“Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime”

“Be my little sugar and love me all the time”

“Sugartime” – song written by Charlie Phillips & Odis Echols in 1957, and popularized by The McGuire Sisters in 1958, Kitty Wells in 1959, and yes, even Johnny Cash in 1961

• 

• 

• 

When we gain sobriety, one of our primary tasks is to try and understand where our excessive habits came from. “How did I get here?” sang David Byrne of the Talking Heads…the trail of self-discovery was, in my case at least, not sprinkled with breadcrumbs, but sugarcubes and candycanes, leading all the way back to my early childhood…

It was the mid to late 1950’s, I wasn’t yet toilet trained and already I lived for sugar. The world, and everything that found it’s way into my tiny mouth seemed sprinkled, dusted, coated, dipped, rolled in, spread with or completely fabricated of sugar. It was everywhere…it sweetened every social event, it was baked into the major holidays, it kidnapped Halloween…the birthday parties with their inch-thick icing cakes, the visits to family with their gauntlet of well-meaning candy-proffering Aunties & Grannies, and the ubiquitous bowls of assorted bonbons & mints presented as offerings of supplication to we God-children by fawning neighbors.

There was always a rush to be the first to give a child candy. The giver knew intuitively that it bestowed an immediate bond…sugar was love.

Sugar in the morning. By the time I started eating solid foods a typical day would start with a good sugar-saturated breakfast cereal…Sugar Pops, Cap’n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios…and for those “healthier” cereals (Special K, Rice Crispies, Cheerios) there was always the

ever-present bowl of sugar in the middle of the kitchen table, to help oneself – unsupervised – to as much sugar as one could tolerate…and yes my friends, young Georgie had a very high tolerance. And who am I trying to kid?…I put sugar on all of my cereals…whether they came pre-sugared or not. “It’s Sugartime Folks!”.

The alternative to cereal was toast slathered in jam, honey & peanut butter, with weekend treats of pancakes & waffles swimming in syrup, or batches of my Swedish Grandma’s Plett (small thin pancakes) sprinkled with spoonfuls of sugar butter and cinnamon.

I had a particular love affair with the sugar bowl and would often find myself  – at age 3 or 4 – kneeling on a chair at the kitchen table, leaning over and methodically channeling spoonful after spoonful of sugar into my mouth while my mother was downstairs doing laundry…bliss.

By the age of 5 or 6 my teeth started to resemble those of Shane MacGowan from the Pogues.

Sugar in the Evening.  If we were sick, sugar was there to “help the medicine go down”. I remember my mother crushing whatever pill may

have been prescribed or bought over-the-counter and mixing it with jam or honey to make it more palatable for my little pill-averse taste buds. If ever we had a cold, flu or fever, Dad was there with a Hot Toddy (Hot Whiskey, Honey or Sugar and maybe a little lemon…a Scottish thing) before we went to bed… hovering somewhere between a sugar coma and boozy delirium.

One “cute story” that my mother (bless her) used to tell from my early childhood, was of little Georgie – perhaps age two – going into the bathroom, climbing on top of the toilet to reach the medicine cabinet above the sink to retrieve the Benylin cough syrup (a rather

• 

• 

potent medicine laced with Codeine – an opioid linked to addiction –  and sugary syrup)…and downing the entire bottle. Mom found the empty bottle and me – staggering around the house. She gave me small amounts of coffee and forced me to keep walking so I wouldn’t pass out.

Sugar at suppertime. I received a weekly allowance of 10 cents, and permission to walk the two or three blocks to my favorite store in our neighborhood (and likely the only one I frequented at the age of 5) called “Kiddie Korner”, a candy store where I would load up on penny candy.

Ten cents  – at two or three pieces per penny – could fill a small brown paper bag and provide an afternoon of addictive* cavity expanding distraction. Green Sugar-Coated Jelly Mint Leaves, Pinkish Sugar

Strawberries, Yellow Bananas, Little Black Licorice Babies, Candy Necklaces, Red Shoestring Licorice, Bazooka & Double Bubble Bubblegum (no suckers or Jellybeans thanks, they’re a little too pedestrian), Lik-M-Aid, Candy Lipstick, Candy Bacon…and on and on. If you build it they will come. Kiddie Kokaine as my friend JB calls it, and as it turns out…he’s right.

When I quit drinking in 2012 (thank you AA) my desire to eat sweet things (ice cream, chocolates and sugary baked goods) spiked, as if I was replacing my adult drinking obsession with my more primary childhood sugar craving. I wasn’t eliminating addiction, I was only transferring it…reverting to the mean, as it were. Shortly after receiving my 1 year “Sobriety Cake” in 2013 (also slathered with sugary irony), I came across across this article in the NatGeo titled “Sugar Love” which said:

*“When we eat sugar the brain releases dopamine and serotonin, two mood-boosting hormones that stimulate the area of the brain associated with reward. In a process similar to drug addiction, we get sugar cravings. However, our sugar rush releases insulin that creates a sugar crash, triggering more cravings and a vicious sugar cycle”

Bingo. If not a smoking gun then at least a prime suspect.

Although I still indulge in the sweet stuff, and may indeed be powerless** over a well-crafted cookie or piece of chocolate, my life is not unmanageable…unless you take away my coffee…don’t even think about it.

** Step 1 from AA, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable”