The sweet poison and me
Originally published at The Homepage of Michael John Bertrand. You can comment here or there.
a simple question : why do I keep eating sugary baked goods when I know they are extremely bad for me?
And the simple answer is hardly noble or intelligent : I do it because it makes me happy. It is a long term sacrifice of health for short time feeling of wellbeing and happiness.
That’s not the kind of choice I usually make. I am a future-oriented person who is always thinking about what is best for the long term, and in normal circumstances, I would be the last person in the world to be so shortsighted.
And I tend to have a bit of contempt for those who are, quite frankly.
Now the traditional explanation promulgated be Western culture is that I am obviously a weak-willed person who deserves to get sick and die because I could not control myself well enough to stay away from the sugar.
That, as patient readers will know, is utter bullshit.
Willpower is a myth. All that matters is reward and motivation. You either have it good enough mood-wise that a lack of pleasure/reward in one area will not be a big deal because you have enough other sources of pleasure/reward to compensate for the loss, or you don’t.
That’s why depressive have addictions. The disease, by damping down all of your emotional responses, suppresses most reward signals, leaving the depressive to subsist in a very unrewarding life.
And human beings can’t live like that. For humans, please/reward is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. We have an inner sense of wellbeing that dictates everything we do[1].
If it is above a certain level, we are happy and feel good about ourselves. In the deep social programming of our minds, this high level of reward means we have the approval of our tribe and are doing right by it, and that makes us feel good and shores up our self-worth. on a very critical level.
But if it goes below that level. we begin to feel bad. We are disfavored by our tribe or group and we will feel that way until we have set things right. Both our sense of well-being and our self-worth are at stake. We are motivated to change.
But when it goes down to a critically low level, the whole machine begins to break down. This leads to either panic (anxiety) or despair (depression). The individual is constantly in a state of stress because every fiber of their being is screaming out in need of some kind of reward. to bring the system into balance and until it is, the person is not in control of their actions and our sense of individual responsibility begins to break down and does not fully take into consideration all the relevant factors of the situation.
All of our civilized behaviour is contingent on getting our basic needs met, and our need for pleasure/reward is the most basic need of all, the one that controls the rest.
The further away from that sense of well being we get, the more our instincts override our rational minds and take control. Our actions, therefore, do not fit the usual sense of individual responsibility because the worse it gets, the less our civilized mind is making the choices and the more we are dictated to by our instincts.
That;s why the honest man steals a loaf of bread if he is starving. And why he doesn’t remember deciding to do it. The truth is that he didn’t decide to do it. Instinct took control and it drove him to do it. The decision making part of his mind was cut out of the loop by instincts aroused to the point where they simply take over.
I suspect something similar happens in some cases of infidelity. Two people’s sexual needs are so strong from being unmet that they literally never decide to cheat. Instinct takes over and doesn’t give control back to the conscious mind until the sex is done and both people’s sexual needs meter is back up to a healthier level.
And when they are called on it, they are telling the truth when they say they never decided to do it, it just sort of…. happened.
My situation is not quite so desperate, but the same principle applies.; My depression blocks the pkeasure/reward I should be getting from life and my sense of wellbeing falls down to dangerous levels and it takes a super strong pleasure/reward in order to get it back up to healthy levels.
Hence the sugary food. Sure, it’s terrible for me, but that doesn’t matter because my immediate need for strong pleasure/reward drives me to seek high-reward activities and for me, that tends to come across via food.
Add in the fact that buying a sugary dessert makes me feel good when I do it, then makes me feel good because I have something to look forward to, then makes me feel good when I eat it and leaves me feeling good for hours afterward, and it’s no wonder that I keep going back to that poisoned well.
I can’t help myself.
That’s why my previous attempts to “dry out” from the sugar stuff - kick the habit, so to speak - have failed. Sure, I feel much healthier when I keep away from the sugar - but a gnawing emotional emptiness fills me and I can’t put up with that forever.
So what I really need to do is find others sources of the pleasure/reward I crave. This is far more complicated than it seems. Human being fixate on pleasures, and the stronger the pleasure, the deeper that fixation goes.
Hence an otherwise rational person like myself, one with a very good imagination, nevertheless has trouble even imagining something else giving me what food gives me. That’s the fixation at work. It’s an easy thing to imagine in the abstract - why, just take up chess, or nature hiking, or anonymous sex - but as soon as it applies to me, something else replacing food is literally unthinkable.
There has to be a way out, though. And it probably involves continuing in therapy and getting through a lot of the junk inside of myself that is the root cause of the whole thing.
That’s the only way to mend the hole in my happiness bucket that causes it to drain away so fast in the first place.
