Suh-weet!

After a long day of driving, driving, driving to Charleston, WV, and back yesterday (the older I get the less I care to drive, but the older my husband gets the less I want him to drive! So there you go, I'm the chauffeur), we settled down to watch Brian Williams, who relayed this little tidbit about sugar.

Which basically says there are some scientists and policymakers who think sugar consumption should be regulated. Like alcohol! And tobacco! Imagine that.

©Debora McNeer

Toward the end of the segment, Dr. Nancy Snyderman mentions that artificial sweeteners, which taste sweeter than refined sugar, actually trick our brains into wanting more, more, more. The last couple of days I've indulged in sugar-free soda and sugar-free pudding (both are permitted on the South Beach plan) and bingo! The sugar blues have been hitting me hard.

A more in-depth look at the issue of regulating sugar can be found in yesterday's L.A. Times. And here's a .pdf file of the journal article.

The article points out that the four criteria for justifying government regulation apply to sugar as much as they do alcohol:

• It's unavoidable in society
• It's toxic
• It can be abused
• It's bad for society

My current diet is sugar-free, to the best of my ability, and has been for nearly three weeks. I don't see this changing for quite some time. Nor do I see public pressure rising to force the FDA to begin regulating sugar consumption in the United States. (Can you imagine the outcry from the current Republican-controlled Congress? Nanny state! Personal responsibility! Let them eat cake!)

I'm not even sure I agree that sugar meets the four criteria. Yes, it's unavoidable and I'd have to agree that it can be abused. But is it bad for society? Or toxic?

Advocates for sugar regulation claim it is. And so did William Dufty in his book Sugar Blues. He relates an experiment during World War II in which two groups of dogs were given only plain water or sugar water for a period of time. The sugar-water group became sick and/or died before the control group did. (Can you imagine what PETA would do if this happened today?)

I've been an advocate for single-payer health insurance for many years. One of the main arguments against it is this: What would happen to all those people who work for health insurance companies? You know, the ones who fight with your doctor's office staff about whether you should take Drug A or Drug B, or receive Test Y or X-ray Z.

Should sugar come under federal regulation, what would happen to all the cake pop shops?

Just as I'm better off a nicer person sane when I don't drink alcohol, I believe, for me, that the quality of my life – and my husband's! – goes up when my consumption of sugar goes down. But I haven't purged the pantry of the baking chocolate, homemade marmalade (SOB!) or 10-pound bag of Domino's. Yet.

Maybe if I wait long enough, the DEA will raid my kitchen and I won't have to. I wonder if they serve marmalade in prison …

Oh, what a relief it is …

to wake up and realize it was all a dream.

It's taken nine days without sugar for my subconscious to break free and put me in one of the craziest using dreams I've ever had.

Recovering addicts/alcoholics frequently experience dreams in which they're high or drunk. I've had more than a few of those myself. But this is the first time I've ever had a similar dream about candy.

SCARY!

I'll tell you about it in a minute (this is your opportunity to go read someone else's blog if you don't want to be bored by my dream). First, though, I ran across this website while I was searching for the identity of the tote-bag logo. I contacted the site owner, a graphic designer living in Northern Ireland, and while he said chances were slim that he would be able to identify it, he agreed to take a look.

Okay, if you're still with me, here's my dream.

I was in the terminal of Yaeger Airport in Charleston, WV, getting ready to board a puddle-jumper that would take me directly to Ft. Wayne, IN. I paid for a magazine and a big bag of Kraft caramels. I then proceeded to find my seat, where I leaned my head against the cool window of the plane and started methodically opening and eating every. single. caramel.

It took the whole flight to polish off the bag. I felt no remorse or guilt or discomfort. In fact, I was giddy and up for anything.

I ended up getting married in Indiana, to someone I hardly knew and who later turned out to be a woman – a reverse Lola moment, if you will. When I found out he was a she, I was perfectly okay with that. We were in college and trying to figure out dinner plans. She had a class at 1:30, mine was at 2:30 and we weren't going to be able to get back together for several hours. And there were lots of other people involved. It got very complicated and messy and apparently my subconscious had had enough and it was over. Just like that.

I was greatly relieved to wake up and not find a sack of empty caramel wrappers next to my bed. Oh, and to find my current husband still beside me.

The first time I went sugar-free, 21 years ago, I remember crying for the first three weeks. It wasn't that I was sad or upset, but that I was tender, brittle, fragile. I was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time, so I might have cried easily anyway, but I've always associated those easy and frequent tears with abstaining from sugar.

This time around, I'm not so weepy, but I'm short-tempered and sarcastic. The brittleness is there, certainly, but is being manifested differently. I'm nice when I have to be; otherwise I'm sullen, quiet, dark. This, too, shall pass. It did before and I lived to tell about it. Aren't you glad?

The flooded basement is more than likely still flooded, even though I personally removed more than half a ton of water from it yesterday. (A much better workout than the previous day: Suck up water until the wet/dry vac container is full, roll it across the floor to a tiny kitchen with a sink, bail the water out of the vessel until it's light enough to pick up and dump the rest.) A sump pump took out most of it before I got there, but I was left to finish the job. I noticed that one area wasn't drying up, and upon further investigation found a crack in the floor from which water was flowing. The project ended up being an exercise in futility; water was coming in at a rate equal to that which I was pumping it out, so I stopped.

Not sure if I have to go back again today. When I think about yesterday, I spent about five minutes in a room of the house that had a big candy bowl in the center, filled with – no, not caramels – snack-sized Hershey bars. There were other bags of goodies on one end of the table. It was, at the time, my worst nightmare.

Until I went to bed.

Have any of you experienced anything like this? I can't imagine I'm the only one. It's certainly strengthened my resolve to remain sugar-free: I'm really not ready to get married again.