I don’t need the chocolate, I need a glass of water.

This post comes with two disclaimers.

1) I'm going to talk about screens and food. I'm going to talk about them critically and use words like "addiction" and "unhealthy". I know these words can land uncomfortably, so if you're not feeling into it right now, mosey on along. It's totally okay. Maybe come back later, but if not, that's okay too.

2) It is a rare occasion when I blame an individual for their faults. I believe that we are products of our environment and 99% of the faults we develop as human beings are the result of the trauma of living in late stage capitalism: a period of extreme disconnect. The other 1% is just human nature. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is not how we are meant to live. When I talk about human faults (I usually focus on my own but they might apply to you too), I do so with this at the core of my belief system.

Okay, if you’re on board with those two items, let’s jump in.

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I want to take some time to explore the idea of cultural normalization. The somewhat grim definition of normalization from Wikipedia is as follows:

Normalization refers to social processes through which ideas and actions come to be seen as 'normal' and become taken-for-granted or 'natural' in everyday life. There are different behavioral attitudes that humans accept as normal, such as grief for a loved one, avoiding danger, and not participating in cannibalism.

(Who the heck added in cannibalism in there??)

The idea of normalization or normology has been explored at length by philosophers and sociologists as it pertains to everything from diagnosing mental disorders to hip-hop loving presidents but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how we normalize our addictions.

Because we do this so often now and sometimes I don’t think we take the time to acknowledge how much we lean on the idea that “if everyone is doing it, it can’t be that bad”.

Case in point: chocolate.

Over the holidays, I received two boxes of chocolate. Which is amazing. I love chocolate. But for the last two weeks, I’ve been eating a steady amount of chocolate day in and day out and sometime last week, I noticed that my body was CRAVING chocolate in a way that was unnerving. I would wake up in the morning and my body was asking for chocolate. After each meal, even before bed. It was pretty clear to me at this point that I had eaten way too much chocolate and needed a bit of a detox.

I’ve never had an unhealthy relationship with food and generally eat whatever my body tells me it wants to eat, but I still fall victim to the narrative that I “deserve treats” as a reward even though I know that I might be doing long term harm like the aforementioned chocolate binge. When I think about rewarding my body with a treat, the best thing I can offer it is likely a glass of water.

As the primary grocery shopper and meal prepper, I have noticed this type of behaviour in my family with sweets in general. Back when we jumped on the radical unschooling train in 2018, we removed pretty much all food restrictions. A few have been put back in place over the years, especially for my youngest who grew up in a time where we stocked a limited amount of “unhealthy” foods (a vague and shifting definition that, again, might make some folks uncomfortable and I apologize) but they were freely available to eat whenever. These days, sometimes I feel like the whole day is just processed snacks and that makes me feel uneasy, so we talk about balancing with whole fresh food. All too often I feel like my words fall on deaf ears.

I worry about the role normalization in the behaviour of unhealthy eating. I worry about this within the context of my immediate family, but I worry about it as a culture phenomenon as well. To be clear, I am fully in support of health at every size and will NEVER EVER shame people for what they eat. What I am more worried about is the societal implications of normalizing the overconsumption of processed and unhealthy foods and what this normalization is doing to our physical and mental well being. I worry about how it is disconnecting us from traditional food ways. I worry about the loss of food culture and the institutionalization and capitalization of the need to nourish one’s self. And I worry that we’re not allowed to talk about this problem without being policed. I worry that I’m worried about writing the term “unhealthy” in a public post.

When we fall victim to the normalization of this type of behaviour, we justify our actions by comparison to others who have also become normalized. And so the ball keeps on rolling, each person supporting the next until we don’t notice that our body is no longer benefiting from the action and we’ve become disconnected even from ourselves. It might even fall into the realm of addiction.

Cellphone usage also comes to mind. I heard on the CBC this morning that Canada has just released it’s biggest study to date on smart phone usage and folks across the country are acknowledging that they spend too much time on their devices. One person cited that they were uncomfortable about spending 5-6 hours per day on their phone. That’s 1/4 to 1/3 of their waking hours.

I shared this with my partner, shocked, and he checked his phone to find it was at 4.5 hours today. I can justify this number by saying that he uses his phone for work or that he watches documentaries on YouTube or that he’s texting with his Grandma, but the truth is that it’s probably an unhealthy amount regardless of what the activity is.

And this is exactly how we all justify our time online. I use Instagram to connect with friends. I check my email to stay on top of work. I play sudoku to keep my brain alert. There’s reason and logic behind each of these actions, and yet I know - I can FEEL it in my body - when I’ve been interacting with that little screen for too long and it feels unhealthy. I start to crave it the same way that my body craves the chocolate.

Beyond how I feel in my body, I can see the implications and effects that it has on our culture - how we become disconnected from each other in real life because we can communicate online. We feel like we know people who’s life we only catch glimpses of on social media. We skip the coffee dates and board game nights because we can do it all online without having to leave our homes. This has become the norm.

And I am worried.

Personally, I feel like I’ve been ready to leave Instagram at least a dozen times and I make some excuse that pulls me back in. I worry about losing readers. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sell zines or rugs. I need to be able to chat with my friends! There’s a million reasons but the truth is that I’m addicted to it. In a post from last September,

Marlee Grace

writes about their break away from Instagram:

Artists make technology and digital spaces special places to be, and then those places turn against us. Or they weren’t designed for us in the first place. They are designed to keep us there for as long as possible. That is the whole point. To be an artist, a writer, an herbalist, a creative and thoughtful person - we are risking so much at the hands of the apps that keep us sucked in.

I keep thinking that I can make the app work for me instead of me working for it. But I think that’s a lie. I don’t need the chocolate, I need a glass of water. I want to ask why this is so hard to recognize, but I know the answer already: it’s because my screen addiction has been culturally normalized.

I take solace in the memory that there was life before cell phones. (I’m not sure what life was like before chocolate… probably not quite as good...) I remember that we sold our wares at local markets instead of on Etsy and went for coffee with friends instead of texting online and went for walks in the park without having to take pictures to remember the beauty. I encourage myself to live with more intention; to pay attention to my choices and not get swept away with what my culture dictates when it doesn’t agree with my body. I commit to trying to keep my chocolate consumption to a more appropriate level with the reminder that if my body is looking for a reward, it’s probably better to just have a glass of water.