I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.

I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.

The difference is that I haven’t done drugs in decades but I still have a pack of Oreos on my counter.

The thing that really causes addiction isn’t so much the physical dependence, but the psychological dependence.

Almost all drugs (including Cocaine) have only very short term withdrawal effects. If it was only physical dependence, all you’d have to do to break any substance addiction is to lock that person up for a few weeks, until the drugs are out of the system and that’s that.

The long-term effects are purely psychological. Usually, your life is shit, you got some pretty heavy problems or you have other psychologial issues like depression. And you know that substance X will help you to feel good, even if only for a short time. So you take the substance again to forget and feel good.

Because of this, you can get severely addicted to stuff like gaming, smartphones, social media, shopping or gambling, even though there is no substance involved at all.

Remeber the high-profile study about a rat that was locked alone in an empty cage and the only things it had available to distract itself from it’s misery where a bottle of regular water and one filled with cocaine water.

The rat used cocaine until it died of an overdose.

This experiment was repeated, but this time there was a whole rat family in a really nice cage with a lot of things to do. This time some of the rats did a bit of cocaine sometimes, but never in excess and no rat overdosed.

Sugar, together with the physical withdrawals (which do really exist), is really tough on the psychological side due to its extremely easy availability and omnipresence.

To get cocaine you need to find a dealer, spend a rather big amount of money and you are always aware that if you are caught, there are some very serious consequences.

To get sugar, you walk into the kitchen. Worst case, you go down to the next shop, spendless than an Euro on the substance and consume it completely legal without fear of any repercussions.

Or you wait until someone gifts you some sugar for birthday, Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday. Or just because they are nice.

This super easy availability means, there are hardly any barriers where you can say “Actually, I wanted to stop” and stop what you are doing.

I want to respond to your edit:

wait for consensus before you publish, don’t publish anything that isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times.

You need to understand that publishing is the way scientists communicate among each other. Of course, all reputable journals conduct peer review before publishing, but peer review is just that: Review. The peer review process is meant to uncover obviously bad, or poorly communicated, research.

Replication happens when other scientists read the paper and decide to replicate. In fact, by far most replication is likely never published, because it is done as a part of model/rig verification and testing. For example: If I implement a model or build an experimental rig and want to make sure I did it right, I’ll go replicate some work to test it. If I successfully replicate I’m probably not going to spend time publishing that, because I built the rig/implemented to model to do my own research. If I’m unable to replicate, I’ll first assume something is wrong with my rig/implementation. If I can rule that out (maybe by replicating something else) I might publish the new results on the stuff I couldn’t replicate.

Consensus is built when a lot of publications agree on something, to the point where, if you aren’t able to replicate it, you can feel quite positive it’s because you’re doing something wrong.

Basically: The idea of waiting for consensus before publishing can’t work, because consensus is formed by a bunch of people publishing. Once solid consensus is established, you’ll have a hard time getting a journal to accept an article further confirming the consensus.

People have left some great comments here so to add: when the body gets something it needs nutrition-wise, it releases dopamine. We know this, that’s why we enjoy eating (pretty good biological functioning). However, there is diminishing returns on most things. The first steak you eat: delicious. Hell the first bite is the best. Every next bite, every consecutive steak, you get less and less dopamine release because your body recognizes it doesn’t need that nutrient as much. Drugs however (disregarding tolerance and dopamine fatigue because those work through different mechanisms) do not do this. There is no evening out or plateau on dopamine release for cocaine for instance. Sugar works the same way. No slowing or plateau. So in a very real and bio mechanical way, sugar is very analogous to drugs.

Not only is it hard to kick the habit, it’s incredibly hard just to avoid. For cocaine, in order to get a hit, you gotta call a dealer. For sugar, it’s in so many foods that it’s seriously hard to go sugar free, even if you never ate sugar before in your life.

deleted by creator

I’m addicted to air. At some point I’ll kick the addiction.

Its physically addictive but not as addictive as most drugs. Someone with a sweet tooth used to huge intakes of sugar may get cranky and a little jittery while their body detoxes, but their bodies won’t literally shut down like a hard alcoholic going cold turkey.

Its also important to note sugar is a neccesity for you to live. I don’t count survival necessities like air and water as addictive substances.

Let me put it like this. I’m 3 months without alcohol, cannabis and now I’m cutting down social media… he said on social media. But boy, I needs my ice tea. I walk passed chocolate isles salivating. When I was younger I could empty 2x 1.5L bottles of soda in one day.

Yeah, impulse issues I got, but sugar has always been hard to get away from. Refined sugars should have an 18 year old age rating. No joke.

Crazy.

It is.