Puttin' Down the Cookie

I've always been a little bit proud of my sugar addiction, honestly. After growing up in a family of alcoholics and addicts, sugar seemed a harmless habit, and there are so many fun ways to eat sugar.

I don't know when it began. My mother tells me that I was three when the dentist said to lay off the candy bars because they were turning my teeth into black stumps. Mom says she attempted to curb my appetite for sweets then, and when I couldn't have a Snickers bar during ballet class (the teacher gave them out as snacks-- an odd choice, I think now) I threw such a glorious tantrum that we never returned.

Her attempts were eventually foiled by my loving grandparents as they could never resist handing over anything I asked of them. I asked for candy.

I know that sugar has been my regular habit since I was old enough to pilfer from the quarter can under my parents' bed and take myself to the liquor store.  I would get one of those small brown bags one usually sees wrapped around a bottle of booze and fill it with Laffy Taffy, Neccos, candy cigarettes, Now&Laters, Zots, Root Beer Barrels, Baked Beans, Lemon Drops, Pixie Stix, Jolly Ranchers (I loved the way the formed to the roof of my mouth as I ate them), Abba Zabbas, JuJuBees, and Sugar Daddies. If I could afford it I washed it down with a big bottle of Pepsi sipped through a Red Vine straw.

I took myself to my closet-- not because I was ashamed, but because I didn't want to share with my family members-- and I ate until my mouth was numb, and my stomach roared in revolt. As I grew older it took more and more sugar to get to that point. But I never threw up, and I never dieted or fasted or took laxatives. I figured I was OK.

I don't hang out in my closet anymore. In fact, I don't have a closet. I do, however, spend a lot of time in my car. After a particularly challenging day, I will drive myself to the store for an Almond Joy and a bag of Sour Patch gummies. Sometimes I choose Snapple instead of Pepsi-- in attempt to be healthier (ha!) and I gobble them down while I think no one is looking. Have you seen me?

But my tastes have also broadened, which means that after all that sugary bliss I'm still going to have a creme brûlée after dinner because that's what grownups eat.

I'm a quirky person. I trip over the dog, sing in the grocery store, dance in my pajamas, and forget to pay the bills. I always chalked my sweetest of teeth up to my goofiness, which is evidence-- my friendly neighborhood therapist tells me-- of my incredible denial.  The fact that I've been seeing her for nearly a year and never before mentioned my regular rendezvous with the Candy Man: more evidence.

Sugar, apparently, is a depressant much like alcohol. We all talk about the sugar high, but the sugar crash lasts so much longer, and takes me so much lower. I joke about wanting to feed myself to the bears, but there are times when it's not at all funny, when I struggle to see the point in getting out of bed. When I'm there I tell myself it'll pass, and my children need me, and I hope that's enough to keep on-- until next time.

What if I'm the cause of my own Next Time? Studies show a strong link between sugar consumption and depression, and I have to see if it's true for me.

I don't know what recovery looks like. Recovery. Oh, how I despise that word. It's for sick people, and I'm just a fun person. Is that what alcoholics tell themselves, too? I guess it's recovering who I was before the first sugar fix-- or who I might have been without it. Maybe I'll call it "discovery."

Giving up sugar seems as onerous as breaking it off with a particularly bad-for-me, yet devilishly alluring, f*ck buddy, one whom I will meet again at every grocery store, at every party, for the rest of my life. But as a person in discovery, I've learned that I'm not supposed to think that far ahead. I'm just supposed to focus on right now. And right now, I think I'll peel myself an orange.