I became a rebel. A miscreant. I was churlish and truculent, occasionally high as a kite, other times lonely, slow and miserable. The outlines of manic depression showed, but had the ruts been carved by three or four years of hopeless sugar addiction? Which was the chicken and which the egg? I already had manic depressive tendencies and therefore self-medicated on sugar? Or the highs and lows, rewards and punishments of sugar, did they trigger the neurons and prime the pumps of endocrines in a way that caused the first cyclings of what was then to become a bipolar disorder?
And why? My brother never had it. He liked sweets, sure, but to that extent? Never. Genetic, then? My father never ate puddings (doesn’t to this day); my mother prefers sour fruit to sweet. My sister doesn’t have a sweet tooth either. I was the only one with this craving, this wild, transgressive, sexual lust for sweets.
As I go over my feelings about this, I wonder if sweets didn’t shape me entirely: the savage, gnawing yearning, the greed for them blended with romantic and sexual feelings. Masturbation began, all that. Sweets opened up a pathway, they established one thing and one thing hugely. I must get pleasure. I must reward myself. That’s the beast to which sugar gave birth. These days we express the urge in the language of endocrines and neurotransmitters. We talk now of endorphins, of serotonin, noradrenalin, tryptophan and dopamine. Sweets began it. They carved through the brain and left their imprint. Pleasure, reward. Rush, crash. High low. Mania. Depression. The cycle has to be fed. Self-medication, we bipolar people call it.
The Leaf Arrives At fifteen I find a new substance to feed the ravenous beast within. Tobacco. “A cigarette is the perfect kind of perfect pleasure,” Wilde said. “It is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied.” I thought at first that this was just Oscar talking all pretty and silly. But of course he got it right. A cigarette is the perfect instrument of addiction. Perfect. It has no function, no point, no quality other than to make itself needful to the smoker. It doesn’t taste pleasant, it doesn’t modify mood (except inasmuch as it quells the need for itself) it doesn’t offer texture, elation, hallucination, bouquet, nourishment, calorific value, anything. And ultimately, as Wilde pointed out, it never satisfies: it is always necessary to have another.
Imagine that one day someone hit himself lightly on the head with a parsnip. Instead of stopping (for this is a foolish thing to do) he carried on doing it. When he eventually did stop he went about his business but discovered, much to his surprise, that he had a sudden unconquerable urge to hit himself lightly on the head with a parsnip all over again. So he did. And the more he did it, the more he needed to do it. The act of doing it gave him a tiny surge of joy, a little rush of pleasure that had to be elicited, never mind what a twazzock he looked, parsnipping himself on the head all day.
Smoking is no less stupid than that. In fact it is a whole bicycle-shed more stupid, because it’s smelly, unsociable, carcinogenic etc etc etc. But the principle is the same: smoking has absolutely no point other than to stop the misery of not smoking. Smokers claim that it aids concentration, soothes the nerves and so on, but we know really that it only does those things because it’s tobacco addiction that messes with concentration and jangles the nerves in the first place. Tapping your head lightly with a parsnip would aid concentration too if not doing it made you all jumpy and desperate.
All this is obvious. But when there’s a beast inside you that wants, needs, insists upon feeding, a beast that knows how to press the little button in the brain that releases all those wonderful, surging delicious endorphins, when that beast is there, then new ways must be found to let him find and press the button. Sugar is okay, self-abuse is jolly of course, but can’t really be done in the street without exciting comment. Forward, tobacco.
I was so delighted to hear about your documentary on the whole US. Most do not even bother with my state(Alaska). Or even think its a part of the US. I wonder what you will be doing in Alaska? Well, I hope you make a quick visit to my University at least if you fly into Anchorage, Or are you driving through from the lower 48? I’m really hope to see you black cab around town. I fear you will have a problem driving it all through Alaska, as there are certain areas where you need to fly in. But I very much doubt you will have time to discover all of what Alaska has to offer, seeing as it is such a large landmass. I think I will be then only one in Alaska who knows who you are.(That was a little egotistical of me ,but probably true.) So I really hope to run into you sometime.Although, I’m afraid that I will sound like a stuttering idiot.You must forgive me if that happens.
