“The president believes that [high-energy consumption] is an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.”

- Ari Fleischer, spokesman to President George W. Bush
Newsweek, May 21, 2001, p. 17

While taking a break from woods living recently, I found out the hard way just what a poison sugar is.

I found myself, on that day in town, eating uncontrollably. Twenty Chips Ahoy peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. Four York peppermint patties. A double hamburger with fries. Two Dairy Queen Blizzards. Three plates at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

I started suffering for it that day, but it really hit me the next day: irritability, low energy, a progressively intensifying headache, nausea. Symptoms of hypoglycemia. It’s what happens when you get your blood sugar suddenly spikes up and down really quickly: an overproduction of insulin, whose consequence (after the sucrose leaves the system) is a really low glucose level.

So this sugar addiction is bothering me, because I’m finding it to be a real hazard to my physical health and my psychological survival. Sugar used to give me bad acne, so I gave it up, but my addiction came roaring back, when I started living in the woods. The stress of dramatic lifestyle changes. It actually began when I was here last summer: I’d spend half my time at camp and half working at the house, and when I did have access to stress-relieving guilt foods, I’d eat heavily. So I got sick — same symptoms that I described above, only I didn’t know what it was then. I didn’t make the connection for awhile, though; I thought that my problems were linked to intestinal bugs, something to do with the water, even though my bowels seemed fine.

I finally made the connection yesterday, when I found a book titled Sugar Blues, by William Dufty. For me, it’s doing for sugar what Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television did regarding TV.

The basic thesis: Sugar is lethal.

I was incredulous at first, like anyone else would be. But then, that’s how I was with the whole TV thing too. It’s been a part of my entire life, and no one seems to be suffering from it. Gotta be bullshit, right?

Well, no. Sugar Blues outlines the history of sugar, its chemical effects on the body, the politics and ignorance that has allowed it to permeate society. Sugar is, basically, lethal. Sugar changes chemical balance in the body dramatically. Dufty links it not only to illnesses but to degradation of the immune system, thus linking sugar to diseases as diverse as scurvy, schizophrenia, and cancer. We are basically in the midst of a health crisis precipitated not only by sugar but by all the chemical shit we put in our food, in our air, in the earth, which is brought on by our desires, our lifestyle … the way we live. The American way of life.

Yeah, it’s kind of an overwhelming realization. I know I’m not ready for its full impact. And maybe Dufty does go a little overboard, but who knows? Even if there’s not a direct cause-effect relationship from sugar to everything else, sugar permeates industrial civilization. Correlation may not be causation, but there may be some relationship. And speaking from a few intensely sickening personal experiences, I know it’s destructive to health.

But it’s an addiction, which means that I can’t give up sugar entirely, not yet. I have, though, started considering really scaling back.

I’ve also started wondering why I eat sugar. It’s not just because I like the taste.

I concluded that sugar provided a direct connection to something — some base part of my brain that experiences the world more sensually, more directly. I crave sugar when I’m bored or lonely or tired or need stress relief. For me, sugar is a quick and relatively readily accessible fix. But its effects are horribly draining to my energy and my mood, and ultimately to my health.

What I really yearn for is that connection, not the sugar itself; but without things like sugar, it takes me a calm mind and lots of energy to achieve that state of consciousness. Someimtes when I meditate I begin to sense what it’s like to have direct experience of the world, to feel more fully alive than when I’m wrapped up in my little troubles and cares. That’s what I’m here for, after all: direct experience of Spirit, energy, reality, whatever you want to call it.

Sugar gives me an intensified split-second of that, but it falls to pieces after that split-second, and I’m left with little energy for other activities (except getting more sugar). I’ve never done drugs or gotten drunk, but I imagine that people do those things for similar reasons. We are a culture of addiction because we are a society in which we lack connectedness — with each other, with the earth, with Spirit. Blessed way of life, my ass.

I haven’t won my struggle against sugar, of course. I did fast for a day and a half after bingeing, and that broke the cravings and accelerated my healing, but it’ll come to a head again in the future, I’m sure. I’ll just have to fight it when I can, give in a little when I can’t, and apply unbending intent to become, overall, a healthier, more spiritually and energetically connected person.