Last summer I decided to quit sugar cold turkey. I came to this decision because I know how bad sugar is for a few of my diagnosed illnesses. Also I experienced a bout of constipation that felt like a boulder in my gut after consuming too many sugary things. My poor kid also deals with constipation and other digestive issues like me. The Apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, if you know what I mean. She went on a bowel clean out clear liquids diet after two trips to the ER for constipation. Just so she didn’t have to do it alone, I went on the diet with her. She didn’t actually clear out until I stopped the steady intake of sugary substances. And I didn’t get relief until I too stopped eating sugary things. It was miserable to say the least.

I have a condition called small intestinal bacteria overgrowth (SIBO) and sugar is one of my kryptonites. Chaos is really my true kryptonite, and sugar causes chaos for my insides. But I stopped eating all processed foods that had any sugar in them. What happened was like a drug withdrawal scene out of a movie. I lost so much weight I looked like a cancer patient. I even had myself convinced that I had cancer and it was eating away at my body because I stopped eating sugar to feed it. My mental stability is questionable at best, and it really didn’t help that I have a new found love of keeping my head shaved. It just further added to the look of cancer. My face thinned out so much it was sunken in. It was not a healthy look on me.

Not only did I lose too much weight, I became hyper aware of everything sensory wise. Sounds were louder. Colors were brighter. Smells were stronger. Tastes of things were intense. And I literally felt everything more intensely. To be honest, I felt disoriented like I was high on marijuana constantly. My brain felt like it was on fire cause I could feel the synapses and neurons sparking. Also, I was always in pain, especially in my bones, and my mood was one irrational roller coaster after another. I was so out of control emotionally that I even ended up doing a short inpatient stint at a mental health facility. I was a mess. My body temperature was also severely irregular. I would get these sudden full body chills complete with full body shivers, usually right after I ate. And my vision was sort of vignetted. It was not a fun time in my life, though not much last year was fun, so it’s par for the course.

The thought occurred to me in the hospital, and has since occurred multiple times that, I think I was going through the sugar withdrawal. Sugarcane is even more addictive than cocaine, and it’s in a lot of processed foods so that theory makes complete sense. Plus who really knows what goes into the chemical processing of the stuff. All I know is it’s stuff we as animals are not designed to digest. A lot of the stuff we eat doesn’t digest well, but we still eat it. I’ve added sugar back into my life since my hospital stay. Like it’s all I think about some days is what sugary things can I eat today. And as expected, I feel like absolute crap all of the time. Part of me wants to kick it cold turkey again, but no part of me wants to go back to the mental hospital. That experience was a nightmare I’ll never forget.