There's a scene in the second season of Breaking Bad that tells my story better than anything I've found. Jesse and his new girlfriend Jane have just been handed his share of Walter White's most recent drug deal - a duffle bag filled with $480,000. After picking their jaws up off the floor they begin to talk of a future together in New Zealand. Jesse wants to see the land where the Lord of the Rings was filmed and Jane just wants to be somewhere else with Jesse. Together they decide to get clean from the heroine and methamphetamine they've been using and then begin a new life together. Tomorrow.
SPOILER ALERT BELOW
A moment later Jesse and Jane walk into their bedroom and see the old life spread before them. His and hers needles and enough heroine for one more high. If you've watched the show then you know how this ends. Jane chokes to death in an overdose and Jesse is crushed. They went back to the old life for one more high and it crushed their dream. Tomorrow. That was all they needed but couldn't make it. And while this is art imitating life and I'm certainly not implying I struggle with anything akin to heroine additions I think the lesson here lies in that word which brings everlasting rationalization - tomorrow.
I've already slipped up on my diet today so I'll eat what I want and get back on the wagon tomorrow. It's not heroine addiction but I can relate. Imagine if we asked addicts to get clean only to release them into a world where they could so much as drive to work without passing 27 stores selling heroine and twice as many billboards and other advertisements. When they got to work their friends would ask them each day if they want to go out at lunch and get high and by the evening, if they've made it that far without relapse, they are so exasperated from fighting temptation all day that the smallest trigger would send them running for a syringe which would be so convenient and easy to find that home delivery was available.
This is the world I live in. Fast food signs abound; I'm inundated with advertising; and my drug of choice can be delivered in minutes. It's an unfair fight and no wonder this nation is struggling with an obesity epidemic that seems to have no solution and no end in sight. If we treated heroine like we treat junk food then half our country would be junkies and there would be poppies growing in every back yard. My libertarian and some conservative friends would interject here about personal responsibility and no doubt that's a factor. But consider that at least some credible research shows food addiction as powerful in the brain as some opiates If you acknowledge the vailidity of this science then you have to admit we're asking at least some people to fight a battle they cannot win.
Now I'm not about to go all Bloomberg on you and call for bans on fast food or state-sponsored portion control. That's a bit much even for this old liberal. But somewhere the solution lies in between in a new world where food struggles are given the attention of drug addiction and acknowledge to be just as deadly, just as life upending as any other substance abuse. Food is a substance and it can be abused. Just like alcohol there are many who can have a bourbon and Coke and never think twice about another while some can't control themselves. I am one of them. But we each have those things in our lives that fight to control us. For me it is food. What is it for you?
