Transcripts For WMAR Nightline 20100520 : vimarsana.com

doesn t always win in the old west. and we find out why, in tonight s sign of the times. announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, martin bashir and cynthia mcfadden in new york city, this is nightline, may 19th, 2010. good evening. it is an emerging condition, but one that most sufferers will do anything to hide. food addiction can be no less dangerous, nor difficult to break than alcoholism or drug abuse. a scientific study published in march found signals in the brains of rats similar to nose of drug addicts, only, in this case, it was high calorie food that triggered an addiction-like response. so, how do you treat a condition that s often concealed? deborah roberts reports on one woman s brave fight against the compulsion to eat. it s sweet, salty, cold. reporter: what you re watching is a rare glimpse of a food addict on a binge. i don t want so be like this anymore. reporter: in treatment, but in the middle of a relapse. i had eaten that monday night, that started with rice cakes and mustard. reporter: her name is lori. and moved to 12 pack kelts of oatmeal. olives, cheese sticks, four cottage cheese tubs, tofu, packages of edame. frozen individual tables, starbucks, scones, muffins and an egg sandwich. reporter: nightline was given rare access to lori s treatment at milestones and recovery. binge eaters are treated as addicts. every bit as hooked as drug abusers. when people are drinking, you get a buzz. when i eat food, i enjoy it. but where s the buzz. i do, though. i do. it s like a craving. it s kind of like, nothing else matters when you re in the food. reporter: how do you look after a binge? pardon the phrase, but i always make a reference like i m a crackhead or something. i m in this drug mode. i really don t care. reporter: for three weeks, she ll live here, preparing to re-enter a world where nearly everything will try to conspire to trigger here binges. you have to be sure you re following your plan. it s not just thrown on the plate. it s an addiction. it s an absolute addiction. absolutely. because there s no doubt in my mind i m a different person when i m in a binge mode. so, i have to face my fears. keep going. reporter: a simple trip to the grocery store must be sup supervised. i m coming for apple sauce. reporter: lori s big weakness is sugar. passing all of the candy. we re not going to look at the candy. reporter: you have a name for sugar. what do you call it? my cocaine. my other white powder. reporter: it s really like that for you? yeah. reporter: at 35, lori has been secretly bingeing for nine years. i mean, if we went out to dinner or lunch together, you would think, she eats like a bird. i always take leftovers home. the first thing, though, when you leave my house, i m going to eat them and i m going to go to the next and the next. but in front of you, i would never do this. like, this is reporter: publicly, nobody is going to see it. no, this is nothing i would do in public or with anyone. reporter: pardon the question, but how would you get it out of you? did you throw it up? how did you purge it? diuretics, laxatives and then exercise. i ll have water and an orange and divy it up between seven days, i get two slices on this day, two on that day. reporter: like any other addict, she s now terrified that her addiction will kill her. i ve fallen asleep with 911 on my phone, ready to call, because it s almost like you are so full that you can t even breathe. that was where, you know, i was very concerned, too, because i don t want to have food kill me. reporter: finally, she s ready to spend limited time outside the facility. i want to get back to work and get back to my routine and my family and friends and, you know, have my normal life again. reporter: she agrees to record what happens on a flip camera we give her. i m nervous about going home. i m nervous about, i guess, just failing again. reporter: three days later, on her way to an overeaters anonymous meeting, her resistance crumbles. i don t know what i m doing. i stopped and bought, because i don t even know why. and now i m sitting here with a bag of munch kins. a bag with a doughnut and a bag with a muffin. and i know that if i have that, that s going to lead me down a road that i can t go. oh, my god. reporter: two days later i m not happy. i think i m happy. reporter: she s at it again. this is why i am screwed up and i don t know why this is more important in my life. i ve just start ed a brief beginning to my day. and have had many, many, many things. reporter: on her way to work, lori eats 25 munch kins. two boston cream dough nuts. three scones a sin won swirl coffee cake and lemon cake. almost there. i don t know what i m in the mood for now, though. reporter: this is after work. four cinnamon swirl coffee cakes, one pumpkin bread. 