Modified post. Read the edit at the buttom.
Now, call me crazy, I don’t think so! I have been an addict and I know how it is to be an addict, but I don’t think sugar is as addictive as cocaine. And I really am frustrated with people who say such things.
This notion that it’s as addictive drives me crazy! I mean, imagine someone gullible who says, well, “I can control my addiction to ice cream, heck I can go without ice cream for months, if it’s as addictive as cocaine, why not give cocaine a chance? It’s not like it’s gonna destroy me or something?” Yeah, I have once been this gullible (when I was younger) and I hate this.
I do crave sugar and I do occasionally (once per week and sometimes twice a month) buy sugary treats/lays packet (5 Indian Rupees, smallest one) to quench that craving, but I refuse to believe that it is as addictive as cocaine or any other drugs. PS: My last lays packet was 45 ago and I am fine, and this is the most addictive substance I have consumed.
I am pretty some people here have been addicted to cocaine (truly no judgement, I hope you are sober now), so what say you?
PS: If you haven’t been addicted to anything drastic as drugs, you are still welcome to chip in.
edit: thank you all for adding greater context.
I realize now that when they talk about sugar, they are not just talking abt lays and ice creams, but sugar in general. I get the studies now. But media is doing a terrible job of reporting on studies.
Also, the media depiction of scientific studies is really the worst. I mean, they make claims which garbage and/or incomplete data or publish articles on studies which make more alarming claims. Also, maybe wait for a consensus before you publish anything, i.e., don’t publish anything which isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times. Yes, your readers might miss out on the latest and greatest, but it isn’t really helpful if the latest and greatest studies in science aren’t peer reviewed and backed up well by data.
I feel like a headline “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” can and will be life destroying if you don’t give enough information. I feel like there should be an ethical responsibility to not sensationalize studies, maybe instead of “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” give a headline like “Sugar and Addiction, what science says.”
also, https://i.imgur.com/VrBgrjA.png ss of bing chat gpt answering the question.
some articles: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/25/is-sugar-really-as-addictive-as-cocaine-scientists-row-over-effect-on-body-and-brain
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/cravings/202209/is-sugar-addictive
https://brainmd.com/blog/what-do-sugar-and-cocaine-have-in-common/
I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
The difference is that I haven’t done drugs in decades but I still have a pack of Oreos on my counter.
See, the impracticality here is not that I’d be jonesing for sugar, it’s that almost all processed food and most natural food has a little sugar in it, and also that our bodies literally require some simple carbohydrates to operate. Best case, you go on a hard keto overnight, and yes, the first week is terrible, because keto is a stupid fucking diet that doctors don’t recommend because it sucks.
Yes, if I eat nothing but beef and saltines for a week, I’m going to feel like shit. That’s not an addiction issue.
Bruh saltines has carbs, cut that out too
but no simple carbs, no sugars. Got some carbs in on a technicality!
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That would be comparable with asking someone who smokes weed a couple of times a year to quit cold turkey.
Of course it’s not going to make any difference to you if you stop taking sugar or not.
However ask someone who “needs” to have that redbull every day. Who drinks sugary lattes, eats sweetened bread and so on.
Ask them to quit and they will most likely experience withdrawal symptoms and have a really hard time to keep away from sugar.
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To second your point with something that’s easier to grasp:
It’s quite common for people who are heavily addicted to nicotine to be able to enjoy a little bit of alcohol sometimes or completely go without. Or be able to go shopping without getting addicted to it.
Being addicted to one thing doesn’t mean you automatically get addicted to all other things that people can get addicted to.
Going without a basic macro nutrient making you feel bad doesn’t mean its addictive. You’d feel like shit if you tried to go without oxygen too. Your body doesn’t need as much sugar as many consume, but it’s more than nothing.
Well, your body needs carbs. And theoretically, you could do a low-carb diet, even a keto diet, but… keto is fucking dumb.
So, yes, in practice, you’re gonna want at least some sugar in your diet.
Sugar is not a basic macronutrient. The macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
I’m pretty addicted to oxygen at this point to be fair…
To that challenge I would specify “in anything”. Sugar and equivalent is in almost all processed foods.
