Like many fine people, I live the spicy life. The only problem is what started out as love for something soon became an addiction. At first, I was putting hot sauce or spices in my food. Then I was putting both. I had become a monster pouring and devouring spicy food every meal of the day!
You see everything is good in moderation, for example, Sweets, Mexican food, video games, and tv. My problem was that I had thrown moderation out the window years ago and it had finally caught up with me.
I started eating spicy food at the age of eleven to twelve and fell in love quickly. I started out making spicy ramen for lunch before I had to go to football practice. As time went on whenever my family and I would go out to eat I’d order whatever the spiciest thing on the menu was.
After a few years of eating nothing but spicy food, I started having problems. I had started getting horrible stomach pains after I would eat, followed with very explosive bathroom trips. Spending afternoons or sometimes even whole days in bed because my stomach hurt so bad I couldn’t get myself to move.
I continued eating spicy food though. I knew what the root of the problem was and I didn’t want to admit it. Eating spicy food was a problem and even though I was in immense pain most of the time I poured more and more into my food.
I started getting bad acid reflux and occasional heartburn at the age of seventeen. I was getting worse and I didn’t care. I enjoyed the snotty nose, sweating, burning sensation of spicy food. It wasn’t until February of 2018 that I had decided I had enough. I was done with spicy food and it affecting my health!
So, I kept eating it all throughout February. I had decided though that it was way too hard to just give up something all at once. I started putting less and less into my food. My condition wasn’t getting all that much better though. I hated checking days off my calendar, I was getting closer to March and that meant no more.
March reared its ugly head and I’d given up hot food. It took some time but my health had eventually improved. I felt like a new man! No longer was I restrained to my bed and bathroom because of the pain I was in.
I think the most important part of the journey was I found a taste for something new. Since I’d taken the spice out of everything I had to find new things to add flavor to my food. I have always been good with flavors and knowing what to add to stuff, but I always drowned out the flavor in hot spices after. This whole past month I’d get creative with the flavors of my food. I have found a whole new taste for my food.
I still eat spicy food but it’s very rare now. Within the month of April, I’ve only eaten/spiced my food twice. I don’t use anywhere near as much either, I’ve learned my lesson about all that. Learning the perfect mesh of flavor and spice has been a literal life changer for me. Have you ever gotten addicted to a certain type of food or flavor?
Toby Lopez 