25 munch kins. two boston creams. mash browns. an ice cream sun dai. large french fries and a pizza. more than 10,000 calories today. and she s not finished yet. i did sweet, i did salty. i did cold. i did people sa. i m kind of in the mood for mexican, so we go to spicy. reporter: ten minutes later, she s eating a burrito, chips and salsa. this is what i do. drive around all night, hitting the next best thing. i m really in the mood for a smoothie. reporter: what is going through your mind while you re doing all this? just, what do i want next. reporter: are you feeling bad at that moment? no. no. not really, no. it s like this little voice that s like, yeah, no, give in. it s good. reporter: by the end of the day, she s eaten nearly 15,000 calories of food. so much, her stomach s visibly bloated. if you could only see my stomach. ay yi yi. it s okay. as long as i can breathe, i m good. this is my struggle, and this is my lie, and this is my demise. reporter: 24 hours later, on the morning of our interview, she admits she binged again on the way to meet us. i stopped at a bakery this morning. reporter: this morning? what did you eat before you came here today? i had ten munch kins, a boston cream doughnut, the order of hash browns and a vanilla coffee. and then i went to a bakery and i had two of those vanilla things, like pass try things and then i had a cheese and rasp berry day niche. in my head, it s okay. i m going to feel better, but after the interview, i m going to start. reporter: you keep telling yourself, i m going to get a handle on it. but you know what s sad? i already have in my mind that i want to go somewhere else after this. reporter: which is why lori, four months after intensive treatment, still is in what she calls the fight of her life. are you going to get the best of this thing or is it going to get the best of you? i would like to think that i m going to get the best of it. i just i need to continue making the right choices, and taking one day at a time. so, i really need to just follow through and when i get those urges, i said that it s as painful as it s like me not breathing or not blinking or not sleeping. like, when it s calling me, i need to do it. reporter: for nightline, i m deborah roberts in cooper city, florida. the daily challenge of food addiction. our thanks to deborah roberts. and when we come back, we ll meet a man famous for hooking fish every shape and size all over the world. but can the star of river monsters conquer manhattan s mighty east riverer? 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[ male announcer ] approximately 2 out of 3 people being treated for depression still have unresolved symptoms. talk to your doctor. if an antidepressant alone isn t enough, one option your doctor may consider is adding abilify. abilify treats depression in adults when added to an antidepressant. some people had symptom improvement as early as 1 to 2 weeks after adding abilify. abilify is not for everyone. call your doctor if your depression worsens or you have unusual changes in behavior, or thoughts of suicide. antidepressants can increase these in children, teens and young adults. elderly dementia patients taking abilify have an increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor if you have high fever, stiff muscles and confusion to address a possible life-threatening condition. or if you have uncontrollable muscle movements, as these could become permanent. high blood sugar has been reported with abilify and medicines like it. in some cases, extreme high blood sugar can lead to coma or death. other risks include decreases in white blood cells, which can be serious, dizziness upon standing, seizures, trouble swallowing, and impaired judgment or motor skills. adding abilify has made a difference for me. 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[ male announcer ] talk to your doctor . it s often been said that a bad day fishing is better than a good day working. well, jeremy wade, the man you re about to meet, has managed to combine the two. turning his skill as an angler of rare and dangerous prey into a highly successful television show. so, what could he catch in manhattan s east river? accompanied by our john donvan, they went fishing for a river monster. fish on. reporter: he is the world s most famous fisherman. because of his energy and because of his charm. but mostly because of the fish he goes after. we re in the middle of a frenzy. that one bit my thumb. reporter: monster fish. jeremy wade, extreme fisherman and biologist hosts river monsters, the most popular show ever on the cable channel animal planet. reporter: this is a black piranha. the biggest. those teeth are so sharp that went people get cut by them, they say they don t even feel it when it happens. they only notice it when they see the blood. this really is a monster. reporter: he travels the world to find the biggest, the strongest, the deadliest and, well, the weirdest fresh water fish you ve never heard of. which is kind of the point. they are so illusive and mysterious, they are almost mystical. the gunch cat fish in northern india. that is a big fish. reporter: the pariba of the amazon. and this is the one that people say, when it gets big enough, it goes after people, as well. reporter: and, the giant fresh water stingray. a legend in thailand, only its more than a legend. it measured six feet across and weighed about 400 pounds. so, when we heard that jeremy wade was visiting new york city, we dared him to visit the edge of what we consider, well, a mythical body of water. the east river, to see what guild creature he could pull out of there alive. so, have you ever fished new york city waters before? no, i haven t, no. this is going the be a first for me. this is quite exotic for me. reporter: even jeremy agrees it s exotic. very different from what i normally do. normally i m in a rain forest or mountains. so, urban. i do like the idea of that. reporter: what could be done there? and whatever it might