an eating disorder that almost killed her.
The 26-year-old actress gets candid in a personal column in the September issue of Glamour Magazine, admitting that she has battled with an eating disorder since she was a child. In the extremely personal statement, Mamet said the private struggle raged inside of her, nearly killing her.
"I was told I was fat for the first time when I was eight," Mamet writes. "I'm not fat; I've never been fat. But ever since then, there has been a monster in my brain that tells me I am-that convinces me my clothes don't fit or that I've eaten too much. At times it has forced me to starve myself, to run extra miles, to abuse my body."
She added: "As a teenager I used to stand in front of the refrigerator late at night staring into that white fluorescent light, debilitated by the war raging inside me: whether to give in to the pitted hunger in my stomach or close the door and go back to bed. I would stand there for hours, opening and closing the door, taking out a piece of food then putting it back in; taking it out, putting it in my mouth, and then spitting it into the garbage. I was only 17, living in misery, waiting to die."
Mamet, who plays Shoshanna Shapiro on the HBO series, called herself "an addict in recovery." She eventually got help at the age of 17 when her father, award-winning playwright and director David Mamet, decided to intervene and place her in a treatment program.
"He came home one night from a party, took me by the shoulders, and said, 'You're not allowed to die,'" Mamet recalled. "It was the first time I realized this wasn't all about me. I didn't care if I died, but my family did. That's the thing about these kinds of disorders: They're consuming; they make you egocentric; they're all you can see."
Mamet said she learnedduring treatment that her disorder was not about weight or food but about how to take "control of your life and of your body." Today, Mamet said she is at a healthy weight but understands her obsession will always remain with her.
"For years the voice inside me has gotten louder or quieter at times," she wrote. "It may never disappear completely, but hopefully one day it'll be so quiet, it'll only be a whisper and I'll wonder, 'Was that just the wind?'"
The "Mad Men" alum, who also commented on society's notion that skinny means beautiful, joins a list of celebrities who have opened up about their battles with eating disorders - including singers Demi Lovato and Kesha.
Mamet ended her column by urging those who are struggling to seek help and to "remind one another that we're beautiful."
