Sugar has been on my mind lately. I’m currently working to figure out an issue with low blood sugar that seems to be related to my menstrual cycle (aka cycle of the werewolf). I’m wearing a glucose monitor and I have to keep a little juice box in my nightstand in case the hypoglycemia alarm goes off in the middle of the night.
I also took my little daughter Shirley to some Halloween festivities last weekend, where she was introduced to the concept of trick-or-treating—and brightly colored pieces of fun-sized candy—for the first time. Since then, my day has begun with Shirley loudly proclaiming, “I want my treats!” I’ve had to explain to her that candy is a special treat, not something you eat tons of every day, and certainly not something you eat first thing in the morning.
Although…in AA, this behavior wasn’t unheard of. Sorting through Shirley’s Halloween candy, I was reminded of my early days of sobriety, where eating candy was pushed as a way to deal with alcohol cravings. I remember “old timers” touting sugar as a proven way to get through a bad bout of wanting to drink. There were even some meetings you’d go to where they’d have candy available in case you were really jonesing.
Some folks swore by this method of managing cravings. I didn’t find it as useful, just because my worst alcohol cravings tended to hit when I was having severe depressive episodes or anxiety attacks, and they weren’t so much “cravings” as a desperate desire to make the pain and insanity stop. I have a vivid recollection of ugly-face crying in a meeting, explaining how hard of a time I was having staying sober, when the guy who shared right after me told me point blank, “eat a piece of candy” as if a Jolly Rancher was some kind of talisman that could ward off these horrible feelings. (For the record, what actually helped me in the end was finding a good therapist.)
That’s not to say sugar was entirely out of the equation for me. I remember consuming more sodas and fizzy juices in those days, especially at social events. I was known to chow down on a Twix from time to time. But I was still smoking back then, so sugar never became as important to me as my precious cigarettes.
The trailer for the 1985 film, The Stuff, a satirical allegory about consumerism, corporate greed, and addiction.
I met some people who’d get sober and then declare they were giving up EVERYTHING. Drinking, drugs, smoking, caffeine, sugar…sometimes even sex, too. Quitting drugs and alcohol at the same time makes sense (and for me, it had to happen that way) but the other stuff—that’s playing life on hard, big time. My advice has always been to get a good foundation of sobriety first before you start to mess around with everything else. Like, at least try not drinking for 90 days before you go and try and make all these other changes. Then maybe take them one at a time.
Obviously, cigarettes are bad for you. Too much caffeine is bad, and eating a lot of sugar isn’t going to do you any favors. But pushing yourself to quit all of these things at the same time before you’re ready could very well result in a return to drug and alcohol use. And that’s actually dangerous and can cause some really serious, immediate consequences. So I always wondered, “What’s the rush? If you want to eat some candy and that helps you not drink right now, eat some candy.”
But there’s a lot of scary stuff out there about sugar. Googling “sugar addiction” brings up a whole host of hysterical headlines, including The experts agree, sugar might be as addictive as cocaine.
Ok, first of all, this isn’t true. It’s scary and click-baity though, so it’s the kind of soundbite that sticks around. Like the rumors of fentanyl in Halloween candy.
Second, comparing drugs to sugar is misleading, insensitive, and frankly just fucking stupid. Sugar is not going to result in you going to jail, having sugar in your bloodstream will not get your kids taken away by CPS, and parole officers and employers don’t routinely give urine tests to screen for sugar.
I’m not saying you can’t be addicted to sugar—it’s something you can totally become dependent on, just like caffeine or cigarettes. What I’m saying is that it is not like an a life-ruining, killer drug like cocaine (or the fentanyl possibly mixed into the coke).
Aside from its blatant inaccuracy, the sugar-cocaine comparison takes all the stigma and hysteria surrounding drug addiction to try and scare people into eating better (and what that really means is “don’t be fat!”). As a result, it blows the sugar issue entirely out of proportion and completely minimizes and invalidates the realities of drug addiction.
Is added sugar bad for you? If you eat a lot of it, yeah. But addressing the dependence on added sugar requires having actual conversations: what’s being put in processed foods, our entire culture around nutrition and dieting, the pervasive anti-fat bias that runs through American health conversations, and how the onus for “making healthy choices” is constantly shoved onto the individual when there are larger social determinants of health at play.
This is all to say that everyone is different, and our personal relationship with sugar is going to be different. It’s true that a lot of people get sugar cravings after quitting alcohol. If that means drinking some soda or eating candy when the cravings hit will to help you push through that first tough period of recovery, I think that’s ok. I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, but I do know that having a couple Starburst or a can of Sprite is ultimately less harmful than whatever you’re gonna buy at the liquor store.
How sugar individually affects all of us is totally different, too. I rarely eat Halloween candy anymore because it gives me a headache. If I’m going to eat chocolate it has to be the good stuff from France or the UK because these Hershey’s fun-sized things in Shirley’s trick-or-treat bucket are ass, in my opinion. What I really want is to eat my sugar in the form of lots of bread and pasta, but I’ve had to rethink my day-to-day diet in terms of balancing my blood sugar. It’s not super glamorous, but it’s where I am right now.
The nice thing about recovery is that it gives you your options back. When you take drugs and alcohol out of the equation, you start to have room to look at all the other lifestyle stuff that’s not serving you. You can actually make lasting changes and recalibrate your entire approach to your health so that it’s sustainable, instead of fear-driven and reactive. It starts out as getting through the next 24 hours without a drink or drug, and then it becomes a much longer, mindful practice.
So whether you’re having candy today, abstaining from sugar, or having a big heaping spoonful of almond butter like I am, I hope you have a happy Halloween.