Last summer’s two week stay in the Betty Ford Clinic (BFC), where a strict regime of good diet, drinking more water than’s held in place by the Hoover Dam and counselling, resulted in me departing it’s buildings and grounds with my Haribo gummy sweet addiction in check.
Yours truly’s favourable outcome consequential of a fortnight’s focus, discipline and stoicism on my part. This addiction bringing with it misery, pain and habitual sugar rushes which, when powerless in its grip, rendered my behaviour akin to excitable minor celebrity Stacey Solomon after consuming a dozen cans of Red Bull.
Footnote – In Stacey’s defence, I’ve never witnessed her behaviour after quaffing twelve cans of the energy drink. However, although she seems an amiable enough lass, taking into account her giddiness when bereft of Red Bull, it’s an existential episode I’m hoping to dodge.
The physical pain of Haribo addiction is particularly stark – I mean, have you even tried intravenously injecting a gummy cola bottle into one of your veins?! The strength alone required to force the sweet through a needle is so vast the action risks hiatus hernia. And that’s even before the agony of the gelatin sweet getting jammed in a forearm vein.
Anyhow the positive news is that the clinic weaned me off the addictive confectionery; and six months on I remain gummy ‘dry’. A situation predominantly resultant from me pursuing the same strict regime of good diet, drinking more water than held in place by the Hoover Dam and counselling, I’d undergone in the BFC.
That being said, sadly there remains collateral damaged from my formerly excessive Haribo sweet consumption. For example, my bag a day habit, significantly more around Halloween when I fed the addiction by candy mugging young Trick or Treaters, no doubt contributed to the dental procedure I underwent this morning.
In fact I’d venture the moreish sugary gelatin confectionery was probably mainly culpable in the requirement to have a stricken top left molar filled. Thankfully, a procedure which was pain free; well, apart from the bill and a four minute period where I was subjected to a Cliff Richard song on dental surgery radio.
Regrettably, there’s no local anaesthesia on Earth that can abate the aural distress of a Cliff song. Bizarrely, scientific research has identified that even general anaesthetic and turning the radio off cannot negate the suffering!…… Incidentally, if you’re a Cliff fan, don’t get too irked with me; after all, I’m only kidding….. Even though the mental scars will linger, turning off the radio does at least provide respite for the ears!!
Despite contemporary dental visits being significantly more bearable than my childhood, both from a surgery and treatment perspective, I’ve still friends who bemoan how much they hate ‘trial by orthodontist’. An opinion I cannot subscribe to, unless the dissenter wishes to prematurely chew gummy bears by gum.
Footnote – When suffixing the above sentence with ‘by gum’ I was referring to the individual utilising flesh ordinarily housing teeth to chew. I’d not suddenly embraced a dialect using Yorkshire colloquialisms proffered by farmers on the BBC TV 1980’s drama All Creatures Great & Small.
I’ve been chronicling this prose for around an hour and a half now. During that time the local anaesthesia rendering my filling pain free has just about worn off…… Chuff knows, though, how long the mental scars of hearing a Cliff Richard refrain will linger!
