Ashley Steele, a freshman at Iowa State University, said her drinking habits can disguise her eating disorder.

“I’ve always had a problem with anorexia, but I like to drink,” she said. “I figure most people will see me drinking and not realize that I have a problem with my eating.”

Steele is affected by “Drunkorexia,” a variation of anorexia and bulimia which mixes starvation or binging and purging with alcohol abuse, and can be more devastating than eating disorders or alcoholism on their own, said University of Florida College of Medicine addiction medicine chief and psychiatry department chairman Mark Gold.

Gold said drinking on an empty stomach allows alcohol to affect the brain faster and can cause people to become addicted to alcohol.

“Drug abuse and alcohol compete in the brain for the same reinforcement sites as food,” he said. “Drug reward is greatest when the person is starving or hungry and least when they are full.”

Some students use alcohol as their main source of calories as a way to deal with psychological and social issues and to “self-medicate” their problems, said Kitty Westin, president of the Anna Westin Foundation, a group that works to prevent and treat eating disorders.

“Drinking relieves them from their self-imposed restrictions, rules and obsessive thinking about weight,” said Susan Sorrentino, a Salem-based psychologist specializing in eating disorders. “They want to get so drunk that they won’t be able to think.”

Rutgers University freshman Regan Howard, who is recovering from an eating disorder, said it is extremely hard to break free from obsessive thinking.

“I have overcome the disorder, yet not the thoughts,” she said. “It’s a daily battle.”

Southeastern Louisiana University junior Brittany Wallace said she has struggled with an eating disorder for years and constricts her calorie intake during the day because she wants to drink without gaining weight.

“I want to have fun and go out, but downing between 1,000 and 3,000 calories from alcohol on top of food is ridiculously too much,” she said.

A 2003 study showed that substance abuse and eating disorders are linked because people with eating disorders are at risk to abuse other substances due to an addictive component in their personalities. Both alcoholism and eating disorders are chronic conditions with high relapse rates, according to the 2003 report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

People with eating disorders are up to five times likelier than those without them to abuse alcohol and illicit drugs, according to the report.

University of Florida psychiatry assistant professor Lisa Merlo said about 17 percent of women with eating disorders have a lifetime history of substance abuse or dependence.

Helping Hands, a Boston University club focused on eating disorder education, sold eating disorder awareness bracelets and organized a panel to help raise funds for the National Eating Disorders Association in February, national eating disorders awareness month.

College of Communication junior and BU feminist magazine Hoochie Woman staff member Rosemary D’Amour said colleges can only help prevent and treat eating disorders and substance abuse to a certain extent.

“I don’t think that you can do much to stop this type of behavior other than letting people know about the dangers of it,” she said.