Are you just talking about refined sugar or are you including natural sugar in that too?
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh.
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
Healthy as in survivable sure, but I’m pretty sure at that point you would already notice the side effects of not having access to carbohydrates.
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh
Most fruits have a huge amount of sugars (and are therefore not healthy in large amounts), so I would say they count as sugar for this purpose.
Yeah I don’t mean survivable. I was thinking about the implication from the comment that sugar is this horrific substance which is prone to abuse and should be avoided at all costs.
If the point is for refined sugar then I’m with them. If they’re talking about sugar as a whole though, then it would be unhealthy to go for a week without any.
Not literally everyone is addicted to sugar. I barely have it and many days don’t have any of it at all (and I know it’s not in the food I’m eating because I make the food I’m eating).
Do you also know what the plants you use to make your food consist of?
Onions are about 4% sugar, for example. And that is excluding more complex carbohydrates that are essentially the same to your body. I highly doubt you don’t eat any sugar for days on end.
You barely eat sugar. Sure. But not eating any is close to impossible I’d argue.
Often, yes. It’s something I’ve had to look up in order to properly reintroduce foods on the low FODMAP diet.
Anyway, this conversation is about refined sugar. I eat fruit, for example.
fruit is natures provider of “refined” sugar. you body doesn’t care whether you first actually refined it and then put it in a cake. It’s the same sugar while it’s still inside the apple (I know nobody refines sugar from apples but you get my point)
That’s not how sugar works.
I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
ok that makes more sense.
I can easily go for a week without sugar. I did it recently. I wanted to lose some weight so I cut out sugar. Usually I have some desert after lunch but I just stopped. Usually I put sugar in my coffee but I stopped. I don’t drink sugary drinks so that was easy. I didn’t have any bad cravings or anything. I would simply think about eating ice cream and even if I had some in the fridge I would just say ‘nope’ and move on. I was doing this until I lost the weight I wanted to lose so for about 2 months.
If sugar is as addictive as drugs does it mean I just start smoking and doing drugs and it will be as easy to quit?
I have dropped all sugar a couple times. It’s not easy, but also not terribly hard for me. That’s not to say that is the case for everyone, just me. I have seen people come out of addiction to a few different drugs and it was not at all comparable. To compare my experiences with sugar would be as insulting as OP describes, if not more so.
But humans are all different, so I wouldn’t be shocked if for some it is comparable.
I did it many times and it wasn’t awful in any way. If you cut all carbs, that’s different though, and it has little to do with addiction and a lot to do with your body entering ketosis. That’s not to deny that food can be addictive. Anything can be addictive. People get addicted to porn, phones and computer games after all. But people blow this sugar thing way out of proportion.
The thing that really causes addiction isn’t so much the physical dependence, but the psychological dependence.
Almost all drugs (including Cocaine) have only very short term withdrawal effects. If it was only physical dependence, all you’d have to do to break any substance addiction is to lock that person up for a few weeks, until the drugs are out of the system and that’s that.
The long-term effects are purely psychological. Usually, your life is shit, you got some pretty heavy problems or you have other psychologial issues like depression. And you know that substance X will help you to feel good, even if only for a short time. So you take the substance again to forget and feel good.
Because of this, you can get severely addicted to stuff like gaming, smartphones, social media, shopping or gambling, even though there is no substance involved at all.
Remeber the high-profile study about a rat that was locked alone in an empty cage and the only things it had available to distract itself from it’s misery where a bottle of regular water and one filled with cocaine water.
The rat used cocaine until it died of an overdose.
This experiment was repeated, but this time there was a whole rat family in a really nice cage with a lot of things to do. This time some of the rats did a bit of cocaine sometimes, but never in excess and no rat overdosed.
Sugar, together with the physical withdrawals (which do really exist), is really tough on the psychological side due to its extremely easy availability and omnipresence.
To get cocaine you need to find a dealer, spend a rather big amount of money and you are always aware that if you are caught, there are some very serious consequences.
To get sugar, you walk into the kitchen. Worst case, you go down to the next shop, spendless than an Euro on the substance and consume it completely legal without fear of any repercussions.
