A fantastical shot of ice cream, jawbreakers and pastries make me drool like one of Ivan Pavlov’s dogs.

This sugar-charged chassis of mine has an internal engine that purrs at the sight of gooey sweets — then splutters and stops. Demanding a refill. 

A saner person, someone free from sugar addiction, may ask how it took root. Some claim they are salty people. Or savory people. Actually, I like those food groups too.

As it happens, we were born this way.   

A taste for sugar is hard-wired into human anatomy. 

“The brain is dependent on sugar as its main fuel,” says Vera Novak, associate professor of medicine. “It cannot be without it.” Scientists have found half of all sugar energy in the body is used by — get this — the brain.

In my case, too, there was a sugar pusher. Enter my father, Warren, the alpha of sugar addiction.

A dedicated sweets guy, our dad was known to make evening forays into Charlotte to Krispy Kreme, 50 miles roundtrip, returning with two dozen raspberry- filled pastries. Was he really responsible? Obviously, he had a very large brain, one practically demanding he stoke it with sugar.

Consider this: Krispy Kreme makes 5 million doughnuts daily. Statistically, that’s a lot of sugar-munching/brain-feeding, so Warren was hardly alone. 

He never met Winston-Salem founder Vernon Rudolph, but, if he had, dad would have definitely shaken his hand and invited him home for supper. (After licking the icing from his own.)

Warren would also have shaken the hand of Forrest Mars, creator of M&M’s candies. Fun-sized fact: Initially, the hard-shelled candies were sold exclusively to the U.S. Army during WWII. 

Dad loved those multicolored, sugar-shell-covered bits of chocolate, and so did I. When I was a child, he would sometimes take me on work trips, iconic brown packets of M&M’s marching across the molded dashboard. 

“If I start nodding off or acting sleepy, shake me and keep talking to me,” he ordered, knowing the sugar high would keep me chatty.

The neighborhood “juke joint” was where my sugar fixation became, well, fixed by the age of 5. The store possessed two marvels: a juke box and a multitude of candies. My quarters were stretched between playing favorite tunes and buying sweets.

Munching on a Butterfinger or a Baby Ruth, I’d dance, joyously spinning like a Sufi.

I didn’t snack on Snickers (originally Marathon, renamed for the Mars family’s favorite horse), but rectified that mistake later. The Snickers rebrand elevated it to the top-selling candy globally.

During my childhood, adults weren’t that worried about sugar.  Mornings called for sugary cereals like Alpha-Bits. I arranged the crystalline letters with my spoon to spell SWEET, one of my favorite words, sneaking in extra spoonfuls of sugar and just enough milk to keep five letters afloat.

The only milk I actually liked was the sugar-jazzed chocolate variety.

Grape juice, more syrup than juice, kept my child-sized lips perpetually encircled with a blurry smear of purple. After school, I craved ice cream or cookies. 

Ironically, children in my household weren’t allowed sweet tea until age 12, but were permitted Tang (thank you, NASA!), Orange Crush or Nehi grape. 

Grocery shopping now as a grown woman, I don’t stick to the store perimeter, as nutritionists advise. Even if I start out in the produce or fresh fruit sections, my cart pulls itself straight to the aisle of Forbidden Fruits. Namely, fruit-flavored gummies and candies. Goodies practically throw themselves into the shopping cart, my resolve melting faster than a Dairy Queen Blizzard on a sunny July day. In go jolly-looking jars of marshmallow fluff, sweet jams and bags of chocolates.

When in need of a fast fix, I binge on Nutella (spooned straight from the jar) or, recently, handcrafted Kilwins’ fudge (a gift to my husband) — or once, an entire bag of Dr. Atkins sugar-free candies.

Resolve is a strange animal. My hand reaches for crunchy peanut butter — natural, of course — when I’m feeling resolute. When it fades, anything can happen. After resisting the priciest chocolates still in their gilded gift box, I turn instead to a beguiling tin of Marks & Spencer’s Christmas cookies (called, quaintly, “biscuits”). Next, I hit hard candies, my emergency sweets stash, crunching away like a badger.

The night before my physical, despite being fearful of bad lab results, I polished off most of a “sharable”-sized bag of plain old chocolate M&M’s after a “healthy” dinner. Then I wolfed down more M&S biscuits.

(My glucose results were not great.) 

My dopamine-hooked brain once put my sugar fixation to good use — when weaning myself from smoking. Swapping one oral fixation for another, I kept a large bag of M&M’s in my desk drawer, finally leaving cigarettes behind. 

But, sadly, not sugar.

Some years ago, Delancey Street Moving and Trucking (whose innovative work programs support those overcoming addiction) moved us from our Westerwood home to Latham Park. My husband was called away, so I hustled alongside the movers.

At day’s end, we all flopped down on the driveway, sweaty and famished. Ripping into a bag of Snickers, I offered them around. The guys shook their heads, each lighting up a cigarette.

One gave a piercing look.

“I used to use,” he said, explaining how heroin derailed his life as a pharmacist.

“What’s your addiction?” 

With a jolt, I realized he’d spotted it. 

“Sugar,” I confessed. Taking a deep drag, he nodded knowingly.