Easter is a difficult time for a recovering chocolate addict. When I have given up chocolate in the past I have usually fallen off the wagon (and landed in my own equivalent of the river of chocolate in Willy Wonka's factory) when Easter Eggs appear in the shops.
Although they are made of chocolate which is available in shops all year round in many forms, there is something about Easter egg chocolate that is especially delicious. Perhaps it is just the comfort of memory of childhood (and I was very much one of those kids who ate all their Easter Eggs within five minutes of receiving them, even though this made me sick. I hated the bastards who only ate a bit each day- see Richard Herring is Fat for more details!) or perhaps the evil chocolate factory owners add some kind of drug to the chocolate they use in the eggs (as if chocolate isn't a dangerous enough drug on its own).
Whatever it is the eggs in Australia are not as appealing. They do have Cadburys and Mars chocolate here, but go for more fancy chocolate for their Easter Eggs generally.
Somehow that doesn't do it for me, so maybe that childhood association is the key.
But although I still get a pornographic (or whatever the equivalent is for stomach-related rather than sexual appetites) from discussing my life-destroying relationship with chocolate (and have just this minute made myself smile with specific memories of the special and distinctive sound that an Easter egg makes when you crack it), my days of dependency are over. I have been clean (ie not have chocolate smeared all over my chin) for almost 16 months now, and when I was offered inferior Australian eggs at a party last night, I only had the slightest of pangs of regret and longing.
Part of me wonders if I can ever go back to just enjoying chocolate on a social basis, but in my heart I know that like any addict, just one Cadbury's mini egg could send me reeling back into a habit that cost me upwards of one pound twenty a day.
My name's Richard and I'm a chocaholic.