Loved this article so much I decided to join in.
Damn you! for mentioning sugar coated coconut tobacco, which comes in wax paper and makes your mouth water at the mere thought.Is it still available or will I have to go online and order a whole batch?Fry you are incorrigible and I hate you!
Seriously,good luck, your article is so readable and gives such an insight to those who crave anything,yes including sweets! Now where the hell is my last tunnocks snowball?
bi polar…
bi polar and manic depression…
There is a theory open to criticism which no absolute doubt, it will meet soon, that alcoholics don’t like sweet things.
Therefore, maybe one takes a choice at some stage as to which addiction to espouse.
For one must have an addiction and sweets, or cigarettes, are going to cause less trouble to everyone else, than one’s alcohol fix.
It’s not often that someone who has eaten several bars of Fruit and Nut or smoked several cigarettes, is going to stagger through the door with his underpants on his head and bread sticks in his ears…..
Sweets are not a bad addiction for onlookers to suffer through.
Stephen,
Believe I can relate to your previous addiction to sweets. I am chocoholic on a grand scale. I can’t go a minute without thinking about chocolates. Sometimes I would spend my last penny on a choclate bar or cake. I admire your determination and sucess of kicking the sweets and cigarettes, and especially coke habit. I have always admired your work and love all of the comedy shows you have done with Hugh (Laurie). As far as I am concerned you two are the best comedy duo ever.
Keep up the good work.
Jacqueline
P.S. My mom loved from the moment she saw on Jeeves and Wooster. You remind her of her old boyfriend.
Belated thanks for that Bi-Polar documentary: it aired 2 weeks after my own diagnosis of the same. I’d known it for years, of course, but it takes longer for those with prescription pads to spot it. Now on Duloxetine with a dash of trifluoperazine to stop me going too high….
Aahhh… ciggies…. yes. I got stuck on the nicotene gum for longer than I had actually smoked. Still struggling to kick the choccie biccie habit though… never connected that with mood… must seriously abandon them and see what difference it makes.
Hope the arm is recovering well.
:^)
[...] also be trying to start a legitimate blog, and post “blessays” (to use Stephen Fry’s term) regularly. As I transition back into Academia (caps for [...]
Welcome to the states, though you’re probably gone by now. I really hope you had a decent time while here in Wisconsin, though that may have been impossible if you were here in the winter (schools were closed because it was too cold, roughly -35!).
I can’t wait for this documentary to come out. I highly doubt I will ever get the chance to travel the country like you have, but your films have always had a real feel to them so watching this one will be a great substitute.
Stephen, I saw your frigin’ cab in Philadelphia! but have only just relized it was yours. My girlfriend and I, both Australians who now live in the US, were walking along (south street i think?) and we were like whoa! left hand drive London style cab! Who would have the balls to drive that here?! I imagine the steering wheel staying on the left would complicate matters even more when driving on the opposite side of the road. If I had only known it was you! I certainly would have taken a photo and sent it in. My girlfriend (your biggest fan) is absolutely kicking herself now, as to am I.
We cannot wait for the next session of QI, and all your other awesome-ness…
Cheers,
Leigh
[...] also be trying to start a legitimate blog, and post “blessays” (to use Stephen Fry’s term) regularly. As I transition back into Academia (caps for [...]
OMG! This was such an insight into something that plagued me for years…. the smoke-coffee-chatty-living-working thing.
I was FORCED to quite having a pair of lungs that were on a big protest, and had decided to shut off the little air sacs so that I felt like I was suffercating from within!
So you might say I was lucky (in a way that is) that good old mother nature sent me this evil effect early in the piece to force my hand…
But with the writing thing; now that was a very different story!