Or you wait until someone gifts you some sugar for birthday, Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday. Or just because they are nice.
This super easy availability means, there are hardly any barriers where you can say “Actually, I wanted to stop” and stop what you are doing.
Actually you can just decide “I want to stop” and then stop. Tell your friends you’re cutting sugar and to stop buying you treats. Stop going to the shops for donuts. Stay away from McDonald’s.
People literally do this all of the time.
It straight up is mostly personal choice and I am tired of people trying to claim it’s not.
Found the miracle healer!
You want to get out of addiction, just decide “I want to stop”.
Do you offer the same solution for other issues as well?
Depression: “Just don’t be sad”
Broken leg: “Just decide that it’s not broken any more”
If you can give something up just like that, you weren’t addicted to it. Please read my post again. There is a huge difference between “using a substance that can cause dependence” and “being addicted to said substance”.
For that very reason there are people who enjoy some wine, rarely, in specific settings, and at the same time there are alcoholics who actually are addicted.
Thanks for proving my point by showing us you know exactly what it is you’re doing when you shovel donuts in your mouth and then get angry you aren’t ripped. Or do you think we don’t know what you’re thinking when you instantly react to any kind of pushback against any attempt to hold you accountable for your behavior?
You make the choice to be obese by practicing bad lifestyle choices and refusing to take responsibility for those choices. And you do it because you want to eat sweet, delicious treats. And you are angry because you can’t accept the fact that you can’t have it both ways: you can’t eat donuts and be ripped at the same time, and you don’t want to put the effort in to be healthy, you want it done for you so you can eat what you want without consequences.
But that’s not how life works.
I say that as someone who is fat and eats donuts and drinks Cokes all the goddamn time. We do it because we want to, because we understand a large part of happiness in life comes from the food we eat and that has always been true, not because of society or any other externalities, but because that’s how life is. We do it because we like donuts and Cokes. We do it because we want to.
But there’s a price to pay for that. I’m as fat as a pile of pigshit rotting in the Texas sun on high noon on the summer solstice because of it. But I don’t worry or have feelings about it, because I understand and fully accept the consequences of my actions as an adult, and more importantly, don’t care about being ripped.
I am adult enough to be honest and make that choice and it’s time for you to grow the fuck up and do the same.
Or choose to stop eating sugary treats and actually become ripped.
It’s up to you how you’re gonna live this life.
You are projecting. I hate doughnuts. I do eat sugar but not excessively so. And I am not overweight. I also don’t care about petty beauty ideals like “getting ripped”. I am not 15 anymore.
Let me get this straight though: You say that you are “fat as a pile of pigshit”, say that you eat donuts and drink cokes all the time and that you “could stop at any time, you just don’t want to”. That’s 1:1 addiction speech.
You are addicted. Because being addicted means that you keep doing something even though you know it’s really bad for you. Being addicted means, that you are not in control.
Saying “I could quit at any time, I just don’t want to”, while your body is rotting away, means not only can you not quit even if you wanted to, but that you have so totally given up on trying, that it has become part of your identity.
That’s the exact same line you hear from old smokers with amputated legs and lung cancer.
Then you should not speak for those of us who actually are obese and for whom this discussion is relevant, should you?
Think before you open your mouth. I do it before I swallow down a Coke; you can do it before arrogantly presuming to speak for a situation that is not even yours.
You are the one who brought obesity up. I was talking about addictions from an empirical standpoint.
You then jumped in and called me obese and weak-minded.
I didn’t even mention obesity or being overweight at all in my first post.
There are also a lot of other conditions you can get by consuming too much sugar, even if you aren’t overweight. For example, you don’t need to be overweight to get diabetes from consuming too much sugar.
And contrary to you I know that addiction is not a character weakness and it has nothing to do with being weak-minded. Addiction is a psychological problem same as depression. Shaming people for their addiction is incredibly counter-productive, because it often is the result of people being very unhappy with their current state. Shaming someone makes this problem worse and usually results in more severe addiction.
I’ve have experience with addiction and I worked a lot with people who are affected by addiction. I do know how it works, and shaming someone (even yourself) makes the addiction much harder to get rid off.
