Kathleen Des Maisons, M. ED, president of Radiant Recovery in Burlingame, California, believes that many addictive people have an actual biochemical flaw in the way they process sugar and carbohydrates. This flaw in metabolization causes an addict to respond to sugar as if it were alcohol and to white flour products as if they were sugar. Genetically, these people have biochemically sensitive bodies, which invite chemical imbalance. Substances like sugar, by creating insulin and rapidly penetrating the cell wall, actually after the permeability of the cell. The normal person, Des Maisons states, has stronger, more impermeable cells which prevent the rise and fall of blood sugar and the jagged peaks and valleys of violent emotions that plague addictive personalities.
Sugar is like an opiate drug that can make life manageable.
The child who used sugar becomes the adolescent who discovers alcohol, which is the perfect drug because, beyond its high sugar content, it has an anesthetic property. The addictive personality moves naturally into other drugs. The whole syndrome is really about pain management. When we reach this point and need a particular food in order to feel good, or rather, in order not to feel bad, we are addicted to it. The substance masks the allergy, in other words, Dr. Chaitow points out, that an addicts withdrawal symptoms are almost Identical to the symptoms which occur when an allergic substance is removed from the diet- ranging from tremors to prostration, cramps, vomiting, sweating, and hallucinations.