Addiction · Guest Posts

Guest Post: Sugar and Sobriety

Ruby Pipes18 Comments
"Decorating Sugar" © Gloria García, 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“Decorating Sugar” © Gloria García, 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Three years ago to the date, I was living sugar-free. Actually, I was consuming no more than ten grams of sugar per serving. Unless you count naturally occurring sugars, like those found in fruit, which I did not. I gave up all sweeteners, including artificial ones, so no diet sodas and nothing in my coffee. I definitely gave up daily dessert and near daily sugar binges.

What started out as Sugar-Free January got a little easier and continued into February until a few bites of rice krispie treat on a family trip started a slow but undeniable unraveling. It wasn’t long before all the wheels came off the dessert cart.

Sugar is a real slippery slope for me. I gave up drinking completely over four-and-a-half years ago and tore open a bag of Starburst in one fluid motion. Sugar didn’t make not drinking easy exactly, but it provided a little cushion. Sugar–cookies and candy in particular–provided immediate distraction from stress and possibly some emotional boost, though I never felt better after a binge. So why do I consume it so compulsively?

It’s no secret that sugar is highly addictive. Some claim sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine. Wow, no wonder I have trouble quitting Oreos.

And what happens when I do give up sugar for any length of time? Oh, it’s not pretty. People stop loving me pretty soon after. The sun dims and clouds roll in from the west and I realize what’s the point? There’s an unhealthy side of agitation.

After about a month of this, the sense of power and control (the high?) I get from eating right mostly replaces this, but I still miss that emotional cushion. Not that eating whatever I want makes me feel very good about myself.

This brings me to moderation. Yes, please, I’ll have some of that. What I really want is to have my cake, but make it a small piece and hold the ice cream. And I only want it on birthdays, plus maybe a handful of times a year where cake is appropriate, like Bob’s last day or Polly’s baby shower but not Monday through Sunday.

People I know who successfully kicked the sugar demon have a different tale to tell. There is no such thing as moderation with sugar, they warn. Addiction is addiction, they tell me. I think they’re probably right and look for powdered sugar at the corner of their mouths. They seem pretty normal, well-adjusted, not curled into a fetal position.

So no more ice cream, you say? Like forever? Why can I commit to a lifelong with no booze but the thought of no ice cream makes me melt like a soft serve cone in July? Is it the more addictive thing or is it just that I don’t have much more left to give up? Don’t I get to keep a couple good vices for the hard times, parting gifts for my sobriety?

While there are many similarities between how I drank and how I eat–obsessively, secretively, shame-filled–sugar is no booze. I can eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs and safely drive. A sugar binge might make me a little spacey, but it doesn’t affect motor skills or make me say terrible things I won’t remember later. It is, afterall, just dessert.

Since that Sugar-Free January three years ago, I’ve had a couple more semi-successful quits. I say semi because I’m still eating sugar, overeating it if I’m honest. My weight is about the same now, though it was lower two years ago.

I think I have healthier eating habits now. I strive to eat more greens and protein in hopes I’ll feel satisfied enough not to want to binge on sugar. This occasionally even works, though not as often as I’d like. I also eat better because good food tastes good. I never noticed this before I did my first sugar-quit.

Last month I came this close to declaring another Sugar-Free January. Then I read this post and it hit me. I have never been at a weight where I’m like “okay, perfect” and I’ve always felt anxious about how much I exercised and what I ate. Even when I weighed ten pounds less and ran almost every day, I still thought my ass was too big. I have never been enough.

So I’m taking a break from expectations this month. This week I’ve eaten a cupcake every day, not as some sort of obscene experiment but because my daughters and I made some after school and work on Monday. It was a bad day, a very bad day you see, and I picked the one thing I knew would rouse us all: sugar.

We stirred and mixed and poured and baked and frosted, mouths watering all the way into the first few delicious bites. We laughed and talked and everything became a little sweeter. Sugar saved the day again, it seemed, but really I know it was the conversation and connection. Next time I’ll try it with a nice brussel sprout casserole.

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Kristen lives in the northeast US and writes about important life stuff and assorted nonsense at Bye-Bye Beer. She has also written about recovery for After Party Magazine and The Fix.

Interested in doing a guest post for this blog? Send an email to ruby@rubypipes.com.

Autobiography · Relationships · Writing

Writing and My Divorce

Ruby Pipes18 Comments
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“divorce beach” © Adrienne Bassett , 2007. CC BY 2.0.

