I MADE IT UP: My wife, the junkie

by Carl D. Clarke, Jr.

It started innocently enough.  I bought chunky white macadamia nut cookies at Kroger for my wife Sweetness and me to have as our midnight snack.  They are big delicious cookies, four inches in diameter, with monster macadamia nuts floating in the middle.  A dozen are packaged in a clear flat plastic box, the kind restaurants give you for a “doggie bag.”  Sweetness was pleased and had one the first night with milk.  So did I.
The second night, she must have had two, because there were only eight left.  “You have to pace yourself,” I told her, “because I only go to Kroger once a week.”  That had no effect.  On the morning of the fourth day, there were only five left.
I got my cordless drill, drilled holes in the front of the plastic box, and put a padlock on it.  On Day five, three more cookies were gone.  She had sliced through the hinge on the back of the box and slipped the cookies out that way.  When I questioned here, she turned on me.  “It’s my body.  What I put into it is none of your business.”
That’s when I knew we had a problem.  They say that if a normally sweet and gentle person becomes moody and irritable, that person may be using something.  Like all enablers, I hoped she could control her habit on her own. 
I even bought more chunky white macadamia nut cookies. This time I put one out for her, and hid the rest on a top cabinet shelf.  The next morning, the whole kitchen had been ransacked, and the box was on the counter.  It had been ripped apart, as if an animal had found it.
The next day, I saw in the Washington County News that Kroger had been burglarized.  When I read that the only things taken were boxes and boxes of chunky white macadamia nut cookies, I knew.  I found most of them cached in the trunk of her car, but there were others hidden all over the house.
I talked with Sheriff Fred Newman, who was completely understanding.  “It used to be meth and oxycontin,” he said.  “Now we’re seeing cookie addiction all over the county.  We even had a woman in Westwood who was forging prescriptions for macaroons.”
We had to go through an overdose episode for Sweetness to admit that she was hooked.  I found her on the kitchen floor, with almost no heartbeat and a macadamia nut cookie half eaten in her mouth. 
After a short stay in De-tox, we got her into counseling and macadamia cookie replacement therapy.  Slowly, she is returning to her old self, and she is not dealing cookies to feed her habit.  But I really blame myself, for bringing the things home in the first place. 

Carl D. Clarke, Jr. from Abingdon is a weekly columnist for the Washington County News.  He may be reached at .