I want to talk about binging. We all know that too much of anything isn’t very good. Excessive beer, cigarettes, food, even sleep or sex can be kind of bad for you. This doesn’t just apply to material goods and services in the economic sense- it’s also very possible to think, talk  and share too much. (I have been learning this the hard way, lately.) There are always thresholds, limits that shouldn’t really be crossed. It’s downright inefficient and uneconomical, a poor allocation of resources. Sometimes it can seem that much of life is about discovering these limits, and getting as close to them as possible without crossing them (a rather utilitarian perspective!)

The law of marginal diminishing utility- or the pervasiveness of desensitization- is the first consideration. The first cigarette of the day is amazing. The second is pleasant. You barely notice the third, and by the fourth you’re going through the motions without really inhaling or enjoying the taste. Your tastebuds deaden. The same applies to other indulgences too, like candy and ice cream. If you want to maximise the pleasure you get out of your cigarettes, or your candy, or your ice cream, you should apportion them in a way that minimises binging. I started out as a casual smoker, then progressed into becoming a chain smoker, and have since regressed into an occasional/social/almost-quitting smoker. Without going into detail (in this post, at least!) about my current status as a smoker, the insight I can most certainly share is this- the less you smoke, the more pleasurable each cigarette becomes.

There’s also the sickening sensation of overconsumption. I’m pretty sure that’s our body’s way of telling us that we screwed up. As a frequent binge-indulger, I am only all to familiar of the terrible feelings of drinking, smoking and eating too much. These experiences can be downright negative in their own right and tend to overwrite our memories of the positive experience of the actual act. When I eat sour skittles, for example, I enjoy the taste and the pleasure of the sweets- but after finishing the entire packet, my tongue and mouth feel raw and unpleasant. This discomfort persists sometimes for the entire day. It would make much more sense for me to ration out the sweets and eat them every so often, and the same applies to cigarettes or even sleep.

It is clear to me then, upon logical hindsight, that pleasures- be they cigarettes, sweets or even time spent with friends- should be indulged in with moderation. I’m not preaching asceticism or a renouncement of worldly pleasures- far from it. I’ve always believed that life should be enjoyed to the fullest, and I still do now. I was a hedonist then, and I am still technically a hedonist, albeit perhaps an enlightened one. I’ve begun to come to terms with the idea that sometimes you have to give up the good things in pursuit of the great things, and sometimes too much of a good thing can stop you from experiencing the great things.

Why do we binge? I think it’s a very primal human instinct- to hoard, to indulge. I imagine our ancestors didn’t have such plentiful resources- food was probably hard to come by, so it would make sense that those who survived did so by stripping all the meat off the bones of their prey. Binging makes some degree of logical sense in an era of scarcity and uncertainty. Scarcity encourages a sort of hoarding mentality- even at the physiological level, if you are deprived of food your body slows down its metabolism to hoard the resources that sustain it. Binging, it would seem, is ultimately an outdated instinct that we ought to learn to overcome to stay relevant and survive in our constantly changing environment.

So my theory is that I will probably find myself happier and more fulfilled if I minimize my binging tendencies. I’m actually fairly confident that this is true, but I’ll just keep track of things just for that extra element of certainty and post updates as I begin to overcome my impulses in the name of enlightened hedonism. I believe that the Dionysian and Apollonian can be unified, and that they must.