The World's Favorite Drug
Sugar
See photo credits below.
The following is an excerpt from p. 85-88 of Chapter 2, “Sugar is the Knife: The World’s Favorite Drug” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
“Sugar was the knife, imperialism was the assassin.” -Eduardo Galeano
I.
It was a few days before [the imperialist celebration of genocide known as] Thanksgiving, and I was fortunate enough to manage a visit to my family, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. My sister had been making pies, of wonderful fall flavors, one after another. During my visit, she offered me a piece of pumpkin pie.
“There’s sugar in it,” she warned. She knows I try to avoid the ingredient. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” she insisted. But I knew from growing up with her that she, quite the chef, likes to share her work in the kitchen. She gave a piece of the pie to my dad, and the two of them fawned over its flavors.
Faced with such peer pressure, I gave in, and decided I would take one bite. I did, and it was amazing. Sweetness melted in my mouth and I felt waves of warmth and energy as the sugar in the pie triggered a synaptic burst of dopamine and adrenaline.
Sweetness melted in my mouth; I felt waves of warmth + energy as the sugar triggered a synaptic burst of dopamine + adrenaline.
The following day, I was cooking something and, almost without thinking, decided to use some pineapple juice which had been lying around the apartment in my food. I went for it, adding a splash to the lentil soup I was cooking. I thoroughly enjoyed it too, until I was digesting it and realized how much fructose was in my system. Fruit juice has much of the same effects as sugar when it comes to our health. Just the previous day, I had the pie, and now, I was adding juice to my food. What was I doing? I had relapsed!
I have been off sugar for years, and my life is better for it. But every now and then, social expectations, availability, peer pressure, and the sheer pleasure of it subsume my own will, and, a couple times a year, I consume something with refined sugar in it. When I do, I feel like I have lost a battle.
I stopped eating sugar when I was 20. I had heard and read a lot about how sugar is supposedly bad for us, how its consumption increases our chances of illness. I constantly felt tired and sluggish, and the other drugs I was using at the time told me it was time to change something up.
I noticed I actually got higher from cannabis if I had not recently consumed sugar.
First, the cannabis I was smoking told me that I would get higher if I did not have sugar in my system. Initially, this was purely instinctive—I did not know scientifically why this is the case (though I do now, and will explain later). I just noticed I felt better from the cannabis I used if I had not recently consumed sugar. I somehow got higher with each hit.
Then acid taught me how much power a single compound can have over my mind and body. Contemplating chemicals and habits, I realized that I likely had not gone a single day my whole life without eating sugar. The gravity of this insight saddened me. I decided I wanted to see how it felt to go twenty-four hours without eating any refined sugar—so I did. It felt great. But it was also tricky, since much of the food I relied on actually had refined sugar in it. I wound up eating a lot of vegetables, fruit, and nuts, and found that to avoid sugar I needed to cook more of my own food myself, from scratch.
Growing up, my diet was saturated with processed foods. This was not out of choice but rather necessity. My parents both worked full time and neither one had time to prepare three meals a day for the family. As a result, I wound up eating a fair amount of processed food throughout my childhood, as many people do. As a teenager I figured out how to cook. It would become a necessary skill when I decided to drop sugar from my diet. To this day, the only way I can assure that a meal will not contain sugar or excessive salt is to cook it myself. It is worth it.
I realized that I likely had not gone a single day my whole life without eating sugar.
II.
Sugar is a drug. After salt, it is the most popular in the world. And it is consumed in greater volumes than any other drug in history. As such, for students of drugs, sugar is one of the most important substances to study. Sugar, like salt, forms the basis upon which US (and global) drug culture and policy are built. From 1776 until today, nearly every food and drug law in the US has been passed for the benefit of sugar.
But before we dive into the history and politics, it is helpful to clarify: what is sugar? Sugar is the common name for the refined extract of sucrose from Saccharum officinarum, sugar cane. The plant itself is a large grass which somewhat resembles bamboo and grows up to fifteen feet tall.[i] Sucrose, or sugar, is an organic compound which occurs widely in most grasses and many trees; sugar cane is among the most abundant natural sources of sucrose, as are sugar beets.[ii]
The word sugar is also used to refer to a class of chemical compounds which are loosely analogous to sucrose, much as salt is used to refer not only to the common product but to an entire class of compounds.[iii] Other common sugars include fructose (found in fruit), lactose (found in milk), dextrose (found in corn, potatoes, etc.), and many more.[iv]
Sugar is a drug. After salt, it is the most popular in the world.
Perhaps the single most important sugar for our own health is glucose. Glucose is produced in our bodies from the metabolism of carbohydrates. The food we eat gets broken down into glucose, which is the safest and most stable type of fuel for our bodies.