He asks if I’ve been writing. I respond the same way I have every time someone has asked me since January, “No, but I really should. No, but I’d like to.” As if it is just a thing I can add to my list and cross off when I come to it. Nestle it down in between reworking an entire business and trips to Seattle on the weekends. Tack it on to the end of an already existent line of tasks to be completed. Make time for it in between planning a divorce celebration and figuring out where the hell we go from here.

It’s not like that. It’s more like putting all that down and unearthing something completely different. Because if I start writing, I’m going to write about Mason. And if I do that…

Everything aches. I do a good job with blocking, with dealing, with harnessing all that heartbreak into motivation. My mental health professionals, my friends, my family, they all remark on how well I’ve been doing “all things considered”, but they neglect to consider writing. Because if I haven’t written about it, I haven’t done much of anything with it.

So let’s do something with it.

I made him say the word. The big, scary one with the sharp edges. I made him say “divorce” before I would acknowledge what he was saying. It meant all my fighting hadn’t been enough to keep him. That talks about how I would change, how we could change hadn’t been convincing enough to sway him. That I’d failed irreparably at the one thing in my life I wanted to be good at: being married to Mason. I’d lost him. Curtain falls.

Sitting on the steps of the once-ours, now-his apartment building I sobbed for a solid hour. In the days following every mention of future plans, of children, of growth, of building something brought me to tears. Nothing was beautiful without him. This is not the life I had wanted to live. Over and over in therapy those words would be repeated, “You didn’t ask for this. This was not your plan.” And despite all my resistance, I finally gave into the feeling that it’s different being left than leaving.

Here I was–handed something I had no desire for–being told, “This is what you get.” It happens all the time, I know. But my partner was supposed to be my constant and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

The urge was strong to hate him. To vilify. Instead, I pulled out all the reasons getting divorced was the right thing for both of us. I told myself that this was good, was better. That the trees that grow back after the fire are stronger than the ones before. Then I remembered that when we first met he called me “wildfire” and I break down again. Break down. Then continue on again.

Most every morning I get out of bed and I smile in the mirror and I begin my day with confidence. And we plan a party to celebrate the end of one chapter, the beginning of the next. I even buy a new dress. Mostly things feel just fine. We joke about June 15th being the best day of my life.

But you don’t just turn off love like that. Don’t just turn the wheel and plot a new path. I sewed him into every fiber of my life. And though we know I shouldn’t have, I still have to go back. Go back and pull out each stitch made in the last five years. It will leave a hole there. There is no fixing it.

In time I won’t notice it as much. As we get more chapters in our book each one seems less significant alone. And in time I will stop checking my phone and email, hoping he’s tried to make contact. I will stop missing him at family dinners and stop reaching across the bed for him in the middle of the night. Eventually I will stop thinking of how to tell him first when something exciting happens. Before I know it, he will fade off into the edges. But that won’t change the fact that I never wanted this.

That I still don’t. Not this. And–you know what?–I didn’t even know that until I wrote it.

Yet this is where I am. Standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the most important people in my life. We problem solve and take measurements. Smooth the edges of each piece of clay. Learn a new trade like the curves of a new lover’s body. And I think, “This is it, kid. This is your constant now.”

And I wouldn’t trade it out.

Autobiography · Relationships

Parting

Ruby Pipes31 Comments

"Sprouting!" © mekabra, 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“Sprouting!” © mekabra, 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
I tell Andrew hearts always break in the same places. The weak points are sought out and shattered over and over again. We do not grow back stronger. It is the same hurt every time.

We know these feelings. We recognize them. We remember just how to scream into pillows and sob on staircases. We’ve been here often. We’ll return before we’re ready.

At dinner Mark stops me when I say, “I think I’ll be fine.” He holds steady until I meet his eyes.

“No. There is no ‘think’,” he says gruffly, “I know you’ll be fine. Better than fine. I know it.”

I feel almost guilty for believing him. For acknowledging the fact this is just another one of those moments we go through, that go through us. That we always walk away from. Every time.

Over and over I repeat the story. Each time becoming further removed from it. Until it’s nothing but a monologue I recite when prompted. Something I can put down and walk away from. Like the dress I threw in the trash because I was wearing it when Mason told me he wanted a divorce. Pretending I could separate myself from the statement by separating myself from the clothing.

No, it may not be that easy, but it is similar, isn’t it? We hand the words off to anyone who will listen, keeping only a tiny piece of them in a coat pocket to be discovered next season. And bit by bit time softens the edges of everything. Staircases worn down after thousands of years of footsteps. We do not remember what they looked like when they were new. That is not what makes them precious.