Maybe then, I could be normal.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
Footnotes (↵ returns to text)
- a simple question : why do I keep eating sugary baked goods when I know they are extremely bad for me?
And the simple answer is hardly noble or intelligent : I do it because it makes me happy. It is a long term sacrifice of health for short time feeling of wellbeing and happiness.
That’s not the kind of choice I usually make. I am a future-oriented person who is always thinking about what is best for the long term, and in normal circumstances, I would be the last person in the world to be so shortsighted.
And I tend to have a bit of contempt for those who are, quite frankly.
Now the traditional explanation promulgated be Western culture is that I am obviously a weak-willed person who deserves to get sick and die because I could not control myself well enough to stay away from the sugar.
That, as patient readers will know, is utter bullshit.
Willpower is a myth. All that matters is reward and motivation. You either have it good enough mood-wise that a lack of pleasure/reward in one area will not be a big deal because you have enough other sources of pleasure/reward to compensate for the loss, or you don’t.
That’s why depressive have addictions. The disease, by damping down all of your emotional responses, suppresses most reward signals, leaving the depressive to subsist in a very unrewarding life.
And human beings can’t live like that. For humans, please/reward is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. We have an inner sense of wellbeing that dictates everything we do{{1}}.
If it is above a certain level, we are happy and feel good about ourselves. In the deep social programming of our minds, this high level of reward means we have the approval of our tribe and are doing right by it, and that makes us feel good and shores up our self-worth. on a very critical level.
But if it goes below that level. we begin to feel bad. We are disfavored by our tribe or group and we will feel that way until we have set things right. Both our sense of well-being and our self-worth are at stake. We are motivated to change.
But when it goes down to a critically low level, the whole machine begins to break down. This leads to either panic (anxiety) or despair (depression). The individual is constantly in a state of stress because every fiber of their being is screaming out in need of some kind of reward. to bring the system into balance and until it is, the person is not in control of their actions and our sense of individual responsibility begins to break down and does not fully take into consideration all the relevant factors of the situation.
All of our civilized behaviour is contingent on getting our basic needs met, and our need for pleasure/reward is the most basic need of all, the one that controls the rest.
The further away from that sense of well being we get, the more our instincts override our rational minds and take control. Our actions, therefore, do not fit the usual sense of individual responsibility because the worse it gets, the less our civilized mind is making the choices and the more we are dictated to by our instincts.
That;s why the honest man steals a loaf of bread if he is starving. And why he doesn’t remember deciding to do it. The truth is that he didn’t decide to do it. Instinct took control and it drove him to do it. The decision making part of his mind was cut out of the loop by instincts aroused to the point where they simply take over.
I suspect something similar happens in some cases of infidelity. Two people’s sexual needs are so strong from being unmet that they literally never decide to cheat. Instinct takes over and doesn’t give control back to the conscious mind until the sex is done and both people’s sexual needs meter is back up to a healthier level.
And when they are called on it, they are telling the truth when they say they never decided to do it, it just sort of…. happened.
My situation is not quite so desperate, but the same principle applies.; My depression blocks the pkeasure/reward I should be getting from life and my sense of wellbeing falls down to dangerous levels and it takes a super strong pleasure/reward in order to get it back up to healthy levels.
Hence the sugary food. Sure, it’s terrible for me, but that doesn’t matter because my immediate need for strong pleasure/reward drives me to seek high-reward activities and for me, that tends to come across via food.
Add in the fact that buying a sugary dessert makes me feel good when I do it, then makes me feel good because I have something to look forward to, then makes me feel good when I eat it and leaves me feeling good for hours afterward, and it’s no wonder that I keep going back to that poisoned well.
I can’t help myself.
That’s why my previous attempts to “dry out” from the sugar stuff - kick the habit, so to speak - have failed. Sure, I feel much healthier when I keep away from the sugar - but a gnawing emotional emptiness fills me and I can’t put up with that forever.
So what I really need to do is find others sources of the pleasure/reward I crave. This is far more complicated than it seems. Human being fixate on pleasures, and the stronger the pleasure, the deeper that fixation goes.
Hence an otherwise rational person like myself, one with a very good imagination, nevertheless has trouble even imagining something else giving me what food gives me. That’s the fixation at work. It’s an easy thing to imagine in the abstract - why, just take up chess, or nature hiking, or anonymous sex - but as soon as it applies to me, something else replacing food is literally unthinkable.
There has to be a way out, though. And it probably involves continuing in therapy and getting through a lot of the junk inside of myself that is the root cause of the whole thing.
That’s the only way to mend the hole in my happiness bucket that causes it to drain away so fast in the first place.
Maybe then, I could be normal.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
&↵