If you’ve been in my office, in a corner not always noticed, is a sign my stepdaughter bought me. It says “Save the Earth, It’s the Only One with Chocolate”. It’s true and I mean it.
As addictions go, sugar has a lot of advantages. First, it isn’t illegal. I don’t have to worry about getting arrested, and many people consume it in public, so that means I can too. It isn’t all that expensive, a fix can be had pretty cheaply, so I give myself a lot of credit for choosing something easily available that doesn’t make my teeth fall out quite as quickly as other addictions, or make my eye sockets hallow out and have deep dark rings around them. I’m an addict, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I can be an addict and still present myself in public with no one suspecting. And thanks to Costco, I can purchase mass quantities of the stuff and no one even notices. When I buy myself my own chocolate cake, no one knows I’m the only one who will eat it. I can pass for a person who might have a big family or entertain company.
Sugar is readily available and it is consistently there to be counted on. It always always always tastes good. Not like heroin addiction where they have to have more just to rid themselves of the withdrawal. No withdrawal that I can see. Just love love love!
Sometimes I have splurged a bit too close to hoarding – I do have to watch that. My favorite days of the year are :the day after Christmas, the day after Halloween, the day after Valentines Day.
I’m sure along with drones, Amazon is preparing to test implanted brain chips that will automatically order whatever we think about that we want. I will be the first to volunteer. In the future I will wake up every morning and find amazing sweets at my front door. I will need to keep a refrigerator and freezer on my front porch so I can wake up to chocolate cake and snickers ice cream to start my day.
It started like this. It was something special and often hidden away, and I needed to be a good girl to get some. I needed to finish all my food to get some. I needed to be a sneak to get some, I had to search and sometimes steal it, so I did. That is the lure of an addiction, one will go to any and all lengths to get it. I promised myself when I grew up I’d surround myself with sugar, and I kept my childhood promise to myself. I do. My favorite sneak was to get 35 cents to go see a movie. My cousin was all to willing to ditch the movie with me and each spend our 35 cents on candy, and with two for a penny, that was a lot of candy. Of course her favorite addiction was the chocolate milk shake at the drug store, so sometimes I needed to be a good sport and contribute my share of the money to buy it. I guess it must of cost 50 cents. I did it grudgingly, but that’s what one must do in order to maintain an accomplice.
I promised myself that I would let myself have dessert before my meal when I grew up, and I do.
During college times I would binge eat, and I was determined to learn to control my intake of sugar. I have to give credit to the employees of my local Baskin Robbins at that time, because they never blinked when I went in day after day after day and bought 4 quarts of the same ice cream. People used to be a lot more polite in the past than they are now.
As a vegetarian, I freaked out when I read that some sugars are bleached using animal bones! Oh no! This was serious! Fortunately, M @M Mars company was at my rescue, because their products are not made with sugar bleached this way. And anything marked “Kosher, pareve” is safe too. Thanks to all the Orthodox Jews in the world, my love and I do not need to be separated. But I had a freak out week or two where I thought I had to give it up, unless it was marked “Vegetarian”. I tried some of those products and they just weren’t very good. Whew, what a relief that so many products are safe. (I did have to give up gummy bears but Whole Foods sells a similar item made without gelatin in their bulk section).
So all remains well in my world. I am grateful for so many things. We are so lucky and so blessed to live in this country. And I am so grateful for sugar. And electric toothbrushes. And floss. And dentists.
true love; breaking the cycle of failed relationships 