Sugar Addiction: The Stephen Fry Paradox

Did you know that for most of his childhood, writer and actor Stephen Fry suffered from sugar addiction? He describes this in vivid detail in his autobiography. The Fry Chronicles. He led to lying, stealing, and repeated expulsions from various schools.

Stephen Fry? But it is a national treasure.

And that is the point. He is more than a good example of someone who, despite having an extremely addictive personality, has managed to succeed and help others (he has used his bipolar disorder to create a lot of awareness about mental illness). He is a role model for all who have a dependency, showing us the importance of confronting the low self-esteem and self-destructive tendencies that accompany addiction.

Part of dismantling the hold sugar has on your life involves accepting responsibility for the behavior that triggers this addictive substance. Accept responsibility for your self-loathing. Blaming the door for what are, after all, inanimate white granules prevents you from taking control.

Have you ever heard the saying that with great power comes great responsibilityover there? This generally only applies to the political arena. It is repeated so many times that it has become a cliché. However, something very interesting happens when you reverse the logic of this statement:

With great responsibility comes great power

Taking responsibility for the damage you have done to yourself through the tool of your addiction is a very difficult thing to do. The advantage is that it gives you the power to transform your life, an empowered life that is liberating beyond description.

Facing the person you’ve become is likely to trigger intensely uncomfortable feelings as the denial you’ve been living in subsidizes. He can interpret this as self-loathing, but the weird irony is that it may actually allow him to start liking himself, as much as Fry would if he knew him.

This is Stephen Fry’s paradox: Coming out of denial can feel like bathing in self-loathing, when in fact you’re opening the door to accepting and liking yourself.

if you read The Fry Chronicles, it is initially quite shocking to hear the author talk about his disgust with himself, he is so nice. After a while, we assimilated this new information into our view of him and admired him even more for his honesty and awareness of him.

The reason it is so difficult for addicts to extend the same understanding to themselves is that they have yet to come out of denial, that attitude of I blame my addiction and can’t help it.

Letting go of the crutch of denial is not remotely easy. Many people are aware that they live in denial, but fear that taking responsibility for their addiction is too difficult. However, a more important and useful question is this:

Has it been easy living with a sugar addiction?

The constant cravings. The behavior you know is below your standards. Being unable to focus on a conversation at parties, because you can’t stop thinking about the food there. Casual theft of other people’s food.

There is a way out. And it’s open to all sugar addicts, not just national treasures.