Making the Cut

The Fix - Cutting yourself to quell emotional pain isn’t all that different from drinking or drugging, though the scars are more apparent. The question is: How dangerous is it?

When 21-year-old Alexa, a student from Los Angeles, speaks about her battle with cutting, she uses the dark language of progressive drug addiction. “I started when I was 19,” she says. “At first, it was very shallow cuts along one specific area of my wrist—just slightly more than a scrape. But as I continued, it progressed. They began going up and down my arms. Within a few months, I had to start going to the hospital and getting stitches for it. After a year, I basically ran out of room on that part of my body.”  Read more.