Sugar how you get me so high

My brain and I have been in negotiations for some time now regarding our intake of sugar. We've held a series of closed-door meetings to discuss this weighty topic and have come to an agreement that we need to continue to think about it for a while longer before making any rash decisions that will take candy away from us.

Sugar is my cocaine. It is actually just another addictive white powder that is in its own way as deadly as cocaine. Furthermore, most people would probably snort it given half a chance.

The latest trendy and hip lifestyle choice thing to do is to quit the sugary goodness. All the experts tell us to do this, do that, sugar is bad, candy is the spawn of the devil; it's goes on and on. That's why the only expert you should listen to is Willy Wonka.

While I suppose it is probably very good for you to eat sugar, it just so happens to be quite impossible to quit, so if you do manage to pull it off your virtuous bragging rights go shooting into the stratosphere, where they spend their days orbiting the earth and mocking all the western people around the world who are addicted to lollies.

So how the hell do you quit sugar willingly? Unless you're Sarah Wilson, the self-proclaimed and very successful 'I quit sugar (and you didn't)' guru, it's the hardest thing in the world. Potentially eight times harder than nicotine, according to some close encounters of the sugar kind I've read on the interwebs.

All of this has been leading me to ponder the inevitable. If it's so darn difficult to quit, I imagine one would need to significantly alter one's circumstances for a time to get it right, right?

So here's a list of fun maybe sure-fire ways to quit sugar:

Become a instagram health guru.
Unless it's made of kale and beetroot, they are not allowed to eat it. Not even Caramello Koalas. Also, if you stop eating The Sugar you may just fit your entire bodyshape into the teeny weeny little square filter frames that Instagram forces you into, and that's everything.
 
Go on a hippie retreat.
On second thoughts, this is a terrible idea. While sugar acquittal may come just that bit easier at these places, the trade off is just not worth it. You will be massively brainwashed, forced to play acoustic guitars for a hobby or worse, for a living, and no-one likes that person.

Join the army.
Join the Australian Defence Forces and get deployed to a war zone. I don't know how this will help you quit sugar at all - I'm sure they have cake in the Taji military base in Iraq - but it sounds like a good place to burn it off.

Bury yourself.
Not in your work. Literally. Make sure you do this project with a reasonably trusted friend who owns a decent shovel.

Move to the bush.
Get out there! Eat only the contents of your veggie patch. This may be a problem if you, like me, are a seasoned and convicted vegetable murderer. I'm sure you'll be fine. Dirt tastes gross, but it's not sugar, so well done.

Go on a three hour tour like Gilligan.
Take a leisurely cruise forever on a dodgy rickety boat and be marooned on a deserted island in tropical, touristy far north Queensland. Make sure there are no Michel's Patisseries, or you'll ruin everything and be a failure forever.

Just drink wine
There is no sugar in wine. How dare you make these allegations. For those who need evidence, the fructose in the grapes is what ferments to become alcohol, leaving the finished product low in sugar. I heard this from someone who knows someone who know everything so proof.

Violent school bullies

I am of a generation that didn’t know or see or understand violence until I was in my early teens. I didn’t watch much television, mum and dad got along, we didn’t have computer games, and we played and fought with our friends face to face rather than bully each other through a machine.  I played inside, then I got kicked out of the house to play in the backyard.  I was fortunate to have a carefree childhood, being a child; growing up at just the right pace.

When I was in high school, I remember watching an after school fight, for the simple reason that it was on my way to the bus stop. What I saw sickened me, and I was relieved when my PE teacher turned up and dragged the two protesting morons off to the principal’s office to, presumably, give them a kick up the backside. And I can ensure you that not one kid left standing in that dirt car park was anything but completely terrified of our furious teacher. And no-one considered suing the school or putting the episode on You Tube. How quickly things change.

The stories I hear through personal accounts and through the media of school bullying these days breaks my heart and makes me angry. It’s easy to place the blame solely with the parents for the behaviour of these borderline sociopaths, but helicopter parents are only part of the problem.

I big part of the issue with school kids these days is that education unions don’t let teachers use discipline in the classroom.  I’m not talking about corporal punishment; I’m talking about telling them to be quiet.  Teachers can get a rap over their knuckles in some schools for asking their students to be quiet and listen!  The geniuses in charge think teaching young people how to behave in a socially acceptable way is politically incorrect; they should just be allowed to be themselves.  Unfortunately, the consequences of this idiocy means the good kids have to suffer, the teachers have to suffer, and the rest of society has to suffer when these thugs leave school.  

I don’t know anyone from my generation who is worse off from having being disciplined when they were young.  Smacking is distinct from child abuse, and any parent who doesn't know that can take quite a bit of the credit for their kid's anti-social behaviour.  Every teenager in history has rebelled against their parents; the kids in the fifties did it through the quaint use of rock and roll.  For the most part, kids need to be moulded into decent human beings, and that requires some discipline from those who have been through it before and have come out the other end.

The progressive movement has ruined education and childhood. Their idea that non-punitive discipline leads to healthy, balanced children is plain wrong. Lack of any discipline is too permissive and leads to unruly children. The evidence can be found running around terrorising other kids and teachers in every public school playground in Australia.  

And helicopter parents, who don't let their kids learn from their own mistakes, are part of the problem; because these kids never have a chance to learn that their actions have consequences until they are arrested on a charge of assault and battery that may ruin their lives.   While many of these kids should to be placed in remand centres (a place to store young criminals before they graduate to adult prisons), a lack of any common sense in the criminal justice system means the judge will likely let the kid off, and then he's our problem.