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"Can we talk about friends for a sec? We hang with them, rely on them&amp;amp;#8230;and, occasionally, do shots with them. But what do you do when your friendships get in the way of your taking care of you? Many women are kicking these kinds of relationships to the curb: In the Edelman Health Barometer 2011 survey, analyzed exclusively for Glamour, 32 percent of women ages 20 to 39 said they spent less time with a pal because of his or her negative health habits. &amp;amp;#8220;After my friend developed an eating disorder, it became too hard to be around her,&amp;amp;#8221; admits Caitlin, 24, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. &amp;amp;#8220;I tried to help her as best as I could, but her obsession started rubbing off on me. When I started seeing food through her eyes and dangerously restricting my own eating, I had to break things off.&amp;amp;#8221; A little distance can be a smart move: Research shows that bad health behaviors can actually be contagious. Both eating disorders and obesity can spread through groups of friends, studies have found. It&amp;amp;#8217;s also been shown that friends are the biggest influence on whether women, especially young women, smoke. True, your friends can also be the best things to ever happen to your health, but how do you deal when they&amp;amp;#8217;re not? And what would you do if you had to choose between your health and the people you like most? These three women found their own fascinating answers. &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;#8220;My friend got me hooked on cocaine&amp;amp;#8221;How two women spiraled downward&amp;amp;#8212;until one broke free By Kristen Smith* Four years ago, I was like any other young professional I knew: I worked hard at my job, then went out with friends on the weekends for dinner and cocktails. At 32, I&amp;amp;#8217;d tried drugs only once or twice, when someone at a party passed them around and I was feeling crazy. Then I met a woman I&amp;amp;#8217;ll call Jane. She had a cushy job and a ton of &amp;amp;#8220;society&amp;amp;#8221; friends, and went to all the best parties. The first night we hung out, Jane brought out some coke, and since everyone was doing it, I did too. High with Jane, I felt like the best version of myself: witty, exciting, popular. I was psyched when she started inviting me to events with her. Other friends warned me that Jane partied too hard, but soon, the two of us were inseparable. We even shared a beach house that summer in the Hamptons. Back in New York City, we&amp;amp;#8217;d hang out every weekend. Then I started going over to her apartment on Monday nights to watch TV, and we&amp;amp;#8217;d order cocaine, drink vodka and somehow end up at a seedy strip club. Or we&amp;amp;#8217;d meet for Sunday brunch, then find ourselves at a Mexican bar downing margaritas and snorting lines in the bathroom at 3:00 A.M.&amp;amp;#8212;and I&amp;amp;#8217;d have to work later that morning! Before long, I was using by myself at home, calling Jane&amp;amp;#8217;s dealers directly for my weekly supply. Deep down, I knew I was addicted, but I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t stop. At the time, I had a great job as a vice president at a luxury PR company. One day I went to work after staying up doing lines and drinking with Jane until 8:00 A.M.&amp;amp;#8212;and ended up in an elevator with the CEO of my company. Not long after that, my bosses caught on and fired me. When I called Jane, she told me to come over and party away my sorrows. Eventually my life got so out of hand I had to give up my Manhattan apartment and move home with my parents, who lived upstate. It was depressing, but I&amp;amp;#8217;d still go into the city all the time to see Jane and do so much cocaine (sometimes 20 lines a night) that I&amp;amp;#8217;m amazed I&amp;amp;#8217;m even alive. I used at my parents&amp;amp;#8217; house too; I even got high before church on Christmas Eve. At one point I tried to get sober, but Jane kept encouraging me, and I kept caving in. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re not addicted; you&amp;amp;#8217;re just having fun,&amp;amp;#8221; she would say. Finally I checked myself in to rehab. Jane thought I was overreacting&amp;amp;#8212;she actually said I was being dramatic!&amp;amp;#8212;but I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t keep living that way. It took 10 months before I could cut Jane out of my life completely. The last time I saw her was at the end of last year, at a birthday party. She did coke right in front of me, but I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t tempted anymore. I realized that she was never going to change, and I already had. And my friends? I&amp;amp;#8217;ve met a group of truly supportive women who are always there for me. With their influence in my life, I know I&amp;amp;#8217;ll be OK. *Kristen Smith is a pseudonym; the writer has a new job in public relations and has been clean and sober almost a year. &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;#8220;My best friend and I always think we&amp;amp;#8217;re dying&amp;amp;#8221; Is it good or bad when a friend eggs on your paranoia? By Emma Rosenblum The other day at work, I started feeling weird. My chest was tight, and I thought I could sense my throat constricting. I had just eaten my unch&amp;amp;#8212;a mediocre turkey sandwich&amp;amp;#8212;and so I immediately came to the catastrophic conclusion that I was having a deathly allergic reaction to the nuts in the bread. No, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t have a nut allergy. What I do have is a case of hypochondria. I am almost always certain that I&amp;amp;#8217;m dying of a tropical illness or suffering from an undiagnosed heart defect. As my mom says, &amp;amp;#8220;Everyone has their thing.