Eh, obesity was labeled a disease by the WHO nearly a century ago (1948). And just to be clear, obesity does not mean being fat. Obesity is defined as “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to heath.” You can be overweight and live a perfectly healthy life, but saying that putting on so much weight that it takes decades off your life and greatly reduces your standard of living is a choice is pretty ignorant. This may be a bit extreme, but I would equate it with saying that self-harm is a choice, completely ignoring all the underlying conditons that cause such behaviours.
Honestly, I find the psychology and biology behind obesity fasinating. If you’re interested in the science of weight gain and obesity, look up some of the recent studies done on it. I think they’re realay neat.
Oh, but claiming that obesity is a choice and that it’s a symptom of weak willpower is an old stigma that prevents lots of people from seeking help. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t push such old ideas.
I am sorry buddy, I am not sure if that’s true. Not true for most people at least.
It literally happens all the time. You can find videos of people losing hundreds of pounds through their own choices with a simple Youtube search.
You just don’t want to admit you don’t really care about losing weight, you just want to be fat without the consequences, and life doesn’t work like that.
Just say you choose to be fat, you’re happy being fat and you don’t want to change. Just say that, and no one could really touch that. But don’t sit there and try to lie to me.
Yes, you can find videos of people who have not been addicted.
Please go and read up just a little bit about what addiction is. Apparently, being completely unaware about the concept does not stop you from commenting.
I don’t understand either how you came up with the idea that I am addicted or overweight. I was just talking about the concept addiction and the difference between sugar addiction and other addictions.
You are making a fool of yourself.
You are making a fool of yourself.
Are you sure?
You’re literally the one in this thread right now gossiping to other people about me, directly in front of me where I can see, accusing me of being a sugar addict because I said I went back to eating donuts and drinking Coke because I didn’t like eating Mediterranean.
You’re clearly the angry, spiteful one here proving to everyone that everything I am saying is right with your immature, abusive behavior. See herein:
It’s no wonder you struggle so hard with respecting obese people – and people who consume sugar in general – as adults making their own choices. You clearly aren’t capable of being mature so why would you assume anyone else would be? And you clearly don’t understand that we who are fatter than pig shit are self-aware and happy with ourselves because we accept ourselves as we are, and that’s why we can laugh and joke about ourselves. You misconstrued it to mean something negative because you have a negative image of fat people in your mind, and that’s why you label us as sugar addicts. Because you don’t like us. Because you’re afraid of becoming one of us. Because you’re an immature child who can’t grow the fuck up.
That absolutely is a you problem though. I’ll be over here enjoying my ribs slathered in the sweetest, spiciest barbecue sauce I can find. And unlike you, I’ll clearly be happier. 😎
No, I am kinda pissed because you called me weak-minded and because you kept attacking obese people.
I got a few obese people in my life that I care a lot about and I know how messed up they get because of the constant scrutiny and hatered they get from random people.
Again, I kept saying all throught this conversation that I think that addiction and obesity are not a weakness of character or something like that. Everyone has things that don’t work out and issues that they work on for decades that just don’t get better. And if we are honest, everyone is addicted to something. Some addictions are more visible than others, but that doesn’t make them worse.
You on the other hand have done nothing but bashing addicts and obese people.
Go and eat your ribs the way you like it. Why do you think I care?
nice comment, thank you!
I want to respond to your edit:
wait for consensus before you publish, don’t publish anything that isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times.
You need to understand that publishing is the way scientists communicate among each other. Of course, all reputable journals conduct peer review before publishing, but peer review is just that: Review. The peer review process is meant to uncover obviously bad, or poorly communicated, research.
Replication happens when other scientists read the paper and decide to replicate. In fact, by far most replication is likely never published, because it is done as a part of model/rig verification and testing. For example: If I implement a model or build an experimental rig and want to make sure I did it right, I’ll go replicate some work to test it. If I successfully replicate I’m probably not going to spend time publishing that, because I built the rig/implemented to model to do my own research. If I’m unable to replicate, I’ll first assume something is wrong with my rig/implementation. If I can rule that out (maybe by replicating something else) I might publish the new results on the stuff I couldn’t replicate.
