Content Warnings and Resources for Eat Your Young

Content Warnings

Substance abuse disorders, drug use, self-harm, body dysmorphia, disordered eating, fatphobia, violence, and occasional misgendering. 

For more detailed information about how these happen in the play, please scroll down. 

Resources

Trans LifeLine
The Network/La Red
The Center
Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBTQIA+ Youth
Body Liberation with Lindsay Ashline
The Body is Not an Apology
ANAD Eating Disorder Support Groups

While the content and characters of this play are fictional, the troubled teen industry and wilderness therapy camps are all too real. Young people in need of support around substance abuse disorder, mental illness, suicidality, eating disorders, and other obstacles are sent to high stress situations in remote locations where their access to basic necessities of food, water, and privacy are controlled by adults in the name of therapeutic technique. Many—perhaps even most—of these adults believe they are doing a kind, compassionate, needed service. 

Survivors of programs like the one depicted here have spent endless time and energy to make their stories heard and to remember their peers. You can read their testimonials at https://1000placesudontwanttobe.wordpress.com/.  

Detailed descriptions

Character and plot specifics follow.  

Substance abuse disorders and drug use

  • Quinn references using benadryl recreationally and wanting access to it several times throughout the play. They describe explicit dosage information. We also see Quinn’s withdrawal symptoms. 
  • A former camper is described as being in withdrawal from percocet. 

Misgendering

  • Marty occasionally refers to the group of participants as “girls” or “ladies.” 
  • Jelly describes being made to stand up to pee on the drive to New Frontiers. 

Self-harm

  • Marty B briefly describes their first suicide attempt of rolling off the roof as a young child. 
  • Marty describes Marty B’s childhood attempts at self-harm. 
  • Ginger describes wanting to cut her stomach off.  

Disordered eating, body dysmorphia, and fatphobia 

  • The campers are denied food more than once. Marty B frequently references fasting and starvation. 
  • Ginger describes various diets she’s been put on throughout her life, as well as the desire to sometimes cut her stomach off. She also briefly describes binging and purging (making herself vomit). 
  • Marty is described as making comments about keeping the food “safe” from Ginger by locking it and hanging it up. 

Violence

  • Marty B describes making a camper stand for a painfully long time in cold water.
  • The campers allude to and describe Ginger being tied to a tree. 
  • Depictions of violence between multiple characters onstage.