Confessions of a Chocoholic
“What are you doing?”
I’m licking the chocolate off my iPhone, that’s what I’m doing.Okay…I may have a worse problem than a melted mass inside my purse. I’m not talking about an occasional craving for milk chocolate, the inferior portal candy of nine-year olds. I’m jonesing for the nearly uncut, organically grown stuff, dark and shiny as Denzel on a summer night.I had to ask myself: am I an addict?
Addicts rationalize: dark chocolate has magnesium, potassium, copper and iron. You want instead I should break into the Filipowicz Brothers Salvage Yard and lick the rust off scrap metal? Addicts make deals with deities: “I’ll eat this, but I’ll do an extra half hour on the treadmill after work.” Deities are often disappointed. Addicts have a hierarchy of desperation: chocolate chips are dinky, candy bars are cumbersome. I spurn Mr. Hershey’s kisses. My delivery system for a premium chocolate rush? Dagoba Chocodrops.
A single packet of these bad brown boys costs almost as much as a bag of plasma. There are days I want to hang the Chocodrop pouch off an IV-cart, calibrating it to dispense 74% dark chocolate at life-sustaining intervals. When I sought solace in the like-minded companionship of fellow self-loathers, all I found were websites that reveled in this insidious addiction–featuring recipes and quotes from Bridget Jones’ Diary. Like thathelps.
Narcotics Anonymous, though, had a helpful quiz. I adapted seven questions for chocoholics:
1. Do you ever use alone?
It’s a scientific fact that chocolate tastes better alone, in front of a Lifetime TV movie.
2. Have you ever substituted one substance for another?
I still have carob flashbacks from that Missoula health-food jag I had back in 1977.
3. Have you ever stolen to obtain your substance of choice?
Attempting to rearrange remaining gift-boxed chocolates around a missing mocha truffle–does that count?
4. Does the thought of running out terrify you?
I am not mining for stale M&Ms between couch cushions. I am CLEANING.
5. Have you ever tried to stop or control your using?
This time, I tell myself, eight Chocdrops will last for an entire hour…Whoa, they’re gone! The only rational explanation? A chocolate-induced blackout.
6. Have you ever felt defensive, guilty, or ashamed about your using?
None of your damn business.
7. Have you ever lied about what or how much you use?
I can’t lie because I don’t know how much I use. I’ve got a bowl in my showroom (less tempting low-grade stuff), Chocodrops in my office drawer, Green & Blacks bars in the pantry and an emergency reserve of Sunspire chocolate chips in an unreliably sealed container inside my purse. I may be a chocoholic, but I guess I’m not anonymous anymore.