Sugar: Puttin' the Junk in Junkfood

Every time I get aroused, I want cupcakes. Must be sugar addiction.

Over the winter, I woke up in the middle of the night with a knife in my back. Perhaps my wife was finally getting me back for all the times I snuck chicken stock into her "vegetarian" meals, or maybe all the times I told her what a great "singer" Katy Perry is, but there was no knife there. I took some toilet time, sat in the kitchen, but it only got worse, so bad that I had to vomit from the pain. From waking up to entering a cab to take me to the emergency room was about 15 minutes.

It took another 3 minutes from the front desk to being laid on a gurney and a doctor jabbing me in my tummy area. "This hurt?" she asked. It did not, all the pain was behind my front. She said it was not my appendix, probably kidney stones, and,  "Just wait a sec, you're really gonna enjoy this." I didn't know what she was talking about, all I knew was that I was about to Quatto right then and there...

Before the drugs.

Though I'm needle-phobic, I did not notice the nurse slipping a syringe in my arm and leaving it there. I didn't notice that the pain slipped away and I started levitating off the gurney. I did notice that the low drop-ceiling with water-stained acoustic tiles started reminding me of cumulus clouds on a sunny day, seeing clouds shaped like animals and Charlie Brown and...

Some time after they put me on morphine, I got scanned in a big beeping tube and confirmed I had a kidney stone. After about 3 hours of feeling on top of the world and sending my wife giddy text messages, they unhooked me, gave me a prescription for a butt-load of oxycodones, and sent me on my way. When the fresh air hit my face upon walking out of the hospital, the buzz was gone, maybe 5 minutes after being unhooked from the drip.

I started feeling achy in the afternoon, and popped an oxy. I felt that buzz for about 20 minutes, watched some TV from the couch then...fell asleep. Woke up groggy, disoriented and deep in a cloud.

Too much oxy, feel like a generic clip art cartoon.

That was the event that inspired me to reexamine my health and perhaps revise my diet, which lead me to the reboot of this blog. It has also inspired me to look fondly over my kidney stone experience. Because that morphine drip was SWEET. It was  like a switch, one second in hell, the next I'm over the clouds and the happiest I've ever been. When it stops, I'm dropped back to earth with out a hangover or aftereffect....except that I really want to go back there.

I now appreciate why the junkies hang out in Tompkins Square, chasing that feeling and ruining their lives in the process. If your life sucks, you want to get back there. You want to live there. Fortunately, my life is pretty good, my wife & children ground me, I'm loved by my friends (right, friends? cough cough) and lead a relatively stable middle-class life. Still, if I wasn't so needle-phobic and had access to morphine in my medicine cabinet, it would be near impossible not to fool around with it. Occasionally when the subject comes up, I go into a reverie about how nice being in the morphine cloud is. When I'm on my death bed, I want my wife & children and close friends and....morphine to usher me out. I am addicted. One hit was all it took.

One hit is all it takes...

This past Sunday evening, I was content with myself -- I had eaten a relatively reasonable amount. Though I do not count calories on the weekend, I'm learning what +/- 2200 daily calories feel like, and I felt like I was close to it. However, I was hungry, not crazy hungry, just the normal nagging hunger. I walk into the kitchen to look for a light snack. On the top shelf are the sweets, which have been collecting over the past month or so. I grab a handful of chocolate chips, no more than 100 calories or so, reasonable. I sit for a few minutes, and my hunger kicks me the gut. Crap. Gotta eat more. I avoid the sugar, and eat a hot dog and a pickle. I sit down in front of the tube. Crap again. I do gotta eat more, but my gut is just wanting one thing. And it ain't more processed lips & butt holes, it's the siren song of the top shelf.

A lovely world-trotting friend brought back a box of ornate, intricate Japanese chocolates. It is gone. I ate it. It was delicious. My hunger fades. I feel a bit guilty, but I tell myself two things:

1. It's the weekend, I'm allowed to slip a little
2. I have to think this through, this sugar thing.

I can't help but think that the box of chocolates was morphine, and the top shelf of my pantry was the medicine cabinet. Am I addicted to sugar?

Addiction is so preeetteeeee....

Addiction: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

Is it in my head, is this psychological? Is it just that my will power that is failing me? (Big Sugar rep: "Yes! End blog entry now!") Can I actually be addicted to a food stuff, just like an addiction to morphine?!

Researchers say that sugar and the taste of sweet is said to stimulate the brain by activating beta endorphin receptor sites, the same chemicals activated in the brain by the ingestion of heroin and morphine.

Oh crap. I guess that's why it's "junk"food. The science is not in dispute (though like with Fox News and climate change, you can always find an outlying scientist to muddy the debate or simply ignore it.) Sugar IS addicting. Big Sugar will quibble with how much sugar is safe in a diet, but regardless, it is real.

Hello, my name is Fatty and I am a sugar addict. So what is a short, pat way to break sugar addiction? After a bunch of Internet thinkin', I've concluded there is none. Just like addiction to alcohol or narcotics, the common wisdom is predicated on the depth of your addiction. Any where from consumption restrictions for mild cases all the way to full-blown rehab for the daily bingers.

Tomorrow, a review of my own sugar consumption, why sugar is culinarily important, and what I'm gonna do about it.

THE COUNT:2355

Lifted weights in the morning, felt good. Took Milli to the Brooklyn Museum of Art while it rained as the central part of the day. Ate well.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, steel cut oatmeal, water, 375 cal

LUNCH: 12:15pm, chicken sausages, steamed string beans with butter, whole wheat ritz crackers, pickle, 7oz diet coke,  600 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, momma salad, 100 cal

DINNER: 6pm, Pasta a la Fatty, 7oz diet sprite, 1005 cal
After eating this huge bowl of food, felt like about 1000 calories, which I seem to say a lot. But this time I had all the weights written down, and it came to pretty much 1000 with rounding errors. I shall use the 95 calories to celebrate! With out going into details, this was just some pasta thrown together to use  a bunch of yesterday's CSA veg. 4oz whole wheat fusilli 4oz chopped shrimp, a saute of onion, eggplant, garlic, heirloom tomato and fresh basil. Sauteed in 1 tbsp of peanut oil, finished with 30g parm and 1 tbsp of good olive oil. Pulled no punches, very satisfying. The light cook on the tomato helped them get softer and juicer to make an awesome sauce with a huge fresh flava.

EVENING SNACK: 8:45pm, 1 cup chocolate milk, 250 cal
Ugg, after all this writing about sugar, this did not go down without thought or the full appreciation of gut-pulling attraction of the 100 calories in the chocolate syrup. Felt the urge to eat more sugar, but didn't want to bust my budget and feel like an a-hole about it.