As she sat there eating her second “confection” (and counting) of the day, Isabella had to wonder if perhaps she was replacing alcohol with dessert. It had been one month since her last drink and, more to the point, one month since her last blackout. An “art” she had mastered quite well since moving to San Francisco. Not that she didn’t drink her fair share in L.A., it was just that getting “blackout” there was so much more expensive when one tallied up all the money spent on Ubers to avoid drinking and driving. And yes, in San Francisco, all it took was the mere summoning of an Uber to mitigate the embarrassing display of lolling through the streets in a state of blackoutedness.
But, in some sense, Isabella felt that would be cheating. A fundamental disservice to dissuading herself from getting so blotto in the first place. Yes, it would most certainly take away any incentive to stay “respectably” drunk if she told herself she could still rely on Uber instead of stumbling home on foot and risk having that stumble forever immortalized by CCTV or someone with a phone who found her movements to have “viral” potential. Thus, Isabella made it a point to tell herself that it was time to cease drinking full-stop. And, at first, it seemed to her as if the whole “cold turkey” thing was going seamlessly. That is, until she started to notice how significantly her dessert intake had increased in the midst of this so-called sobriety. For while Isabella could admit that she had always been a “dessert lover,” she could never remember craving it every day until after she quit drinking. Almost as if the day wasn’t “real” if she didn’t consume some kind of sweet treat.
Unfortunately, it took Isabella too much time to realize what was happening—that she had replaced alcohol with dessert and that, as a result, rather than being ashamed of the things she did while blacked out, she was ashamed of looking—of being—heavier. And though, in the past, her metabolism might have better “absorbed” the fallout of this newfound zeal and constant desire for dessert, in the present, it wasn’t doing her much good. And she had failed to realize her metabolism’s current state of laziness until it had been put to too great a test.
As such, it wasn’t going to be any kinder to her when it came to trying to lose that weight (not that she would probably bother, her aversions to exercise being what they were). Going back to drinking wasn’t an option either. Though it would surely restore her body to a non-dessert-craving status. But Isabella knew that if she went back down the drinking rabbit hole again, she might never return from the state of being a lush. A walking humiliation machine. Besides that, Isabella had to admit that it wasn’t as if drinking would help much with weight loss either. Even if she tried to be more partial to, say, vodka sodas in lieu of, say, beer or wine, the amount she drank once she started did little to stave off an inevitable paunch.
Presented with such a dilemma, Isabella didn’t know quite what to do. Exercising obviously wasn’t an option. God I hate that shit, she thought as she stabbed her spoon into another bite of crème brûlée, her latest dessert weakness. And she had just so happened to discover an affordable and amazing one at the café that had opened down the street from her apartment. The very café she was now sitting at and wondering just how much more harm she was doing to herself with all this dessert instead of all the alcohol. Was life really as black and white as being obliged to “pick your poison”? And now, evidently, that poison was sugar. And, often, butter. Drugs of their own sort that kept her coming back for more. Pondering this “replacement drug,” Isabella’s mind invariably went to the saying about how one addiction must always replace another. That addiction itself can never really go away. Must forever “reanimate” in some form.
Right now, for Isabella, that form was dessert. A crème brûlée she couldn’t stop shoveling into her mouth until it disappeared. In fact, it seemed as if it was gone in such a flash that she hoped no one noticed how quickly she had essentially shoved it down her throat. Something, anything to stop up the pain of existence. To numb it all out. One sugar-laden bite at a time. Though in her drinking days, it was one sugar-laden sip at a time. This thanks to all the cocktails she enjoyed, or drinks that “demanded” mixers. Whatever Isabella was drinking, sooner or later, the path always led to a sugary concoction. Which is why she was seeking to emulate it with her dessert obsession that she only just noticed was replacing her alcohol one. As if she had willfully chosen to ignore the obvious. Not that she was the first one to commit such a typical human error. Sin, really.
Setting her spoon down and wiping the cream resin she presumed must be on her lips with the back of her hand (she didn’t care about the appearance of being “civilized” that using a napkin might have given), Isabella vowed there and then to swear off desserts. At least for a little while. She had to find a new replacement drug now. A thing—whether food, drink or otherwise—that was somehow healthier but also still gave her the slight illusion of being just a little bit bad for her.
Needless to say, “alchemizing” her latest addiction into exercise was out of the question. Even just thinking about doing so led her right back to the glass case filled with different desserts, whereupon she pointed to the millefeuille “winking” at her and told the cashier that’s what she wanted. Totally unbothered by the girl’s judgmental eyebrow-raising when she realized it was the same customer who had just ordered the crème brûlée. And, in that instant, Isabella could fleetingly fathom that she was in a “dessert blackout,” engaging in objectively embarrassing behavior that she couldn’t apologize for because she was too far gone under the influence of this highly addictive substance.
