gwax's rumblings

I am not a reli­gious man but I have found, at times, that peri­ods of abstinence/asceticism can be good for one’s body and spirit. Of course, as with any absti­nence reg­i­men, what one is abstain­ing from and the rea­sons for the under­tak­ing play a very large part in what one can get out of it.

This month marks the sec­ond time that I have under­taken a month of asceti­cism; the first hav­ing been March of 2009. Last time, I took a straight edge approach, abstain­ing from caf­feine, alco­hol, and all other psy­choac­tive sub­stances. This year, I am repeat­ing the same absten­tion of caf­feine, alco­hol, and drugs but adding high-fructose corn syrup.

As I men­tioned, I feel that the what and why or any ascetic reg­i­men plays a large part in what one gets from the expe­ri­ence. My first bout of asceti­cism, last year, was prompted by the feel­ing that my caf­feine con­sump­tion had reached unrea­son­able lev­els and, if the degree of caf­feine with­drawal that I went through at that time was any indi­ca­tion, I was cor­rect in my feel­ing. At the time, I decided that if I was going to go off caf­feine for a month, cold-turkey, I might as well do the same with any other mind-altering sub­stance. This time, my rea­son­ing is largely derived from the feel­ing of home­osta­sis obtained dur­ing my last run of asceti­cism. I am adding high-fructose corn syrup this time around because I am under the (mar­gin­ally sci­en­tific) impres­sion that high-fructose corn syrup is unhealthy to con­sume and do not nor­mally main­tain any level of aware­ness over its consumption.

As we’re near­ing the end of my first week of absten­tion, I can report on some of the specifics of the expe­ri­ence thus far:

• Caffeine — Oh, how I miss caf­feine; I am an addict and I crave my fix. Actually, as of today, I find myself crav­ing caf­feine far less than I did even yes­ter­day. Thankfully, this year, my caf­feine con­sump­tion was far lower before the under­tak­ing than last year. Last time, I had mon­strously intense migraines for nearly a week due to caf­feine with­drawal; this time, I had mod­er­ate migraines on day two (Sunday) but the major symp­toms had cleared by day three (Monday). Cravings, as I men­tioned, are sub­sid­ing and I hope to be back to base­line some­time next week.
• Alcohol — Abstaining from alco­hol is mostly a social nui­sance for me. I usu­ally drink socially, as is the case with a great many, if not all, of my friends. On its own giv­ing up alco­hol isn’t a huge deal but, when one’s absten­tion from caf­feine and high-fructose corn syrup means that you can’t even have “just a Coke,” things get annoy­ing. Abstaining from alco­hol also makes me aware of the fre­quency with which I will go to the fridge for some­thing to drink and grab a beer; this has largely been replaced by grab­bing a glass of milk or Ovaltine (thank­fully free of high-fructose corn syrup).
• Drugs — Not really a sub­stan­tive change, mostly here to round out the list and allow the clas­si­fi­ca­tion to be sim­pli­fied to psy­choac­tive sub­stances and high-fructose corn syrup for dis­cus­sion purposes.
• High fruc­tose corn-syrup — Fuck! This shit is in every­thing! High-fructose corn syrup is really hard to avoid; I’m sure that I’m miss­ing things that con­tain this stuff. I went into a gas sta­tion mart on Saturday to get a bev­er­age and the only things that I could find with­out caf­feine or high-fructose corn syrup were water, milk, and Diet Sprite. I didn’t put ketchup on my french fries at lunch today because ketchup con­tains high-fructose corn syrup. For Christ’s sake, they even put high-fructose corn syrup in Saltine’s. The addi­tion of high-fructose corn syrup to my absten­tion list is both mad­den­ing and some­what enlightening.

That’s where we’re at for now; I’ll keep you posted as the month goes on.