Consensus is built when a lot of publications agree on something, to the point where, if you aren’t able to replicate it, you can feel quite positive it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
Basically: The idea of waiting for consensus before publishing can’t work, because consensus is formed by a bunch of people publishing. Once solid consensus is established, you’ll have a hard time getting a journal to accept an article further confirming the consensus.
I’ve yet to see someone blowing people in a parking lot for caster sugar, so I can’t see how it’s as addictive as hard drugs.
Have you ever seen a TV show about a 600+ lbs woman? If cocaine was available in Walmart you wouldn’t see people doing sexual favors for it.
It’s also significantly easier to get ahold of.
you dont see huge bags of cocaine on grocery store shelves either.
Make sugar as rare as coke and you will see way worse shit than some simple street head.
Granny may take your head for a cup of sugar, deary
If the studies are true, Granny is basically a drug dealer
Price…
If pure sugar/corn syrup cost the same as cocaine, then some people probably would.
If cocaine was legal, it would be cheap as fuck and comparable. Hell, it was legal once and relatively cheap, people weren’t giving blowies for it back then. But it was still just as addictive
I’ve seen people with diabetes unable to quit sugar even though it’s killing them, and THAT sounds like hard drugs to me.
You can buy a pound of castor sugar in any store. Plus it’s about $19,000 cheaper.
People have left some great comments here so to add: when the body gets something it needs nutrition-wise, it releases dopamine. We know this, that’s why we enjoy eating (pretty good biological functioning). However, there is diminishing returns on most things. The first steak you eat: delicious. Hell the first bite is the best. Every next bite, every consecutive steak, you get less and less dopamine release because your body recognizes it doesn’t need that nutrient as much. Drugs however (disregarding tolerance and dopamine fatigue because those work through different mechanisms) do not do this. There is no evening out or plateau on dopamine release for cocaine for instance. Sugar works the same way. No slowing or plateau. So in a very real and bio mechanical way, sugar is very analogous to drugs.
I think when people make those headlines they forget that sugar is essential to the human body. It’s a nutrient. As far as I know you don’t get a deficiency disorder if you don’t use cocaine ever.
The problem is with the way our society is structured now: it’s hard to not rely on processed foods with tons of sugar and salt because most people don’t feel like they’d ever have to the time to prepare a healthy meal.
Refined sucrose is not an essential nutrient, carbohydrates may be though even that is disputed these days the body refines glucose from any number of complex carbohydrates and even non-carb sources. In a natural environment sucrose would be consumed seasonally at a relatively low percentage of total calories when fruits were available, for much of the year sucrose would make up a very low percentage of calories consumed.
Who disputes the need for some carbohydrates? Our brains run on carbs.
I was able to quit cocaine, cigarettes, and alcohol and of those 3, cigarettes was the hardest to quit, with alcohol being a close second. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the roles of behavioral addiction vs. chemical addiction when trying to quit something, but sugar has been just as difficult as alcohol and nicotine, if not more so. It doesn’t help that it is seemingly everywhere and included in all the food. It’s not as easy as “I’ll just stop having ice cream”, of course anyone can do that. If you start paying attention to all the foods sugar is added too and try to avoid those foods, you really have to completely rethink your whole approach to food (where to buy, the role it plays in your life, i.e. why you eat) and spend a lot more energy trying to find “healthy” foods.
Avoiding gluten, dairy, or sugar really requires getting proficient at preparing all your meals from scratch. It’s a good skillset to develop, but there’s major hurdles. What are the chances that every single day you’re going to have the time and energy to cook 2 meals from raw ingredients instead of grabbing a box/freezer meal or takeout? It’s not a pure question of whether someone has the willpower to say no to a craving, they have to have the discipline to plan and prepare meals before they are hungry.
Absolute adherence to dietary restrictions is very difficult even when addiction isn’t a major component.
Add to it: they need to have the money too. Getting a cheap frozen Pizza is by far cheaper than to get all the components fresh and preparing everything yourself.
I recently tried making a few of the simple and cheap foods you can easily buy ready-made.
