EXCLUSIVE: 'I have thrown up in the bathrooms of a thousand restaurants and taken laxatives for years on end.' Silvery-voiced folk singer Judy Collins reveals her decades-long bingeing and purging nightmare

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The stunning silvery voice of Judy Collins overshadowed her severe eating disorder of bingeing and purging that took an extraordinary toll on the singer/songwriter for decades.

Collins comes from a family who struggled with alcoholism and addiction to food - and she wasn't an outlier.

Her tumultuous relationship with food began in childhood and tortured her for 40 years - eating was only a temporary solace to what the singer views as a black hole in her soul, she says in her latest confessional, Cravings: How I Conquered Food, to be published by Nan A. Talese in February 2017.

Collins, now 77, tried every diet plan, consulted with top diet gurus and when that failed, she turned to alcohol to anesthetize herself from the pain of failed attempts to control her endless insatiable cravings. 

Folk singer Judy Collins' tumultuous relationship with food began when she was a child, and led her into a downward spiral of bingeing, purging, and alcoholism that followed her for much of her life

Eating was only a temporary solace to what the singer views as a black hole in her soul, Collins says in her latest confessional, Cravings: How I Conquered Food

At age three, nothing made her happier than sugar in any form - fudge, meringue pies, Toll House Cookies and the desserts that her mother whipped up.

At seven years old, she satisfied her sugar compulsion with Bazooka bubble gum, Necco Wafers, Almond Joys, Mud Pies and Peppermint Patties. 

And eventually, Collins turned to alcoholism.  

'As an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder, I yearned for serenity and was tormented for much of my life by longings, addictions, and painful crises over food: bingeing, bulimia, weight loss and gain,' Collins writes. 

'I was determined from an early age that I would never get fat. I would rather die,' she adds. 

Collins had decided that the quickest way of dealing with her out of control food consumption was to purge herself of what she had just consumed.

'I have thrown up in the bathrooms of a thousand restaurants; bought bags and boxes of sweets and eaten them at one sitting… taken laxatives for years on end; done colonics and starvation cleanses,' she writes. 

It all began while growing up in Seattle Washington. Her adored father was blind and sang and DJ'd on a radio show. 

He encouraged her to play the piano and take acting lessons, setting her on her path of surviving well in the spotlight.

She was the eldest of five siblings, and saw how alcoholism and food addiction ran through her family as she grew up.

'There were arguments about the liquor cabinet - Mother would lock it up and Daddy would break the lock in the middle of the night,' she writes. 'I followed in my father's footsteps, beginning with music and the piano lessons and soon with the passion for alcohol and sugar.

Collins with the musicians she met at the start of her performing days. Pictured above she smiles with George Wein (left), Joan Baez (second left) and Pete Seeger (right)

'Sugar fueled my race through life,' Collins writes.

Her mother's passion was cooking and she was a whiz at desserts.

'Her divinity and chocolate fudge were dream inducing, and they were always there, the homemade pies and cookies, rum-soaked fruitcake for the holidays… it was heavenly,' she writes.

But the alcoholism in her family and the expectation of her parents and teachers to perform as a musician began what the singer believes to be her journey through dark thoughts and depression.

The family moved to Denver, and when she was ten years old, Collins was stricken with polio. 

She spent a month in total isolation in a little hospital room, with eating limited to what was brought on carts and handed to her through a sterilizer.

But when she left the hospital after two months, she returned to consuming all the sugar she wanted.

And the pressure was on to sing on her father's radio shows, perform in school plays, sing in the school, church and opera choirs - suddenly hit. 

Meanwhile, she was also dealing with her father's alcoholism and her mother's codependency, which were tearing the family apart.

'The ravages of drinking were evident, from the rages of my dad in his cups to my mother's silent scorn and tears at my father's womanizing,' she writes. 'I certainly had the gene pool for addiction.'

Her anxiety kicked into high gear when her father asked her to perform a very complex piece by composer Franz Liszt, La Campanella, at a concert he was giving in Denver.

Collins confessed to her father that she wasn't ready but he insisted.

In the 1960s and '70s, Collins was performing up to six days a week and three times a night. But she comes from a family who struggled with alcoholism and addiction to food - and she wasn't an outlier

And one Saturday, while doing her weekly chore of ironing, she decided to kill herself.

Foraging through her parents' medicine cabinet, there were no interesting medications so she decided on the unopened bottle of aspirin and tossed handfuls down her throat with some water – all 150 tablets.

She'd iron for ten minutes, take a few more pills, drink more water and iron some more - waiting 'hopefully to fall down dead, my problem solved'.

'Slowly, I began to feel lifted up and out of my problems, but then suddenly I was getting sick to my stomach. I wanted to die but I certainly did not want to have to throw up!' she writes.

Collins and musician Stephen Stills had a brief affair while she was recording music in Los Angeles in 1968

Collins then telephoned her best friend, but her friend's mother answered, telling her to put her finger down her throat and throw up what was in her stomach. She told young Collins that she'd send over her husband, who just happened to be a doctor.

