Addiction

Well, it turned out okay—my bad night’s sleep didn’t totally wreck my writing time, and my little beast’s scarfing of an entire chocolate bar hasn’t killed her. It made her antsy all night and demanding of an outing this morning--she just went crazy in the backyard, racing around like she never does in her own yard, running fast figure-eights and kicking up leaves. Usually she’s still in bed at this time. But today she’s feeling the effects of a hangover—a chocolate hangover.

Last night she got a hold of an expensive bar we just opened from my work, and ate the whole thing--The whole, 74%, $5.25, large, dark chocolate bar. Her nineteen-pound self ate it all.

We finished dinner and I cleared the table except for the bar. We both left the room, then Kevin found her a few minutes later smacking the wrapping. Not a bit left, but evidence all around her.

So we had to endure her ramping up last night before bed, pacing a bit in the night as she tried to rest, and her absolute craziness this morning. She went in the backyard a couple of times and ran circles, but only to demand back in with an aggressive yelp and an almost verbal insistence that we go out for a run. I’ve endured the stare and she’s finally settled some, but the second I get up or move a chair she’s all amped up again. I am going to have to get her out big before I go to work—else she’ll be inside bouncing off the walls until we get home. I’ll try to work the caffeine out of her little system with a quick 30-minute run off-leash—that’s about all I can do for her.

It’s not the first time she’s poisoned herself on chocolate, she’s done it a few times. We had her only a week or two—still hadn’t decided if she was going to make the cut, if we were going to bring her home to the US with us from Okinawa—when we left her in the car with a few purchases we had made while we went into a restaurant. I forgot about the dark chocolate bunny I had hidden from my husband, his Easter treat. It wasn’t a large one but it was solid.

She couldn’t even eat it all. We came out of the restaurant and she was all sleepy, laid out with chocolate smeared all around her, bits of wrapper and the bunny ears nearby. She was drunk, completely wasted, on chocolate. We couldn’t blame her then, she was a street dog, accustomed to having to find whatever she could to survive, not yet trusting the always-full bowl of food at home, still on the scrounge.

But now? She should know better now. Today she’s all hungover with no excuse of need or necessity but because, like me, she just needed some good chocolate, dammit. Can I really blame her? I’m also perfectly provided for yet I sometimes orge-out on things that are really comforting me--food, wine, chocolate, a really hot shower…

A year ago it was the Halloween candy she got into when we weren’t watching, all the tiny Snickers and Milky Ways we bought for the neighborhood kids--only the wrappers were remaining. Yes, we know her hangover routine well—it means a bad night’s sleep for all of us as she paces and we keep waking up to ensure she hasn’t gone into a chocolate-induced coma.

It’s just chocolate really, that she gets into trouble with—she doesn’t do the trash much or beg at home—she snags an occasional chicken bone she finds on our walks, but again, who can blame her? It was her living, now a dysfunction from her past. It’s unseemly, embarrassing and ridiculous with what she now has provided for her, but still, are any of us any different? I reminded my husband of this (he was still verbally berating her hours after the incident), she was curled up next to him, he was petting her and sipping a gin and tonic.

It’s not good for her, but she cannot help herself. So, we recommit to keep the chocolate up—not just up now, but away, tightly away. No enabling.

We must remember we have an addict in our midst.