Do you know how much time and money goes into making a simple Döner Kebab if you don’t have industrial kitchen equipment?
Or sausages?
It really helps to cook in bulk if you want to cook affordably.
Even stir fry. A bag of frozen stir fry mix at Kroger costs $1.79 here. Just a single bell bepper costs 79¢.
It’s pretty much all foods. Cutting out the retailer avoids a markup of ~40%. Buying in bulk straight from the farmers drops the price even more.
Buying a whole pig from the farmer costs roughly €200 or roughly €2.80/kg.
In the super market you pay €10-30/kg (at least over here).
And there is the same kind of markup on everything.
No wonder processed food is so much cheaper.
Well, i am a single guy living paycheck to paycheck, so buying bulk isn’t really an option. I have a local farmers market that i walk to regularly in the summer, but even that is only a marginal saving compared to the local grocery stores.
That’s yet another example of “stuff gets more expensive if you are poor”…
A very annoying concept.
You’re not kidding. I’m a pretty experienced cook and it’s still exhausting preparing every meal yourself.
I’m currently on the reintroduction phase of the low FODMAP diet (trying to figure out digestive problems) and I sincerely don’t believe most people would be capable of properly following this diet. It is extremely restrictive and requires significant meal planning and knowledge about foods and food groups. The only reason I’m able to do it is because I have so much experience cooking and reading about cooking/food.
You don’t have the same incentive to quit sugar either. It’s not illegal, it won’t make you crash your car and kill someone, the police won’t arrest you for driving under the influence of sugar, you won’t lose your job because you were caught using sugar, your family won’t leave you because of your sugar habit, strangers won’t feel ashamed or depressed if they see you using sugar in a public place etc.
Sure, there is obesity and diabetes, but they are directly caused by an excess of calories, not sugar. Sugar might make you eat more, or so people say, but does it really? You can still overeat plenty of greasy salty stuff.
Fructose in particular causes liver damage at a much higher rate than other carbohydrates including glucose. It’s not as simple as excess calories.
There are more non-obese diabetics than obese diabetics. Yes, there’s a strong correlation between weight and diabetes, but that has more to do with metabolic disorders causing both weight gain and insulin resistance.
If you’d like to watch a presentation on the topic, this one by Robert Lustig is pretty good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDJsxw0uMLM
This is just more keto pseudoscience. Unfortunately people care more about YouTube videos than what reputable sources say: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/symptoms-causes#type
Not disputing that excess fructose can cause liver damage, but most studies demonstrating this have mice ingesting absurd amounts. This doesn’t happen when you are eating a normal amount of food anyway. Excess water can kill you, but no one avoids drinking water because of this.
It depends on the person. For me, not really. I get mild cravings but they’re easy to overcome.
What really helps is having something sweet that has no added sugars, like fruit or natural sweeteners like stevia or monk fruit or some-such. That way you can have the taste of sweet without all of the baggage.
I am pretty sure it’s the taste of sweet that’s addictive and not the actual sugar.
To answer your question, no, it is not and never will be as addictive as hard drugs.
no added sugars, like fruit
An average apple, which is a fairly mild fruit, has 20 to 25 grams of sugar. There may be none added but it’s still a ton of sugar. Try weighing out 25 grams of sugar to see what that looks like.
We also bred fruit to be sweeter than they were naturally, so there’s that as well.
It’s not the same kind of sugar as table sugar so your comparison is disingenuous, as is the whole debate.
When we talk about sugar in the context of food addiction or weight management, we mean sucrose, as in table sugar. Not the fructose in fruit.
You can quibble about the semantics of it if you want to, but those definitions are set in stone and nothing you’re going to say will change that.
Now stop arguing in bad faith and let the rest of us speak our minds.
Also apples have 8 grams of sugars in them on average, not 25, now let’s watch you prove my point that you’re just here to argue and not to meaningfully talk about sugar addiction by arguing about apples more.
I’m addicted to air. At some point I’ll kick the addiction.
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Anyone who has gone on a hard cut or fast will tell you how much they crave bread. People think sugar means refined white crystal sugar or honey.
Pasta is “sugar” Bread is too.
