I grew up in the 80’s when we just said “no” to drugs. But there are other substances that are addicting besides cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. For years I’ve teased my coworkers about their addiction to caffeine (coffee). I’ve had patients that had to fast say they didn’t mind missing breakfast, but they couldn’t have their coffee. I’ve never had coffee so I don’t know the trials of surviving a day without standing in a long line to pay for a subpar product from company that’s no better than an alley dealer.

But…there’s also sugar. It’s in everything. Corn syrup is put into so many “foods” that we consume and it’s addicting and it’s so so so bad for us. Yet, I have found it difficult to stop. I need the hit. I’ve not become diabetic thank God, but even the mild forms of addition are bad, both for mental and physical health.

I created small series showing sugar as an addiction. This was a project of passion for me, as demonstrated by the fact that I shot it, then reshot parts of it, then reshot parts of it again. Originally it was meant to be grainy, showing a sad, pathetic version of myself, in some cases engaging with the viewer with shame of the exposure of my weakness. But in the first version two of the images were much more striking and the style was too mismatched to work as a set, so I reshot a few, but still I wasn’t satisfied, so I redid some of them again, eliminating the concept of the 4th wall break and embracing a more cinematic look. Conceptually the series could probably be stronger, but I can count myself satisfied with the results.

Here are a couple of the unused originals to give a better idea of the original concept.

Special thanks to Heather and Maggie for helping me with this series.