Due to circumstances beyond my control I learned early on about addiction.
When I was 16 I broke a femur and was in traction for two weeks in the hospital. It was a radial fracture and I had a lot of pain and they gave me morphine several times a day.
It didn’t take long before I developed a real craving for the high the stuff put me on and I’d cry and complain about non-existent pain and beg for more morphine shots.
They forced me to go cold turkey for last couple of days and gave me stuff that made me sick when they gave me a shot.
For the rest of my I knew that I was susceptible to opioid addiction and avoided the stuff. I think the experience probably helped me quit a two-pack a day smoking habit when I was 23.
I’ve been addicted to nicotine (cigarettes) for 65 years. I snuck my first pall mall at age 11. Everyone smoked back then. Nowadays smokers are social outcasts, and government has taxed them and passed laws trying to control us. I told my doctor who try’s to put me on pills that are supposed to help me quit, I would get more understanding from him if I was a drug addict or alcoholic. I think I made him mad.
I was surfing in Huntington Beach, CA and after paddling out through a big set of waves I started coughing and coughed up a big brown wad of crap. That experience scared me and I quit my 2-pack a day habit and went cold turkey. I’ve not touched a cigarette since that day.
Are you sure they weren’t from Grand Rapids or elsewhere on the west side of the state (Ann Arbor is only 40-50 miles west of Detroit)? The general Grand Rapids area is heavily populated by Dutch descendants.
I remember some of them talking about Ann Arbor and Chicago. One of them left a govt job in Chicago because the building department was taken over by organized crime.
Natural sugar isn’t that bad since it carries water. Vitamins. Minerals. Fiber. Etc.
That doesn’t mean I don’t eat sugar. I just avoid it as much as I can. You can tell from my triglycerides I’m mostly successful. The sad just has to much sugar in it.
Opioids are the devil for some people. Luckily I have no issue with them. They give me insomnia and indigestion. They do reduce pain but they don’t cause euphoria with me.
It is treated as food in many contexts, when it is closer to a drug. Addictive and without any nutritional benefit worthy of mention.
A little bit is ok. More than that isn’t.
Contributes to calcification, free radicals, and aging in general. Not to mention ultimately reducing energy and making people want to sit around more.