Better living through chemistry?
I trust your wonderfully lethargic, (Thanksgiving-fully?), feast-induced stupor abates. I’m just diving into my second cup of java . . . decaf, if you must know . . . thus, my own torpor is being chased out of my veins as I write.
Amazing, isn’t it? I mean, how the American Village has become accustomed and acclimated to certain foods and beverages and such, and never gives much or any thought to the process that goes on underneath? It’s not unlike Parisians who go about their everyday lives, quite content to ignore the massive infrastructure of catacombs and ancient drainage systems that sit below their delightful city, layered like a geologic column, and which provide the foundational substructure for one of the great cities of the world.
One has other things to think about, I suppose.
But really, we generally associate food and drink with something pleasant, don’t we? (Yes, we do, just nod your head. You’re still full of turkey.) But think for a moment. What if, every time we ate a meal, we became terribly sick, and had to endure great pain, even if only for a few minutes? Methinks that would change our outlook on festive occasions. Getting together for a wondrous feast would lose a bit of attraction. However, reality is nothing like that. Generally speaking, everybody in the world really enjoys a good meal, and has very pleasant associations with the notion of sitting down to a table laden with luscious yummies to eat and drink, confabulating with friends and relatives and the momentarily well-behaved Irish Setter at your feet.
What I’m getting at is, there’s a ubiquitous process that’s going on inside each one of us that makes all of that eating and drinking such a delightful experience. Regardless how it all got started way back in pre-history, we are now in possession of bodies that, without our urging, take bits of stuff we ingest, then begin to chemically process everything, and, (if the food hasn’t been left at room temperature too long, or we don’t impetuously cram five pounds of provender into a two-pound-rated gut), at the end of the meal we feel all warm and toasty and sated and good.
Because of chemicals.
Home grown, I might add. Made in the ol’ U.S. of A., right inside our own bodies.
From our earliest moments, we’ve learned to associate very good things with other very good things, and the basic reality behind it all has to do with chemical processes that connect one thing to the other. (The opposite is just as true, by the way. No doubt way back when, somebody tried supplementing his diet with gravel, and was soon known as “Toothless Joe”, an irascible sort who, because of his obvious discomfort and sour demeanor, eventually got uninvited to village soirées.)
Rocks aside, and back to my point, the body is an amazing chemical processor, and it, as part of its normal business, does a great job attending to the jumbles of turkey chemicals and smashed potato chemicals and Chardonnay chemicals, (and on and on), that we stuff into our gob on Thanksgiving.
But somehow and somewhere, somebody began screwing with the status quo, and started making lists of things that are quite yummy, or make us feel rather pleasant, but for some stupid reason the listmaker decided we couldn’t have them anymore, and then somehow that damnable list became Village law.
One list said that slab of scrumptious bacon over there is no longer allowed to sidle up to your eggs. Another list says my morning cup o’ java is off the menu. And another list says that leafy plant over there shall never, in any form, ever pass your puckered lips. But that other critter, and that other liquid, and that other leafy plant?
Why, they’re just fine. Have at ’em!
Folks, scads more could obviously be written about all this, (and you know I rarely pass up a really good scad), but I hope you get my meaning. We, the Village, unthinkingly approve of chemicals every moment of every day, simply because we live. And we approve of chemicals and processes that make us feel good, every moment of every day. Likewise, we disapprove of chemicals that kill us, (unless, of course, enough money exists behind a particular chemical and its delivery system to thwart common sense and the common good. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Tobacco Industry.)
But truly, what differentiates between the scrumptious high we experience post-banquet, and the buzz we get from something else?
Not much, or anything at all.
Except the chemicals inside our head.