be, could jeremy wade find it, hook it and pull it out? here s ryan over here. jeremy wade. hey, jeremy. you must be ryan. reporter: he finds somebody local for some information. in this case, it s new york city fisherman ryan chafler. people see me, they go, where you are going? they re like, yeah. do you know another one on this side of the island? surprised how clean it is. yeah, being the east river and all. yeah, i suppose i mean, this is tidal here. i was expecting dead bodies and reporter: so they get down to business, which including adapting to the new york city soundtrack. that damn helicopter just wouldn t go away. just thinking, norm little when you go fishing, you have to creep around really quiet. not here. reporter: they use small fish and blood worms as bait. what s the take like? like a ton of bricks. reporter: and then, they wait. something that jeremy is quite used to, like all fishermen. when he set out on the conga river to catch the six-foot, 100-pound tiger fish, he waited for three weeks. fish on! there it is. that s a good fish. look at that! look at that. we have to worry about him biting his way out. those teeth. what a fresh water monster this thing is. the fish normally don t respond on cue. you ve got to hang around for a bit. reporter: they don t know about the script. it s a bit look liking for the yeti. but you do get to see it. reporter: where did all this start for you? when i started, i was 7 or 8. i fished very shortly intensi intensively, probably too much for my own good, i mean, it was a bit obsessive. i think it s similar to a gambler. you are always left thinking, if i go tomorrow, i get a bigger fish. reporter: where do you learn the skill of opening a fish s mouth without getting bitten? that s what people want to see. reporter: once, he allowed himself to be the bait. what were you doing in a pool full of piranha? if they re not hungry, you can swim with them. being television, my director said, well, we need you to demonstrate that. these piranhas were tearing into a piece of dead meat just a couple of minutes ago. going to walk to it? reporter: four hours more of this and we actually told jeremy who had a plane to catch that it was okay if he took off. he didn t want to give up. and after six hours whoa! a beautiful striped bass. not bad in the east river. i thought you were making it up. there we go. big old mouth. gosh. reporter: and exotic fish? well this is the east river, so, yes, by definition, that was exotic. i m john donvan for nightline on the east river in new york city. i remember myself fishing in the river thames. our thanks to john donvan. and when we come back, what is the gun slinger s paradox, and is there any truth to the theory? we step into the old west, high noon, guns ablazing, to find out in tonight s sign of the times. what if one little pop could open a world of wonder ? so sensory so satisfying the discovery never seems to stop it s the magic friskies makes happen every day in so many ways friskies feed the senses announcer: nightline continues from new york city with martin bashir. any fan of the western film genre knows the shootout scene well the villain goes for his weapon first, only to be taken down by the hero s lightning reaction and pin-point accuracy. so, is this a case of art actually imitating life? for nick watt, probing the gun slinger s paradox is tonight s sign of the times. reporter: what you just witnessed is called the gun slijer s paradox. the bad guy drew first, but i still smoked him. a phenomenon first noticed by neils bore. he noticed that the baddy always draws first but the goody always wins. mill er! reporter: he figured that human reactions are always faster than actions. that s why john wayne, seen here in blue steel, always wins. men. we found these two going through mason s pockets. so, what s to be done? drop that gun! reporter: now, 54 volunteers have put that theory to the test. restart. red wins. reporter: rath boringly pushing buttons. people when they react to an opponent react 20 milliseconds swifter. reporter: clint eastwood. i need you alive. reporter: proving the point. is this an evolutionary trait? the human brain works faster when it s reacting to danger? a charging mammoth? or, these days, speeding car? that is the truth. 20 milliseconds faster. but our egghead discovered a couple of other things. yes, the good guy will draw quicker, but perhaps not quite quick enough. and we found that these were slightly less accurate when they went second, as well. reporter: so, the good guy is more likely to miss. i guess the good guy will shoot quicker but he ll still die. reporter: when all is said and done, neils bore was only half right. the gun slinger s paradox is really a holly wood half truth. a device to make the bad guy look bad. the good guy look awesome. that bearded sack of goat hair drew first, but i shot first. he s dead in the dirt, i m in here. sweet cheeks. i m nick watt for nightline in london. and apparently there is a new sheriff in town. our thanks to nick watt. and when we come back, sizing up london s new e limb pick mascots. but first, here s jimmy kimmel with what s coming up next on abc. jimmy: thanks, martin. michael douglas, atticus shaffer, and music the only place that you can find southwest fares on the internet is southwest.com. we re not on travelocity. the only place. what s the other one? 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