December 25, 2003:

Fasting. The cheapest high. Sweet little buzz, where the world responds slowly to the turn of your head. Add a little caffeine and you can feel your eyeballs smoke.

I grew up this way. To avoid eating with my doting parental unit I left the table as quickly as possible, halfway through a small plate of, say, soggy spaghetti with wilted canned string beans to the side. It wasn't until college that I first ate until satisfied. This is literally true. All the time buzzed out of my mind on the caffeinated sodas she fed me by the gallon, a way, in her mind, of adding crucial calories to my diet.

Today I often fast on feast days such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. I intend it as a way of feeling connected to the rest of the world, that is, to those who are unable to feast on days like this. I realize there's a certain hairshirt-wearing tone of chastize-the-flesh to this. That's ok. To be honest I like the buzz.