I completely agree as someone who has quit smoking and drinking. Sugar is by far harder to cut back on.
I think it is because at a fundamental level your body knows it needs carbs. Not so for chemicals like nicotine and alcohol.
I think this is part of why drinking is so hard to quit for some ppl. Their body wants the booze AND the carbs!
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When I gave up drinking I developed an overwhelming craving for sugar because it, apparently, hits the same dopamine buttons. I, ultimately, found giving up booze easier than sugar because it’s not socially acceptable to give those in recovery a bottle of wine as a present but people don’t think twice about giving you some chocolate. I’ve had to be explicit about this now.
In some ways the ease of access and social accessibility are key - I had a chat with a couple of former heroin addicts about addiction and they found stopping smoking harder. You can quite the heroin lifestyle but (back before the smoking ban and the rise of vaping) it was very easy to have a few drinks, accept the offer of a cigarette and before you know it, you are working through a pack of 20.
Also, never underestimate Big Sugar, they will use all the dirty tricks Big Tobacco used to avoid bans in smoking, with similar disastrous consequences for our health.
Not only is it hard to kick the habit, it’s incredibly hard just to avoid. For cocaine, in order to get a hit, you gotta call a dealer. For sugar, it’s in so many foods that it’s seriously hard to go sugar free, even if you never ate sugar before in your life.
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast did a segment on this recently, looked at a bunch of different studies and came to the conclusion that the scientific consensus is all over the place on the actual adictiveness of sugar and of processed foods in general, but that there are definitely some affects going on.
Let me put it like this. I’m 3 months without alcohol, cannabis and now I’m cutting down social media… he said on social media. But boy, I needs my ice tea. I walk passed chocolate isles salivating. When I was younger I could empty 2x 1.5L bottles of soda in one day.
Yeah, impulse issues I got, but sugar has always been hard to get away from. Refined sugars should have an 18 year old age rating. No joke.
I used to smoke 1 to 3 packs of cigarettes and i got shitfaced twice a week every week. I only did cocaine a couple of times, so I don’t really know about that. But i ditched cigarettes on a tuesday and haven’t smoked in 15 years. I hardly even cared. Same with alcohol, i haven’t had a drink in 10 or so year, and i’ll never drink again, the desire is completely gone. 4 years ago i thought i might as well ditch sugary drinks, because i’m not big into sweets anyway, so why not? It was somewhat easy, and i lived off water and coffee for a year or so.
Then i was super tired once and drank a monster, and ever since then i’m off and on sugary drinks again. It’s fucking horrible and i hate it, and i’m not sure if i’ll ever be able to quit completelyForgot to mention tobacco! I smoked about one or two 30g tobacco packs a week. But I replaced it with vaping, and I need to kick that as well, because I vape way too much.
I’ll start with saying I have pretty mediocre willpower.
I can definitely understand saying you’re “addicted” to sugar. I find it really hard to resist going for sugary treats, and it takes a substantial effort to make better snack choices.
But I can put some honey in my yogurt in the morning and not go on a sugary bender, so I feel like it can’t be as bad as hard drugs.
There’s a bit of social conditioning to it. If I put whiskey in my coffee every morning, people would be concerned, if I put a few pumps of syrup in I’m bougie. Sugar is a normalized addiction.
And not too long ago the whiskey would also have been considered ok.
In some jobs (e.g. sales) it’s considered essential to the job to be able to drink a lot.
At least where I am from, alcoholism is in many contexts still normalized.
Luckily, this is slowly changing.
Well sugar doesn’t inebriate you so that’s not a fair comparison at all. You’re not gonna accidentally kill someone while driving under the influence of sugar.
Depends on the amount of sugar ;)
If you go into a sugar coma while driving, that could be very dangerous.
But sugar has a very wide range between the amount that it takes to have a nice effect and the amount it takes to have severe accute consequences.
Alcohol has a much narrower range.
That’s also what makes Nutmeg such a bad drug, because it doesn’t take much more of it for a lethal dose than the amount you need for a good high.
You are dosing sugar with every meal, and with most in between snacks.
You likely couldnt make it a week properly cutting sugar from your diet. Most cant.