A few years ago, I sat down at a computer, and began to write.
OMGosh…..WHERE did this come from?! I had never written a word ~ well other than hello, goodbye, and how’s things type of writing (ie. letter writing) so this came as a total shock!
I’d get up in the morning, and go straight to the computer; with a cup of tea, pens, and a box of tissues (for some reason typing makes me cloggy in the snoot) and off I’d go….
At around 4pm one afternoon, I stepped back from myself, and realised that I had been typing since 7am that morning!
Still dressed in PJs, and not a tap of any other thing done that day… This went on for weeks! And after I’d finished my story, I found then I had a peculiar habit of editing my own work; self correcting till I felt I would surely have to tear out my hair…
Over and over and over ……….. 3 or 4 years on, with the manuscripts shoved cruely into a drawer that was too small….
I had left it on the shelf ~ for another time, another place.
But the desire to write came back to haunt me, and I found myself GLUED to the computer once more….
And then, the MOMENT came when (drum roll) THE COMPUTER WENT DOWN…..
AHA! I know….(I thought) I will take a pen and a reem of A4 crisp white paper, and WRITE IT OUT BY HAND….
CLANG!!!!!!
That was when I made my discovery…. without the computer I was mute…. numb….. totally unable to write a SINGLE WORD!
OMGosh! What was that about?! But to this day, unless I am on the computer, I cannot for the life of me, write!
So your addiction ~ the must-have-cigg-to-write is MY must-have-computer-to-write syndrome!
hahaha! I’m laughing because it’s so WEIRD but it’s true, never the less!
An excellent blog; one filled to the brim with a snapshot peek into the facinating world of creative art…
Thank you so much for sharing too… I’ve known ~ or should I say, been very fond of quite a few selebs…. but there is not always the option to get to KNOW those people, to be able to write upon their blog (if indeed they keep a blog) nor does there seem to be many that open their hearts to the general public, and encourage interexchange of ideas thoughts abberations and more besides!
Above all, thank you for your incredible ability to bring about a great camaraderie, via the internet pages! ((-_-))
p.s.
re: “The land you see on the horizon there is actually Canada, where she twists round the topmost corner of Maine at Passamaquoddy Bay”
WOW….. BEAUTIFUL photo…
You could almost imagine what it was like to be there…..
I felt I was THERE …….
What is the defininition of serenity?
Your photo!
I find eating those little individual applesauce containers while writing to be a tremendous help
Can’t give up the sugar, coca cola is my drug of choice. I’m putting my dentists kids through college.
You are quite brilliant, Stephen.
You also have the most remarkable understanding of your own psychology, something that I admire very much in people. Going a bit off topic, I think it’s something more people should take time to get to grips with; it may help the human race in many ways.
Also; sugar addiction, I sympathise with you there. I have had an eating disorder for many years- not, primarily, in the sense that I want to be thin (though that was a part of it too) and it’s funny because the things I did live on were the sweet things. They were very much an addiction, and as much as I wanted to stop eating all together, I couldn’t resist this indulgence.
Anyway, I shall shush now!
Dear Stephen…….You have to be the one person I can honestly say is the most articulate,grammatically awesome etc etc person I know(not personally of course)
I joined Twitter hoping to receive a Tweet from your good self.Alas not as yet but I understand the pressure you must be under.I love poetry and find this is ,the majority of the time,how I can express my feelings.You say in your book,” The ode less travelled ” that your poetry is personal and the road you yourself decided not to venture down.I feel the same about mine too,however,for you to glane at one of my poems would be a cataclysmic honour . I appreciate you get so many people begging you for the same.Me….It’s not for recognition,I dont want my thoughts published or anything,just for the person I admire the most to give me an opinion.My site is http://zoe-tis-me.weebly.com/the poem in question is “Praying for time”To me it would be like T.S.Elliot reading it…….Here’s hoping?? Love your new cab by the way….such a cute little smile in the twitter pic!!
Much love
Zoe