it wants to kill me

As Jack explains, “When you’re severely underweight, you’re emotionless, you’re totally numb because your body doesn’t have the energy to feel anything. You’ve no hormones or energy, you can’t feel anything, you can’t feel happy or sad, you’re just numb, you’re just floating so it’s impossible to have anxiety”. 

And just like that, the nail was hit on the head. Anorexia is about anxiety, more specifically, preventing anxiety. 

“If you have bad emotions and can’t deal with the anxiety and you slip into an eating disorder and not enough food you now have no emotions left, you’re just floating like a zombie, you’ve no emotions so no anxiety which feels good but that’s why people get so addicted to the eating disorder because you can’t feel anything else”.

“It’s a really clever mechanism in your body but unfortunately it can kill you”.

I have to hand it to you, Anorexia, that is clever tactics. 

“I thought I was sick, I didn’t feel right but I didn’t think ‘eating disorder’, I didn’t connect it to the fact I wasn’t eating properly”.

It was when he finally went to see a doctor that he realised the truth about what was going on with his body. 

“I went to the doctor and she weighed me and suspected something was wrong eating wise and she started asking me about what I was eating. I think then she mentioned “I think you might have an eating disorder” and she referred me to somebody”.

At this point, it was starting to appear to me as if Jack knew what he was doing to his body was unhealthy. It made me think of the comment, “you look healthy”, that so many anorexics report as triggering. This has always puzzled me; I always thought anorexia was linked to appearance and wanting to look more attractive. 

Surely, I thought, unhealthiness isn’t the new black?

However, Jack burst this bubble of mine with an indefinite “That is the worst thing to say”. But his reasoning is a lot different than expected.

“Honestly what you’re aiming for is death, that’s what anorexia wants to do, it wants to starve you to death”.

“I remember sitting with a psychologist once who actually went through anorexia herself and is now out the other side and is a psychologist specialising eating disorders and she talks to your anorexia, not you. She asked my anorexia once ‘what do you want’ and I just sat there for like 10 minutes and then eventually I just said, ‘wants to kill me’. When you say you look healthy, you’re basically telling anorexia, you’re failing.”.

College was when things really peaked. Jack was starting an International Business course at The University of Limerick and like so many others, had high hopes for the college experience.

Jack Cregan from the small village of Ballyhahill in the s(h)ticks of West Limerick was nothing more than a normal lads lad; girl-crazed, the appetite of a horse and good-grades-are-for-swats-attitude.

That is; replace the girls with weights, horse with bird and disregard for grades with overwhelming desire to exceed excellence. 

Jack like so many others grew up with a belly full of fear that only later in life, he discovered to be known as anxiety. And which, eventually morphed into anorexia.

It started off as a pretty run-of-the-mill diet-induced by what I like to call “summer bod syndrome”, in preparation for a holiday he had coming up. 

“When I went on holidays it was just a nightmare I realised I was screwed. I was afraid of food yet obsessed with it, all I could do was stare at food. I was starving but I couldn’t eat it”.

When I questioned Jack on the causing factor of his fear of eating, his answer perplexed me. 

Firstly, there was the obvious; “You’re afraid shitless of getting fat”.

Followed by the unexpected; “I was afraid of being around people who were overweight because I was scared, I’d get fat from them which is crazy”. But what really struck me is the logic beneath not eating; what the true driving factor is for anorexia- numbness. 

“I was really bad in college because I was living on my own, I was in control of my own food and could go to the gym whenever I wanted”.

After a few months, he decided to move home and finally, after a year, decided to drop out completely. 

So now what?

“I was lucky I could start working in my dad's business, Greenspan, helping with sales and selling more. I learned more in 2 weeks at Greenspan then I had in the year in UL. It was eye-opening going to meetings, talking on the phone to guys, emailing, going to meet fellas face to face”.

Greenspan became a crutch for Jack. It not only became his purpose for recovery but reminded him of what the purpose for all of this in the first place: to become a healthy, successful businessman.

But in order to do this, Jack knew he needed logic and that meant ditching anorexia so that’s exactly what he did.

“Eventually, when you gain weight in anorexia the irrational thinking is gone because you have energy and are able to rationalise things better. You’re more logical”.

“All of a sudden you find yourself thinking ‘will I eat breakfast or will I not’ and you’re swaying more towards the ‘yeah I’ll eat breakfast it’s a more logical thing to do’”.

It was onwards and upwards from here. Greenspan by day, online marketing courses by night. His first lightbulb moment was realising 3 things about Ireland: 

1. We love to drink

2. We hate to be caught over the limit

3. We have no idea where to get breathalysers 

So naturally, as any good entrepreneur does, he decided to fill this hole in the market. Facebook adverts and Chinese websites became his bucket and spade. 

“I’d have an ad running of people going into prison for drunk driving and stuff because people buy on emotion, not logic, they justify it with logic but they buy on emotion”.

“I’d suck them in with emotion seeing the penalty for drink driving than when I get them to the website I’d throw some logic at them like good battery life etc, just enough to tip them over the edge to actually go and buy,'' says Jack.

Sale after sale, venture after venture, course after course until Jack eventually morphed into a full-blown businessman. He has since left his dad’s business to focus solely on his own ventures and hopes someday to own a successful business.

Urbanpods, similar to Airpods, is his most recent venture and can be purchased online. He is an anorexia champion, entrepreneur and inspiration to many, and we wish him all the best.

Jack was today-years-old telling you, “The comeback is always better than the setback”.