My Name Is Z. And I’m an Addict

I am on the journey to sober living. I am on the journey to overcoming my addiction.

Today, I juiced apples and carrots and drank about 32 ounces of water (taking baby steps towards that 64 ounce quota).

Healthy Lunch- green beans, curried tilapia, brown rice. Yum!

I also had a yummy lunch (left) of fresh steamed green beans, pickled red onions, curried tilapia and garlic brown rice, all made from natural ingredients. Delicious and satisfying!

My dinner will be mushrooms al alioli and spinach and brown rice and pickled tomatoes. Lunch was satisfying but a big handful of M & M’s would have been even better. But of course, that’s my addiction talking.

It’s tough, but I’m taking it day by day. It’s been almost a full day sober, free of processed sugar (and processed food in general) and I am hopeful.

Just look at them!

But, all day I’ve been craving M & M’s. All day I’ve been craving white powdered donuts with ingredients that list things that are poly-syllabled that I can’t pronounce. And this is note-worthy because I am good with languages.

My name is Z. and I’m addicted to the beast.

Sugar is my drug of choice and I understand that it is… now.  I once had a friend that I thought was a nut and to a certain degree… Well, her name was “Sybil”. Sybil and I used to get into one-sided arguments about diet and nutrition all the time. I thought she was extreme. She thought I was painfully ignorant about nutrition.

At the height of our friendship, I was working in yet another profession that brought me great stress and anxiety in an overcrowded, aggressively enormous city. I used to feed myself at every other kiosk on those dirty big city streets in hopes of alleviating some anxiety. Grandma vanilla mini-cookies, sour patch kids, and M & M’s were my usual fixes. I’d feel crack-head high for about five minutes. Then, I’d “crash.” And to make myself feel  that rush again, I’d run to the next kiosk before I’d step into the train station, especially if there was no underground kiosk. You see, I knew where I could get all my fixes. I could have probably produced a map of the city with all of my favorite junk food kiosks.

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have the problem. I am a junk food junkie… and I know this.

One late night Sybil and I were walking to a party when I expressed that I wanted to grab a little something before we entered the party. We headed for the nearest corner store and as soon as I stepped in, I realized that there was no way to avoid Sybil’s forthcoming rant about my habit.

Before we could get out of the store Sybil started, “Are you going to buy that?”

I was annoyed beyond measure. There’s nothing like a life size goody-two-shoe “angel” nagging at you. Besides, it was only one pack of raspberry blue sour patch strings. Scrumptious! I’d been eating them for about 20 years by that point and I was annoyed that she was questioning my friend.

“Yes,” I said as I proceeded to the counter, eyes averting her judgmental gaze.

Sybil continued to stare at me quietly but I imagined I saw smoke coming out of her nostrils. She started back up again when we reached the streets. “You know that stuff has blue dye #1 in it. It’s toxic!”

I said nothing. There was no point. Afterall, this girl was a real life veteran granola crunching tree-hugger, gym rat, and yogi fanatic. Her biceps, triceps, and quads look like a dude’s. She was a bonafide health over-achiever that constantly reminded me about my unhealthy relationship with my friend, Sugar. So how the flip was I going to justify eating sour patch strings to her?

Sybil got frustrated because of my silence, which spurred what seemed like… fury! “Z. all of that sugar is controlling you. It’s controlling your mind. They put addictive chemicals in it to make everybody addicted to it. Its a DRUG!”

I was convinced she had lost it. And had Kanye and Jay already produced the hit back then, the soundtrack in my head would have been, “that b—- cra’!” But, would you believe that I checked the ingredients on the wrapper days later, while not in Sybil’s ridiculing company, and sure enough my beloved sour patch strings had blue dye #1. What the bleep was that? I did not know. Was there any validity to Sybil’s rant? I did not know.

It wasn’t until years later, when I tried to go without processed sugar in my diet did I realize that perhaps Sybil was right- sugar is a hellava drug!

So today I am going through that very same withdrawal. I have not eaten any processed sugar at all today and I am feeling it. I can’t even concentrate for thinking of my friend, Sugar, that is. I miss her but I know that in order to be healthier I have to let her go.

z.