When we eat vegetables, fruit, grains, or just about anything plant-based, its carbohydrates are metabolized into glucose. Glucose is the primary fuel source for the cells in our bodies. Upon entering the body, glucose is metabolized with oxygen, resulting in several important byproducts. Glucose metabolism produces carbon dioxide, water, adenosine triphosphate (or ATP, one of the most important components of our biology), and heat, all of which are used and/or expelled by our bodies in daily functions.
One of the greatest features of glucose is that it can be found everywhere. Any carbohydrate-containing food breaks down into glucose when we digest it. Thanks to the chemical reaction described above, glucose is one of the most important substances for the healthy function of our bodies. The introduction of refined sugar into the body, however, disrupts our glucose levels. This destabilizes the metabolic equilibrium that our bodies work all day and night to maintain. Habitual overconsumption of refined sugar can result in diabetes and other medical conditions. The present-day diabetes epidemic owes largely to the amount of refined sugar in our diets.
The introduction of refined sugar into the body disrupts our glucose levels.
The most common way sugar is consumed is with food, often without the knowledge of the consumer. Take a look at the label of the last processed food item you ate and don’t be surprised if you find sugar or its analogues (sucrose, dextrose, sorbitol, fruit juice, agave nectar, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) lurking there.
Sugar is not only used in food. Sometimes, it is consumed on its own, recreationally. Candy, which has no nutritional benefit and is consumed for fun, is, of all the forms that sugar takes, the one most surely indicative of its status as a recreational drug.
Refined sugar produces intense physiological changes in the body, often with pronounced mental effects as well. If consumed in large enough doses, or for a prolonged period, sugar can be lethal. Indeed, it kills far more people than heroin or fentanyl do. Globally, sugar takes more lives than all illegal drugs combined. Despite this, it is used by billions of people daily to alter or maintain consciousness, to lift the mood.
Sugar takes more lives than all illegal drugs combined.
But sugar is rarely consumed on its own. Ever ready for pharmacological collaboration, sugar has been combined with nearly every other popular drug, legal or illegal. Some brands of table salt add dextrose, a type of sugar, to their salt crystals.[v] Sugar is added to alcohol, coffee, and tea, in countless combinations. Common cigarette brands also contain sugar and it analogues.[vi]
In the 1960s and ‘70s, unscrupulous weed dealers sometimes added sugar to their product to increase its weight or make it look more potent.[vii] LSD is often consumed via sugar cubes and candy, still to this day. Psilocybin has been prepared as candy products as well. Heroin and other refined drugs in illicit markets are sometimes cut with sugar.[viii] Many over-the-counter and pharmaceutical drugs also contain sugar or its analogues. Even herbal tinctures are often suspended in glycerin, a type of sugar alcohol. The list goes on. While sugar is an immensely powerful drug on its own, the frequency with which it is combined with other drugs is truly remarkable.
However, sugar’s most unique quality when compared to other drugs is its sheer ubiquity. While refined sugar is completely unnecessary for our biology, wherever there are people, sugar is not far behind.[ix] Writer and sugar historian William Dufty believed “no other product has so profoundly influenced the political history of the Western world as has sugar.”[x] He wrote that in 1975. And we will find that sugar’s influence has permeated not just “the Western world,” but the entire globe, especially in recent decades as multinational corporations have gained unprecedented control over global food/drug supply chains.
Sugar’s most unique quality when compared to other drugs is its sheer ubiquity.
This influence has wrought untold damage. While it tastes great, sugar slowly destroys our bodies and economies, day by day, century by century.
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Endnotes
[i] Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 21
[ii] Ibid., 19 and 230.
[iii] Ibid., 17.
[iv] Dufty, Sugar Blues, 147.
[v] Ibid., 200; also drawn from personal observation.
[vi] For example, see “R.J. Reynolds List of Ingredients,” which lists, among other things, brown sugar, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, glycerin, and honey at https://rjrt.com/commercial-integrity/ingredients/cigarette-ingredients/
[vii] Superweed, The Marijuana Consumer’s…, 15.
[viii] Rock, ed., Drugs and Politics, 25.
[ix] Dufty, 180; McKenna, Food of the…, 178.
[x] Dufty, 33.
Sources
Dufty, William. Sugar Blues. Warner Books, New York, NY. 1975.
McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods. Bantam Books, NY. 1992.
Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, NY. 1985.
Rock, Paul E., ed. Drugs and Politics. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ. 1977.
Superweed, Mary Jane. The Marijuana Consumer’s and Dealer’s Guide. Stone Kingdom Syndicate, San Francisco, CA. 1968.
Photo credits
Photo of piece of cake from RecipeTin Eats at https://www.recipetineats.com/my-very-best-vanilla-cake/
Photo of pile of candy from Days of the Year at https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/candy-day/
Photo of sugar farmers in Fiji from Fairtrade International at https://www.fairtrade.net/news/fiji-sugar-farmers-adapt-to-survive
Photo of hands holding sugar crystals from Rianne on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/artofdessert/7450503352
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