Remember the caramel apple incident? Of course you do, it was my last post. Well, after I made up that batch of caramel apple dip, what I didn’t say was that I ate some. I sat there in my chair dipping apple slices until I realized I was eating so much sugar I was probably going to go blind. Can you go blind from too much sugar? Don’t answer that. I’m probably one Tic Tac away from getting a seeing-eye dog.
I got up, put the little (really, it was little, I swear! I am not defensive!) bowl into the sink, and started washing it out. I turned on the faucet, pumped out some soap, and began using my hands to squee-gee the caramel out of the bowl. As I was pressing the goo through my fingers, I thought, “Wow, it just melts away, just breaks right down to sugar,” and that’s when it hit me. It’s just sugar.
It’s all just sugar.
I know what you’re thinking: DUH.
Right, right, but what I’m saying is that, as a junk food addict, I’d imbued every cookie, every pastry, every piece of chocolate, with a unique personality. They’re like people. People who love me, and make me happy, at least for an hour while the sugar is lasting, and then they get grouchy and kick me in the gut on the way out. But I never remember that part, I just remember that first hour of total, sugar-infused bliss. Mmmm, sweet, yummy, sweetened bliss….
……and yet, in reality, it’s all just sugar. And I really think sugar is a drug. I’m not saying it’s on par with heroin or anything, but I’d wager it’s definitely up there with nicotine and alcohol. And you can’t get away from it the way you can cigarettes and beer, which is why so many recovering alcoholics and people quitting smoking end up developing, you guessed it: a sugar habit. You think it’s hard to take a cigarette out of a smoker’s hand? Try two weeks after they’ve quit smoking, getting that doughnut out of their clutches. I suggest pliers.
Everywhere you go, sugar is there. This is a great comfort, until you decide to stop eating it.
So how long has it been? It’s been approximately 47 hours, 24 minutes. Not that I’m counting.
Yesterday I was grouchy. Wait, let me check my thesaurus, I know I can do better. Okay: I was irritable, bad-tempered, cranky, huffy, snappish, waspish and prickly.
I thought that was bad. Today was three times as bad. I didn’t sleep well, I had a headache, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t keep my interest in anything, I rambled on whenever I talked (CAN YOU TELL?), and my hands actually shook – which really I’d only seen happen in movies depicting life at detox centers. On top of that, I was an emotional wreck. My kids drove me nuts, every time the dogs barked I felt so angry I thought I was going to pop a vessel, even the parakeets were just too loud. STOP WITH THE CHIRPING ALREADY.
Later, while watching a documentary on stress, I started crying, because they showed a group of women whose kids were disabled, and the scientist who was studying their support group. I used to work in a preschool for disabled kids, and suddenly I was remembering the parents, and how hard it was for them sometimes, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with food, except that I couldn’t stop crying, and that’s when I threw up my hands, completely exasperated, and said to Greg, “What is WRONG with me?”
And my insightful husband replied, with a calm I wished I could suck out of his body through a straw, “You can’t regulate your feelings the way you usually do.”
And then I cried some more because WHAT A GREAT INSIGHT.
It’s been a long day.
I’m going to see how long I can keep this up. I don’t think I can stay off sugar forever, and I don’t even want to. But I’d like the choice to eat sugar-laded treats or not be just that; a choice, and not an impulse, or a compulsion, or the way I make myself feel calm several times a day. There has to be a healthier way to regulate my stress levels, to relax. I intend to find it.
*puts sensible head on*
So long as you’re getting your complex carbs!
Going (mostly) off sugar has been harder for me than stopping alcohol was. It IS an addiction.
Oh yeah, no worries! Definitely okay with carbs. I think the low-carb movement is total bullshit. Let’s see here…..Atkins never published anything scholarly, he died early, and mysteriously enough, no one will let us autopsy the body.
Ornish, McDougall, Furhman, the guy who runs PCRM (Barnard! That’s it); all the low-fat high-healthy-carb vegan guys are still alive and kicking, and their arteries are clear, and their papers are published in actual medical journals, and their patients are reversing their heart disease. And people still believe this crap about EATING BACON CLEARS YOUR ARTERIES!? It gets me fired up, to say the very least.
Yes! Llyra, you are totally right. I think it can be as hard, if not harder, than stopping other things. Especially because it’s just everywhere.
That’s why I ignore their sweet little voices telling me to eat them. I can hear the doughnuts on the other side of the building calling out to me, “GyyyyymGeeeeeeek, eat us! You know you like us, come eeeeeeeeeat us.”
And to roughly quote Rev. Ivan Stang, of the Church of the SubGenius, “If sugar were invented in a lab 30 years ago it would be controlled harder than narcotics today.”
the way you put this, ‘using sugar to regulate emotions,’ puts me strongly in mind of the valium of the seventies, as if emotions are some recurrent revolution in need of suppression. :)
I’ve never been a big fan of the emotionality vs rationality dichotomy… emotions may not be logical, but inasmuch as they happen in thoughts (though assuredly they happen throughout the rest of ones’ self as well) they are… I want to say reasonable, or comprehensible, or comprehending maybe… as legitimate a part of the life of the mind as any other thought is. Perhaps the id is a spoiled child screaming nothing much more than “my way or the highway,” but that primal screen is trapped, along with all the other more loving, logical, or ‘reasonable” thoughts of compromise that dart around, inside one’s head. And it’s crowded in there!
hugs!
sugar is a hard one to kick. you know it’s a drug when your body goes through so much pain getting rid of it. I feel for you.
for a while my problem was soda and caffeine. I’d go through phases where I’d have 2 a day and my sleep was terrible. 2 is a lot for me. I’m a wimp when it comes to caffeine. so I’d stop drinking it. Then I’d start up again when I was getting stressed. Like it helped. not. I didn’t have it at home, so I’d get the Sunday withdrawl headache. Now I’m pretty much off the stuff. I have a soda every week or so. Not bad. but it was hard to stop.
Creamy, sweet things are my downfall. When I am bored, frustrated, or sad, all I want is custard.
I’m trying a different approach. Tonight I roasted some acorn squash with a bit of oil, and I’ll puree it into a pudding-like consistency. Sweet and creamy, without the sugar or cream. We’ll see if it satisfies. Baked apples are good for that kind of thing, too.
Sometimes when I want spicy-salty-sweet, I’ll make sweet potato fries in the oven with a bunch of cayenne. yum. I also like to roast beets, which are pretty sweet. Behold the power of fall veggies.
Hey, Ivana!
Try pureeing the squash with a little bit of coconut milk. Makes it even creamier.