Zosia Mamet says she has suffered from eating disorder since childhood

"Girls" star Zosia Mamet, daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, revealed Tuesday that she has suffered from an eating disorder since childhood.

"This struggle has been mostly a private one, a war nobody knew was raging inside me," she wrote in her column in the September issue of Glamour magazine. "I tried to fight it alone for a long time. And I nearly died."

Mamet, 26, wrote that she considers herself "an addict in recovery" and urged that eating disorders be considered as serious as substance abuse. "Nobody is addressing the fact that so many women wake up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror, and, out of habit, attack what they see. Maybe that's not an all-out disorder, but it's certainly the seed of one."

She said, "I was told I was fat for the first time when I was eight. I'm not fat; I've never been fat. But ever since then, there has been a monster in my brain that tells me I am -- that convinces me my clothes don't fit or that I've eaten too much."

Her father, she wrote, "eventually got me into treatment. He came home one night from a party, took me by the shoulders, and said, 'You're not allowed to die.' It was the first time I realized this wasn't all about me. I didn't care if I died, but my family did."

Today, she writes, "I'm at a healthy weight, though I realize that my obsession will always be with me in some way."