a decorabilia exclusive
At eleven, Marianne Cisneros was the pride of Lincoln Heights Elementary. An honor student, her picture in B Hall, the concomitant bumper sticker displayed proudly on her parents' 94 Volvo Turbowagon, she had the world on a string. Now, at fifteen, Marianne deals ice cream bars behind the bleachers to a ragtag crew of miscreants, jocks, and drama queens.
Marianne is a victim of high-carbonate sugar. As hard drugs get harder and soft drugs lose their softness, so sugar has changed from a relatively harmless, mildly addictive treat to a psychoactive toxin. And people like Marianne pay the price in broken bodies, battered minds, and shattered relationships.
Tim--"Just Tim," he made me promise--hides sugar packets in a hollowed-out Gideons Bible. Tim is a pastor's kid, his cherubic smile spoiled by three fillings. "Splenda's damned sweet, but doesn't have the same kick," he says, tearing the top off another packet and pouring the sweet, sweet grains down his throat. Last week he was suspended for three days when sugar spilled out of his backpack. Today he's more careful.
From its invention by the Mayans in the 5th century BC until the early 1950s, sugar was a harmless delicacy enjoyed in moderate quantities by wealthy elites. Sugar cane and sugar beets dominated global trade as European nations built confectionary empires. The invention of high-carbonate sugar, or HCS, changed everything.
Princeton chemists discovered HCS by accident when an undergraduate mistakenly mixed acetic acid and honey, nearly blowing up the lab but creating a super-sweet, super-cheap additive in the process. Industry leaders quickly snapped up the invention, and, in the heady days of the space race, began pouring thousands into research and millions into marketing to beat the Soviets. Capitalism would taste better.
Marianne got hooked on the sweet stuff after "graduating" from diet sodas and Melba toast. Friends introduced her to cream puffs at a birthday party. "I saw things and heard voices. Everything was light and happy," she says, almost whispering. "My first rush was the best rush. I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop."
Tim met Marianne at a youth group meeting at his dad's church, and bought his first candy bar when the other kids were playing kickball. "I almost went into shock," he reminisces. "I started bouncing off the walls, running around in circles. Dad and Mom thought I was possessed."
Tim's bizarre behavior upon first encountering sugar is typical. The same Princeton chemistry department, awash in grant money, teamed up with biologists and nutritionists to test HCS on cats. The results were disturbing--and immediately suppressed by powerful corporate interests.
Dr. Marvin Casey of the National Institutes of Health first uncovered a tattered manila envelope when he interned at the Princeton chemlab in 1993. It was lodged in the back of a file cabinet, marked "CONFIDENTIAL," and stuffed with microfilm of hundreds of experiments.
"'[Test Cat] #A113 attacked and severely bit #B184, its twenty-first mate,'" Casey reads from an early paper. "'Seven other subjects stood by, screeching and clapping their paws.' These are some of the more banal observations," Casey says dryly. "Cats hopped up on HCS would turn suicidal, cannibalize other cats, tear them limb from limb."
Two hundred million Americans are addicted to HCS, according to a recent NIH survey. Upsurges in crime, delinquency, vagrancy and declining academic outcomes all correlate strongly with the growth in HCS production, which has increased to four hundred times the levels of the 1950s.
Marvin Smith was a stereotypical jock. Quarterback and captain of the football team. All-American in baseball, football, and basketball. Dating a cheerleader. Failing algebra. Marvin used to snarf down HCS before games to get his game on. "I thought I needed an edge," Marvin says. "Coach didn't know. He didn't want to know, as long as we were winning."
But sugar isn't sweet forever, and the aggressiveness and energy will eventually take their toll on an adolescent body. Marvin lost weight. He couldn't concentrate on the field, started snapping at his teammates, even striking them. His coach had to pull him out of a playoff game when Marvin punched a referee in the face. "Sugar nearly killed me," Marvin says, stocking cans at Safeway at three in the morning. "Five months of rehab saved my life."
Recently, lawsuits and lawmaking have started to cut down on America's gigantic sugar addiction. Sugar is a $300 billion octopus, its tentacles in the pocket of nearly every political figure. Casey estimates it will take five years to win a significant court case, and another ten for sugar to join the ranks of heroin, cocaine, and LSD.
In the meantime, Tim and Marianne will choke down their shame and sneak behind the bleachers to buy and sell syrupy poison, devouring Jolly Ranchers and Jujubes to calm the beast that gnaws within.
[ninetieth in a series]
Interesting, sugar as a phychoactive.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, sugar is just a carbohydrate that stores a relatively large amount of energy. These "cases" of sugar abuse are quite extreme, and a lawsuit against sugar will never prevail in court, and is even laughable, for even the judge and the jury are almost definitely consumers and enthusiasts of sugar. Seemingly everyone uses sugar in their daily lives, so why would the examples of a few children effect the lives of millions?
Within ten years sugar will become an illegal drug? I would look more along the lines of ten thousand years. Before sugar becomes illegal, caffiene, nicotine and alcohol will all become illegal, and the chances of that happening are at exactly 0%.