I’m considering adding a “breast milk” entry to my list of blog categories…

I’m always on the lookout for things I can claim are addictive, because I have a fairly inclusive definition of the concept of addiction: in my book, any stuff which leaves you with a need that can be answered by more of that stuff is potentially addictive.

• Jack eats a Mars bar. His liver panics about the insane levels of blood sugar, and goes into insulin overdrive; half an hour later the Mars is long gone but the insulin has caused a blood sugar crash, and he’s itching for another chocolate bar.
• Jill does some heroin. It numbs her, washing away all her pain and discomfort, making her feel wrapped in warm cotton wool. Over time her nervous system habituates to the heroin, so that when she’s straight, she feels more uncomfortable, in more pain than she did before she started taking it, and keen to take it again to numb the discomfort.

When I was a child I was definitely a sugar fiend. Absolutely. I used to think I was a light user because I’d buy just 10 Jelly Wellies each afternoon. That’s probably 20 teaspoons. I’d love to know what proportion of adults in the UK (or the world) relate to sugar in a way which might be described as addictive; me giving up sugar in tea was like a tedious reinterpretation of the film Trainspotting timestretched by a factor of 40000.

When I was first teething (and whinging from my cot) I was given Woodward’s Gripe Water, which as it turns out was alcoholic, being about as strong as Fullers London Pride. I didn’t drink it in pints, but I wonder…

Anyway. Our neighbours across the street have recently had their first child, and they took him into hospital for a check-up because they were concerned that he might not be feeding enough. At the hospital, he was given a bottle of formula milk to supplement his breast milk. And when they got him home, apparently they had all sorts of trouble getting him off formula milk and back onto breast. They think the problem stemmed from bottle milk being easier to drink, so the child wasn’t work so hard but was getting more of a meal; so little baby James started demanding more milk than he could easily get from breastfeeding, and the temptation was there to give him another bottle…

So how about formula milk as the foundation of an addictive personality? Formula milk and sugar as gateway drugs? Baby’s first addiction.

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