I was thinking about this the other day when I had to vomit in a public washroom.  (Nice hey?!  Bear with me, dear reader, that was the gross part). The reason was a food intolerance.  If I knew EXACTLY what the food was that was causing me trouble, it would be so easy to eliminate (er… so to speak).  Instead, I have done this 2-years-long dance around grains, especially wheat, and have narrowed the culprit down to *some* kind of flour.  In the mean time, I have discovered that if I avoid all grains (with the exception of corn, it seems ok, Monsanto mods notwithstanding) I mainly can live my life vom-free.

It is EASY to avoid them.  I have no pangs when I see birthday cake, no urges when the TimBits show up at work, I am coolio with avoiding all bread, pasta, crackers, naan –no matter how inviting it looks/smells.  So I guess I know one of my hard limits. If it has the potential to… you know, make me hurl…. I can avoid it (seriously, that’s the last mention of it).

What is it about the nature of addiction that makes you overlook the threshold.  Recently, my tolerance for alcohol has diminished.  A glass or two is fine, a third or more and a headache develops. I don’t like the headache, and don’t want to exacerbate that situation, and yet… MAYbe this time I can have that extra bit without the headache…. mayBE it’s just the kind… perhaps this varietal is a better, less headachy grape…. The piteous internal negotiations.  THAT’S what makes me angry at myself, as much as the complete lack of willpower.

I fancy smokers must have a sense of that.  They know cigarettes are harmful, cancer-causing, expensive… and yet…. the pleasure overrides the pain. Until they are in some kind of desperate straits.

The incident described above was a result of thinking I could outsmart the intolerance… just a couple of bites of this delicious granola surely couldn’t hurt….

Just one more glass

One more puff

One more time… until the pain outweighs the pleasure, I guess that’s the tipping point. It has to really, drastically hurt before I can say uncle.