I admit it: Looks like I really put my foot in my mouth.
Please accept my formal, profuse apology for the badly chosen headline and analogy for my recent blog entry, entitlted "Sugar Can Be As Addictive as Heroin, Diet Expert Says."
Witchlin and others who commented on the Low Carb Newsline website (where my posts also appear), I'm truly, truly sorry if my analogy and headline offended you.
I do not mean, in any way, to minimize the intense suffering experienced either by those with a drug addiction or the family members.
It must be simply beyond awful to to be in either shoes, and clearly having a heroin addiction is a horrific nightmare far, far worse than having a "sugar addiction." I can understand how you feel that comparing them is simply unfair.
Again, writing the headline I did was a very bad judgment call on my part and being on a tight deadline is no excuse for the insensitive error I made in drawing a close analogy to heroin addiction and "sugar addiction."
Having said that, I'd like to point out that, if you'll note, I basically used a very similiar headline to the one that ran on this TV news story. The KCAL Channel 9 news piece that I singled out bore the headline: "Diet Expert: Sugar Can Be As Addictive as Heroin." (Feb. 13, 2006). I then unthinkingly wrote a headline using the same angle. (Perhaps you might like to write to them, too, with your justifiable complaint.)
Alas, in my haste to post something so that people could hear this interesting TV news story, I made a horrible mistake.
But, while it may be unfair to compare having a heroin addiction with the nightmare of "sugar addiction" and I'm embarrassed that I presented it the way that I did, allow me to explain, however, that in my work with thousands of people who claim to be "hooked on sugar," the common complaint is this: "I have no control. I feel just like a drug addict.".
There is some literature on the subject that repeats this refrain. In fact, in Sugar Blues by William Dufty, he writes:
"I knew enough about junkies to recognize reluctantly my kinship with them. I was kicking cold turkey, the thing they talked about with such terror. After all, heroin is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the poppy and they refine it into opium and then they refine it to morphine and finally to heroin. Sugar is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the cane or the beet and they refine it to molasses and then they refine it to brown sugar and finally to strange white crystals."
Experts such as chemical dependency specialist Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., CEO of Radiant Recovery ( The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Plan, Little Sugar Addicts, Potatoes, Not Prozac, etc.), Dr. Rachel F. Heller and Dr. Richard F. Heller ( Carbohydrate Addicts books), Julia Ross ( The Mood Cure ) and others also use this analogy, comparing sugar addiction to drug addiction.
I admit it: Looks like I really put my foot in my mouth.
Please accept my formal, profuse apology for the badly chosen headline and analogy for my recent blog entry, entitlted "Sugar Can Be As Addictive as Heroin, Diet Expert Says."
Witchlin and others who commented on the Low Carb Newsline website (where my posts also appear), I'm truly, truly sorry if my analogy and headline offended you.
I do not mean, in any way, to minimize the intense suffering experienced either by those with a drug addiction or the family members.
It must be simply beyond awful to to be in either shoes, and clearly having a heroin addiction is a horrific nightmare far, far worse than having a "sugar addiction." I can understand how you feel that comparing them is simply unfair.
Again, writing the headline I did was a very bad judgment call on my part and being on a tight deadline is no excuse for the insensitive error I made in drawing a close analogy to heroin addiction and "sugar addiction."
Having said that, I'd like to point out that, if you'll note, I basically used a very similiar headline to the one that ran on this TV news story. The KCAL Channel 9 news piece that I singled out bore the headline: "Diet Expert: Sugar Can Be As Addictive as Heroin." (Feb. 13, 2006). I then unthinkingly wrote a headline using the same angle. (Perhaps you might like to write to them, too, with your justifiable complaint.)
Alas, in my haste to post something so that people could hear this interesting TV news story, I made a horrible mistake.
But, while it may be unfair to compare having a heroin addiction with the nightmare of "sugar addiction" and I'm embarrassed that I presented it the way that I did, allow me to explain, however, that in my work with thousands of people who claim to be "hooked on sugar," the common complaint is this: "I have no control. I feel just like a drug addict.".
There is some literature on the subject that repeats this refrain. In fact, in Sugar Blues by William Dufty, he writes:
Experts such as chemical dependency specialist Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., CEO of Radiant Recovery ( The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Plan, Little Sugar Addicts, Potatoes, Not Prozac, etc.), Dr. Rachel F. Heller and Dr. Richard F. Heller ( Carbohydrate Addicts books), Julia Ross ( The Mood Cure ) and others also use this analogy, comparing sugar addiction to drug addiction.