We are all addicted to something. Whether it's the latest episode of Corrie or Eastenders that YOU CANNOT MISS, or crack cocaine (not sure which is worse) we all have an addiction.
I've had many addictions in my lifetime, too many to actually list fully here, but although I know how addicted I've been to many things, it's funny how few people would admit to being an addict. I would say it's actually impossible to avoid being addicted to something, as we live in such a commercially focussed advertising-led society that being addicted to something is commonplace.
There are many addictions that are ok and would not interfere with your day-to-day life in any way. But there are many hidden addictions that we just don't realise we're hooked on.
It goes without saying that I've got an addictive personality, as from a young age I have been addicted to staring at women's vee-jay-yays and mammary glands. Actually that's one addiction that I hope will never leave me. But there are many others that I picked up along the way that were really not so welcome.
I have what can be described as a sweet tooth, so my addiction to sugar goes back to my childhood when me and my sister used to go out and walk our dog on the strict instruction not to buy sweets from Whelams (our beloved sweet shop now long gone in Barkingside). Whelams was a kids paradise. It was a proper old school sweet shop, where sweets were sold loose by the 1/4 lb and you could buy 1/2p, 1p and 2p sweets out of small cardboard boxes next to the till. This was the proper way of buying sweets in a totally unhealthy manner, open to lots of kids grubby hands rummaging in the boxes to find the last cola bottle.
We often came up with inventive ways of disguising our sugar eating habits. I loved shrimps and bananas and milk bottles and sherbet dib dabs, not forgetting the chocolate milk drops with hundreds and thousands. Avoiding the tell tale signs of our sweet eating was an ongoing battle with our parents. They now tell us that they always knew that what we were doing, but we used to go to great lengths to disguise our secret sweet eating. My favourite trick was putting our secret stash of sweets in a carrier bag and throwing it over our back fence to be collected later when the coast was clear. We hid bags in the porch, in secret pockets in our coats and even up our poor dogs arsehole.
My point is, that as soon as my Dad said 'You can't have sweets', that set off an alarm in my head which automatically went 'My Dad said I can't have sweets, therefore I WILL HAVE SWEETS AND HIDE THEM'. It got to the point that Dad often smelt our breath for sweets, so we cunningly also bought a packet of polo's or borrowed his extra strong mints to make our eyes water and breath smell fresh before the inspection (we of course didn't realise that having breath smelling of mint was a complete giveway really).
I'm not saying our Dad was a bit of a hard taskmaster (I'm often called Victorian Dad in jest and I know who I take after...), but not only was he often on sweet inspection, but he insisted on us getting a pay phone for our house as my sister used the phone too much. So we had one of those phones installed with a lock and you had to insert a 10p, 20p or 50p. It had pips on the line and everything. We of course found the key and kept on emptying it, so he never had more than £10 in the box no matter how much the bill was.
Anyway, I digress. My point is not that my father was a secret sociopath, in fact he was really quite harmless and easygoing. The point is that my addiction to sugar started at a very yo
ung age, and it shows you how hard it is for any of us to be free from these addictions.
I remember at school I was very proud as I could drink a can of Quatro (a bit like Lilt but contained around 30% more sugar and less fruit) in under 3 seconds. Yes a 330ml can of Quatro in under 3 seconds. I literally pulled the top off and poured it down my throat
. Why I thought this was clever I'll never know. A friend at school (Obby was his nickname, and I would love to know if people still call him that) discovered a cola called Jump Cola, which proudly had 5 times the caffeine and sugar of regular coke. It was eventually banned in this country, but not before we'd both gone through a few thousand litres of the stuff as we danced atop the roofs of the local houses naked whilst screaming 'WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS' (RIP Ron Pickering). Well it wasn't that bad, but I definitely had a buzz during a few Geography lessons (probably why I always get a bit of a euphoric rush when someone starts talking about contour lines and ordinance survey maps).
I was a total drug user at school, and it must have been terrible for my parents to know their son was such a druggie. My particular low light (or highlight depending on how you view it) was when I got called into the headmaster's office for drug taking. There was a big furore as there were a number of suspect clear bags of white powder that were confiscated and me along with 3 other boys were summoned to talk about this.
At the time there was a lot of fuss made of this, but we could never understand the problem. Why was it a issue to empty the contents of a sherbert dip into a small see through bag and then hide them in our school bags? We knew of course the connotations of this, and at breaktime we took great delight in sneaking into the bushes and sniffing or sucking on these small bags of sherbert.
Once the deputy head and headmaster found out that they were dealing with a perfectly legal ring of sherbert addicts and not speed or cocaine, they did thaw somewhat. But we tried to stay straightfaced as we got a stern talking to about the problems of drug use, although sniffing or sucking sherbert was probably about as lame as you could ever get. That's how hard our Grammar school was. Needless to say I was never part of the cool kids, this was as close to being cool as I ever got, apart from when I was selling 2nd hand Razzles, Mayfair and Escort behind the bike sheds for 20p a pop, but that's another story.
But although at the time we laughed about it, I was addicted - I just didn't realise it.
So it was clear that my fascination and addiction to sugar would continue for many years. I'm not saying I'm totally free from my addiction now, but I can proudly stand up and say my name is Gary Mazin and I was addicted to sugar, and sniffed sherbert dips and drank a can of Quatro in under 3 seconds (I was that close to contacting Norris McWhirter, so proud was I of that accolade), but I'm working on it, I'm handling it. As the kids in Grange Hill always told us 'Just Say No'.
No comments:
Post a Comment