Addiction

Alcohol, food, GLP-1s, and knitting.

Making our own cider; mostly used to make apple cider vinegar

I’ve been thinking about addiction recently. It started off with some social media commentary that I kept tripping over last month, about the pain and trauma associated with doing a dry January. I’ll be honest, I was shocked at the vehemence of the loss felt by some who clearly struggled at the most basic level because of their determination to give up alcohol for 31 days. To be fair, I can easily go six months or more without giving alcohol a thought. A beer with a curry is great. Prosecco or champagne at Christmas and birthdays a pleasure. A Bloody Mary as a precursor to an amuse bouche and starter at a restaurant, a glass of Amaretto or cherry brandy on a cold winter evening. These are treats, things to be savoured. The idea of glugging down a half or whole bottle of wine nightly or feeling bereft at its absence is something I just don’t get. Ten pints down the pub? Why? It’s just not my bag.

Converting cherry brandy bottles into vinegar containers

In my late teens I got unbelievably plastered while living abroad for a while; it was a rite of passage, I guess, downing arrack cheaper than orange juice, but the instability of the ground twirling under me as I lay on the grass smashed and incoherent, was enough to tell me that excessive alcohol was not for me. I enjoy myself perfectly, drinking water, even when everyone around me at a dinner with friends, say, is drinking wine. I don’t feel saintly, or a spoilsport, or envious; I just don’t care about it. Talk about lucky.

The second addiction thought trend was around GLP-1 medications – you can’t pop your head above the news and views parapet without this topic smacking you round the chops – and how it quietens addictive behaviour, whether that be food, alcohol and no doubt other things. I’ve also heard that it dulls the senses more generically. Food addiction is an interesting one, and the more we hear and read about ultra-processed foods (UPFs) the more apparent it is that these non-foods are deliberately concocted to be addictive. UPFs are not my bag either, but then I am in the glorious position of having a farm. We produce the vast majority of our own meat, eggs, vegetables and a fair bit of fruit too. I have to buy things, obviously. I like a dish of roasted red peppers permanently in the fridge to drape on my plate, beautiful and delicious as they are, and the ones in the polytunnel have long been devoured. I’ve eaten all the homegrown lettuces of any reasonable size. I cannot live on leeks and pak choi alone which is all that currently exists in the veg patch, and I am a fan of cheese, which we don’t make and fish which we don’t rear. But I am not and have never been a thin woman. I LOVE food, but have to be very careful as I am what is known in farming as a good doer; a sheep, cow, pig that thrives on a sparse diet is seen as a positive, doing well on adequate rather than rich pickings. This is a helpful livestock trait, and keeps them fit and healthy. Me, I only have to look at a restrained version of Christmas dinner and I’m two pounds heavier. I kid you not – my very slim husband heard me announce this particular gobbet of news on Boxing Day (after having seen what I had consumed the day before) and was taken aback, which is interesting considering we’ve been together for 45 years. Anyway, back to GLP-1s, which I am not and will not be taking (no judgement at all if you do, they seem to perform miracles for many and I hope that can continue for folk in the long term). That being the case I have to exercise self-restraint the old-fashioned way. I seem to manage for a couple of years before I succumb to the lure of carbs, which cling to me like limpets on steroids. Here’s hoping my current hugely helpful conversations with a great friend who is also a nutritionist, will see me through for much, much longer – permanently please! Five months in, things are looking and feeling good, and I trust that tight clothes, afternoon snoozes and achy joints stay a distant memory.

I have fixations, I think, rather than addictions. I am fixated on writing, farming for nature, being independent, self-employed. These keep me focussed and interested. There are plenty of other activities that pop up too; knitting is a current one – such a productive way of spending one’s evenings and it gave me a lot of pleasure that the two of us went out earlier this week, both wearing sweaters I’ve knitted recently. And no, they were not matchy-matchy in any way (just the idea makes me writhe) and we had not co-ordinated the effort, it was coincidental. More to the point, no-one noticed which meant it had gone nicely under the radar.

But there are no addictions to diet coke (that noxious brown liquid), or coke (that noxious white powder) or anything else. And for that I can only thank my lucky stars.