&amp;amp;#8221; This is my thing. And my friend Victoria shares that thing. So even as I was googling anaphylaxis, I was picking up the phone to call her. I knew she&amp;amp;#8217;d feel my phantom pain. Other friends lose patience with my panicky tendencies; my family, while tolerant, never takes me seriously either. (&amp;amp;#8220;A heart attack&amp;amp;#8230;again?&amp;amp;#8221; my brother recently emailed me after I complained of chest pains. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d be worried if you hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t already survived so many.&amp;amp;#8221;) So I depend on Victoria for moral support. You might think that having a hypochondriac as a best friend would make me only more crazed (and yes, there was one recent instance when innocent cocktails dissolved into a definitive mutual diagnosis of Lupus). But happily, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve found that it&amp;amp;#8217;s good for my mental health. While other people&amp;amp;#8217;s reassurances are unconvincing, Victoria actually listens to me instead of writing me off as an insane person. So when she says, &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re fine,&amp;amp;#8221; I really believe her. Which gets me back to that time I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t going into anaphylactic shock. Victoria answered the phone at her fancy fashion job. &amp;amp;#8220;I think I&amp;amp;#8217;m having an allergic reaction to nuts,&amp;amp;#8221; I said, before saying hello. &amp;amp;#8220;Yeah, I can&amp;amp;#8217;t breathe after I eat certain stuff either,&amp;amp;#8221; she replied. &amp;amp;#8220;It happened the other day.&amp;amp;#8221; We went on for a few minutes about our various symptoms, and by the time I was ready to get off the phone, I&amp;amp;#8217;d already searched WebMD and learned that if my throat hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t closed up by that point, I was in the clear. &amp;amp;#8220;It looks like I&amp;amp;#8217;m going to live&amp;amp;#8230;this time,&amp;amp;#8221; I told her. Then we talked about where we were getting dinner that weekend, and I hung up and went back to work, fully cured. Emma Rosenblum is a senior editor at Glamour. &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;bull; &amp;amp;#8220;I tried to force my friends to be healthy&amp;amp;#8221; A &amp;amp;#8220;health nut&amp;amp;#8221; repents By Marisa Meltzer In my circle of friends, I&amp;amp;#8217;m something of a health nut. I&amp;amp;#8217;m always the one doing obscure raw-food diets and juice fasts and trying esoteric sorts of yoga. And while it pains me to admit it, for years I pushed my latest phases on my friends (whose names I&amp;amp;#8217;ve changed here to protect the innocent). I made unemployed Andrea spend $200 on yoga gear at Lululemon and another $200 for an unlimited pass to my Vinyasa yoga center. I got carb-addict Jen to put down her beloved morning scone and give up all bread. And then there was the time I was so excited about my $80-per-hour personal trainer that I convinced my friend Melinda to hire one too, even though she barely had time in her schedule to see her boyfriend, let alone a stranger wielding a kettlebell. I&amp;amp;#8217;m not the paragon of healthy living (I swear, I love my fries); I&amp;amp;#8217;m just addicted to trying new things. Call it health ADD. And for years I convinced myself that I was just encouraging my friends to live better&amp;amp;#8212;not annoying them. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I decided that Sonia, my close friend of more than a decade, and I should do a rigorous new diet. We started a secret, password-protected blog where we&amp;amp;#8217;d map out our meals and workouts, comment on each other&amp;amp;#8217;s posts, add words of encouragement and record everything we ate. Every single day. It was a lot of work, even by my standards. Sonia started to post less and less frequently and even began to avoid me offline. And yet I ignored the fact that Sonia worked long hours and had a killer commute to contend with, and that this rigid plan I concocted was asking too much of her. I was too proud to admit that I had overcommitted us, so I kept trying to be the perfect diet cheerleader. What I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t being was the perfect friend. Posting slowed down, and Sonia and I drifted apart. There was no fight, no confrontation, but I felt like I had let her down. Sonia was someone who had been there for me through thick and thin, and here I was pestering her about logging her carrots and getting her butt to the gym? Suddenly I realized: It&amp;amp;#8217;s more important to have healthy friendships than to be the healthiest friend. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to be the drill sergeant anymore. So I decided to step back. These days I let my friends reach out to me if they want diet advice or need to dish about their Pilates routine. As for Sonia, she and I managed to reconnect, after she admitted that she needed a little time away from my health craziness to feel sane. We celebrated the rekindling of our friendship over a big dinner: steak, bread, wine, chocolate&amp;amp;#8212;and no talk of the calories whatsoever. Marisa Meltzer is author of Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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