There was no big to-do over the incident when her parents got home. 

Her father wrote her a letter apologizing for the demands of his perfectionism and no one in the family mentioned it again - no therapist was called and no intervention took place.

Through those teenage years, after her suicide attempt, Collins was unaware of her emotional instability despite her sugar and alcohol consumption.

But the bulimia was deteriorating her health and ended her menstrual period. 

'I drank like a fish when I got the chance…and started smoking, bumming cigarettes and finally buying my own Camels,' she writes.

Her life seemed to change when she was introduced to folk music and singers Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at the Denver Folklore Center.

'I was hooked for life,' she writes, saying she loved drinking at the parties attended by other young folksingers.

She met Peter Taylor, two years her senior when she was 17 in 1955, and quickly fell in love. He was a student at the University of Colorado and she was working at a guest ranch cleaning cabins and playing the piano in the lodge. 

When she returned to New York, her affair with Stills ended, but Collins soon fell into the arms of actor Stacy Keach (left) who set her head and heart to spinning for four years

After the couple had been together for three years, on a night together on a ski trip in March 1958, she got pregnant and the couple decided to get married.

Soon after getting pregnant, she packed on 25 pounds and couldn't stop eating. 

By 1960, Taylor was placed on a teaching assignment at the University of Connecticut, and she was on the road touring - taking her food addiction and thriving alcoholism along with her for the ride.

Collins, pictured in 1989, quit drinking and recovered from bulimia after meeting her now husband, Louis Nelson

She was working three shows a night, six days a week with short visits back home – long enough to argue with Peter and get a hug from her son Clark before heading out for another gig and one-night stands. 

Collins says she had one-night stands as a way to 'let down after the high of performing'. 

In the summer of 1962, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but Collins never quit smoking or drinking. Depression naturally followed and her therapists suggested that being an alcoholic was preferable to drugs. 

Collins was still plagued with thoughts of suicide and continued to gorge on sweets and everything else in the cupboard.  

In 1965, Collins and Taylor finally divorced after years of watching their marriage crumble. 

By 1968, she was living in New York with her son Clark, age nine, when she went out to Los Angeles to make what was her seventh album.

Stephen Stills, who was playing with the Buffalo Springfield at the time and later, Crosby, Stills and Nash, came into the session to play guitar and a tumultuous affair began at once.

The affair ended Collins' relationship with the man she had been living with in New York, Australian Michael Thomas.

'Stephen and I had a rapturous love affair…but nothing ever topped my eating, my drinking,' she writes, adding that she was drinking enough for the two of them.

When she finally met Louis Nelson, an industrial designer, in 1978, she knew she had met the man she had been waiting for all her life

When she returned to New York, the affair was over, but she soon fell into the arms of actor Stacy Keach who set her head and heart to spinning for four years.

But she still couldn't quit drinking and blackouts became a regular part of her days and nights.

'I was possessed with the need to eat and drink in excess…always on a diet and compulsive as ever about exercise,' she writes. 'I was in love but I was miserable and had nightmares and anxiety attacks as well as blackouts and days where I was as out of it as a high functioning addict could be.'

Belonging to three health clubs and exercising to the max was just another obsession. She often arrived at a health club drunk and once walked into a wall.

She was an addictive wreckage, an active bulimic who purged every day for 11 years - but at the same time she had ten top-ten records, traveled all over the world and sang at Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London.

The affair with Stacy ended after four years, and she then slipped into bed with cameraman Coulter Watt. Her next lover, Jerry Oster, a reporter with the New York Daily News, walked out on her.

Cravings: How I Conquered Food , will hit bookshelves in February 2017

When she finally met Louis Nelson, an industrial designer, in 1978, she knew she had met the man she had been waiting for all her life. 

Collins got sober and joined the Anonymous food program in 1982 and quit bulimia.

Her son, Clark, was seemingly living a content life and happily in love in St Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and two young daughters. 

By 1992, Clark, aged 33, had overcome a heroin habit. But he fell back into it and it killed him - Collins says it was the saddest moment of her life.

'I was sure I would die from this wild grief,' she writes. 

She did not eat or drink for weeks and canceled all of her concert dates.

Friends, prayers, suicide recovery groups and her now-husband, Louis, helped her through those terrible days. 

Louis Nelson and Collins married in 1996 after a committed partnership of eighteen years.

Collins has finally gotten her food and sugar addiction under control and eats only food that does not lead to cravings.

'My mind is clear, my heart is light, my health is perfect,' she writes. 

She attends GreySheeters Anonymous, an organization that offers a plan of abundant, delicious and healthy meals.

'I surrendered to it and never looked back,' she writes.

Collins has been sober now for 39 years and recovered from bulimia for more than 33 years.

'We are all in the same lifeboat, but the rescue ship is in the harbor, and we can all come aboard,' she writes, hoping that readers will be inspired by her story to resolve their own addictions.