Is Sugar Addictive? What is a Sugar High?

I was recently reading an Under the Influence article titled White Lines: Sugar, How Sweet it Ain't which is a great article about sugar highs

"Sugar evokes a brain chemical called beta endorphin, the same chemical affected by morphine and heroin," explains Kathleen DesMaisons Ph.D., author of The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program. "The sugar creates a wonderful feeling of euphoria and well-being, but when it wears off, you feel edgy, irritable and cranky - this is actual withdrawal. If you use the drug [sugar] again, it relieves the symptoms, so you get caught in a cycle of needing it."

The article later stated:

As might be expected, this powerful and entrenched system of creating false needs. exploiting those false needs, and all the destruction involved on the production and consumption sides does not suffer opposition gladly.

And that is precisely why I find being a marketer so hard...much of the time I feel guilty for creating and/or exploiting false needs (or at the very least removing market friction in marketplaces where others created the false needs). And yet at the core level I struggle with shit as basic as eating reasonably or valuing my physical / social / mental health. You can't value any of those three without valuing all of them, because they are all related. What you consume consumes you.

As a bonus, NutraSweet and other synthetic sweeteners - such as aspartame - also screws people over because they tricks the brain into thinking there will be a bunch of energy coming, so the brain tells the liver not to produce glucose for a while, and then when food doesn't come that makes you really hungry.

Each time I pig out on sugar I am reinforcing the related reward circuitry, while helping myself become more obese, more addicted, malnourished, and having a lower self image. Many of my larger macro-errors / macro-failures revolve around the same reward circuitry related to this sort of need a quick hit of energy type stuff.

The associated low self image (brought on by inactivity, isolation, overeating, eating bad food, being malnourished) makes social interaction harder than it should be. It also makes social interaction seem as though it requires much more effort than the potential rewards of meeting people would bear.

The need a quick hit of energy junky mentality makes me a problem ( drinker / drugger / eater / sleeper )...and some might say a bit of a sociopath. I think I found it easier to identify with people who tended to be a bit abstract or different because they were typically less judgemental and found their own ways to be happy by choosing to control their own actions instead of letting others dictate what they were to do. But if you allow chemicals to have a significant roll in your life to try to find happiness while not even taking care of the day to day basics of living you are only setting yourself up for failure.

Starting from a young age I was quite naive and still remain so on oh so many levels. But I don't think it is important to identify with any group...what matters is identifying with YOURSELF. Have you found yourself? Or are you who others want you to be? How do those people relate?

The being overweight makes it easier to have poor sleep quality. The irregular sleep cycle and limited amounts of sleep make it easy for me to lie to myself and tell myself that when my body is telling me to sleep that I am hungry, and go grab some sugar rich junk food.

The lethargic feelings after consuming a bunch a sugar make it easier to be lazy and further isolate myself from society and activity.

Building up the reward circuitry related to sugar highs is also likely part of why it is so easy for me to drink fast. It is part of the reason that my self image is low enough that I allow myself to act irresponsibly and socially repugnant from time to time.

On a possitive note, I have cut WAY BACK on my sugar consumption and am about 20 pounds lighter than I was a month ago. But even in doing that I may be screwing up by trying to lose weight too quickly.

And the reason that being as flawed as I am and repeating stupid mistakes over and over again makes me feel so guilty is that I have been given too much opportunity and too many other people care about me or rely on me for me to treat myself so poorly and set myself up for failure or misery so often. I should be a stronger and better person than I have been. And that starts with what you eat...because you are what you eat!

The other issue I need to solve is balancing work and play. I go from working 16 hours a day when sad to working 3 hours a day when happy. But if I have to be misserable to be successful does success have any purpose? And am I measuring success on my own terms? Or based on somebody else's?

This is a poem I wrote about 6 years ago. It was about a person struggling through life due to being bipolar, and how some people tend to approach life (through poor consumption habbits, irregular sleep, living in artificial environmental, and letting other's agenda dictate their actions or view of the world) in a way which prevents people from being anything near their full potential, and instead going for false energy sources that have the net effect of making them live as though a bipolar person would.

Title: Ocean Waves...

Taste, touch, smell, sight, sound
sensory impulses lift me off the ground
drowning gravity keeps me bound

dormant in a cocoon, chemicals released soon
these thoughts pass and I understand
these faults belong to one man

life not enough, have I had too much
places I've been, people I've seen
memories I've had, blurred the dream

I come back
down I go
clear the bottom
is it so

And since I wrote that I nearly died probably about a half dozen times and have largely stripped others from controlling my view of the world, I could prettymuch live wherever I want to, have almost no responsibilities or obligations other than those I chose to take on, and yet I still am making some of the same errors that maybe could have / should have / will kill me if I allow my current and future activities to be dictated by the results of poor choices in the past or inhumane things I learned of.

Part of controlling your emotions is ensuring you do your best to ensure you are setting yourself up for happiness each day. You are what you frequently do. Happiness is not the lack of things you hate, but finding and doing what you love. And you can't just fight things all the time if you haven't set yourself up to enjoy life. If you do then what the hell are you fighting for?

Some of my most important life lessons were learned by making huge errors. Hopefully I don't keep making them though, or maybe I actually learn from them and move on to make different ones.

Posted at October 1, 2006 7:29 AM