Society Addiction; or Breaking the Alcohol/Caffiene/Nicotine/Refined-Sugar Bind

[rosee]

i told sugar to gtfo and haven't had a cold in years. but i buy more interesting shit when i grocery shop. i find that most people buy SERIOUSLY WAY TOO LITTLE fruits and veggies. i'll always get a mango or some berries, lemons and limes... colourful things that look better than the shit-brown wrapper of the snickers bars they stack up right in front of the register so that anyone who is PMSing in line can grab the latest copy of woman's world and voraciously inhale four candy bars before they're out of the store. well, what Student said about cooking/baking/whatever. once you get a good feel for what flavours go well together you can whip up some pretty crazy intense shit. i use stevia in my coffee and if i go just a single drop over my average dose it'll be literally too sweet. stevia is to sweet what the craziest pepper you ever heard of is to hotstuff.

anyway, stevia's good. i dont buy any processed foods and still manage to get as much content for my money as people buying all kinds of kraft dinner knockoffs and fill-yer-own tacos. fruits are surprisingly inexpensive for what you get out of them. this is becoming redundant. i'm tired

Good advice, thujone. I wish i had half the discipline you have.

 

[johanneschimpo]

I very rarely drink, I smoke a little but I'm not addicted, I don't consume caffeine, and I don't give a fuck about sugar much either.

I wish those were the things that I had problems with. lol

 

[Binge Artist]

^I've been clean from heroin about 3-4 months now. Sure, it was a pretty miserable week or two, but that's over and behind me. And yet, I'm still hopelessly addicted to caffeine & smokes. Go figure...

 

[double ewe]

caffeine has been the most persistent for me. not quite ready to let go of that one.

nicotine never really stuck. i smoked for about a year when i was in college, and then just got sick of it. kinda made me feel crappy, so i'm lucky in that respect. it would have been a lot harder to quit if i'd actually liked it.

as for alcohol, i tend to drink regularly, but definitely notice the difference between 2 and 6 when i wake up the next morning (and when i run). i also don't have any problem not drinking, and often will go through phases where i'm really not interested in it (though i can't say the same for pot).

and if you quit eating fast food and drinking soda for any amount of time, you'll never go back. once you separate yourself from that shit, your body has a chance to get some perspective and realize that it's not actual food. i honestly feel healthier drinking beer than drinking soda.

 

[euphoria]

caffeine was the easiest one to let go. i was so addicted to that, i would get bad headaches and hardly be able to stay awake without it. but now that it's completely out of my system i dont miss it at all. even if im exhausted, some decaf herbal tea or ice water will wake me up now. it feels great to not have neon yellow piss that smells liek coffee haha....along with the general crappy feeling when the caffeine wears off or you had way too much caffeine..

i don't feel that i eat that much refined sugar anymore, only on occasion. it just doesnt really taste good to me. i'd rather have "real" food like naturally sweet fruits or yogurt. overly sweet things don't appeal to me like they used to. like thujone said, i find it helpful to keep the variety going. buy more interesting and naturally sweet things instead of processed dessert foods in the box. go to the farmers market and get berries.

nicotine, that was a bitch to quit. i have been so much healthier since i quit though. i used to get sick every couple weeks, now i only get sick maybe once a year. i can RUN again. i fucking climbed a mountain the other day.

i saw a dude on the ferry today, smoking a cig and drinking his morning coffee. i have to say when i look at people doing that kind of shit, i think to myself 'man i really miss that'. it was heaven. i wont lie. but my body just feels a lot better now so that's motivation enough to not start back up again.

alcohol....... well we all have to have our vice, right?

 

[toa$t]

i have the occasional drink on weekends, but otherwise I consume none of those substances.

 

[double ewe]

do ya'll think marijuana ought to be on the list as well?

i know it's not as socially acceptable as the other four, but it's been my experience, at least, that it tends to be socially re-enforced as a part of a lot of folks' daily routines.

 

[delta_9]

I quit smoking cigs a few years ago so I dont have a nicotine intake anymore. Except for the occasional 2nd hand but that dosen't really bother me that much.

I dont drink much but I still do and will continue to.

Caffeine, hmm, now that is the tricky one. Even as I type this I'm sipping some green tea. I doubt I've ever had a "caffeine free" diet. Even when I was a kid I would drink caffeinated soft drinks and the like. So just like every other person in America, I grew up in a perpetual state of caffeine overdose.

Refined sugar is by far the easiest to cut out. Not many foods I eat use processed/refined sugar as is. When sweetening something like tea I tend to use honey or raw cane sugar.

 

[wooger]

caffeine was the easiest one to let go. i was so addicted to that, i would get bad headaches and hardly be able to stay awake without it. but now that it's completely out of my system i dont miss it at all. even if im exhausted, some decaf herbal tea or ice water will wake me up now. it feels great to not have neon yellow piss that smells liek coffee haha....along with the general crappy feeling when the caffeine wears off or you had way too much caffeine..

Same! I also found that drinking all that caffeine was making my anxiety way worse, it was weird stopping tho since I used to drink about 2 litres of diet coke a day for the caffeine, sometimes even more, I would start the day with at least a pint of it.

It's weird, cus now when I wake up, even if my head is a lil foggy, I feel right as rain within half an hour, and no longer have to put up with the caffeine jitteryness (is that a word?)

 

[dokomo]

I don't think I could survive without caffeine in terms of getting through my days. EC stacks plus coffee/espresso/tea throughout the day.

As far as nicotine goes, I only smoke a cigar once every 1-2 weeks. Alcohol and refined sugar are really rare, I definitely keep those to a bare minimum.

 

[McTwist]

I don't really see a reason to stop drinking caffeine-containing teas like yerba mate, since most teas are extremely beneficial and contain less caffeine than coffee, as long as used in moderation. Coffee, on the other hand, I can understand. The physical and mental side effects that coffee poses is enough to put me off unless I am absolutely in need of some quick energy, which is very rare.

Alcohol and nicotine are the easy ones to abstain from, but refined sugar still reels me in sometimes, especially if I am stoned and there is a lack of fruit in the house. If that's the case then expect me to keep eating candy till I feel sick. It's terrible. Once I start I cannot stop until I feel horrible, even though I know it was inevitably going to occur. My friends think I am nuts going on a candy binge, but it is honestly very difficult to stop eating junk food if I am hungry and it's right in front of me. Fruit is the only thing that keeps me away, but not all of the time do I have fresh fruit in the house. It's more of a mental addiction for me, like marijuana, though not nearly as severe. Sugar is brutal, man.