Column: Not Quite Nietzsche; The cold hard facts about a very painful addiction
What follows is a portrait of addiction. It haunts my every step.
Every time I walk past some strung-out homeless junkie, I have to stop and ask myself, “Was ice cream responsible for this?”
Yes, I am addicted to ice cream.
I don’t know when my problem started, but I have some ideas.
There was always an abundance of ice cream in my childhood home, and not liking bread and chocolate, I was ushered towards this coldest of confections.
No, I don’t like bread or chocolate, but please stay with me for another 500 words before you start the hate mail.
I am hard pressed to remember a night of my youth that wasn’t capped with a bowl of ice cream. While most people rely on oxygen and water for life, I rely on ice cream.
But addiction is, even in the case of ice cream, an ugly thing.
My experience has been no frozen wonderland. When Smith’s introduced its limited-edition flavor Lemon Berry Pound Cake, I started going through four bowls a day.
The subsequent weight gain led me to believe for six months that I was surrounded by a group of people who couldn’t take a picture without blurring it.
And then there’s Angie’s kitchen sink. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with this monolithic dessert, but I can boast an intimate relationship with the beast.
It is a miniature kitchen sink filled to the brim with soft-serve ice cream.
Soft-serve ice cream, as we connoisseurs know, is the confectionary equivalent to drinking rubbing alcohol. It’s mind-numbingly cold, dissolves into cloudy water once it hits your mouth, and was responsible for my first heart attack.
Of course I was a little daunted when they brought out a kitchen sink full of soft-serve, but I already owed Angie’s the $8 and wasn’t about to back down. It wasn’t until I drug my half-dead body into the restroom and found myself staring into the toilet bowl thinking, “I’m even too ill to make myself throw up” that I realized just how foolish I had been.
I managed to eat a fourth of the kitchen sink and it nearly killed me.
After something like that, you’d think I would stop using, but it’s not that easy.
Once I got over the severe stomach cramps and violent, uncontrolled shaking, I went to Coldstone.
And, should I ever start to think that Angie’s experience was fruitless, the hostess was kind enough to give me an “I Cleaned the Sink at Angie’s” bumper sticker to remember the whole experience by.
While my selection of ice cream may be somewhat unique, I think that we all have this tendency to eat ourselves sick when given the chance.
Gluttony isn’t new, and in fact, I think it may be a biological urge that stems from prehistoric man’s not knowing where his next meal was going to come from. But the condition is hardly limited to prehistoric man.
I, a 21st-century college student, still eat myself sick because, while I know that Ramen noodles hold no nutritional value, they are the only thing in my cupboard.
I have lived for the past two weeks on nothing but cold cereal and quesadillas and if you’ve ever considered filling your quesadilla with Cinnamon Toast Crunch for the sake of variety, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.
From such a low point, an ice cream addiction is hardly a crutch. It’s a matter of survival.
Zach Pendleton is a junior in English suffering from a massive ice cream headache. Comments can be sent to
zpendleton@cc.usu.edu