Two nights ago, I stood at the sink, scrubbing away the remnants of a meal that I was not proud of having eaten. The frozen pepperoni pizza I’d heated up was a culinary disaster—flavorless crust, rubbery cheese, and a faint tang of freezer burn—yet I devoured it slice by slice. Each bite promised the satisfaction the last had failed to deliver, a maddening cycle of diminishing returns.

When the pizza was gone, the yearning persisted, so I opened the freezer and unearthed a weathered tin of vanilla ice cream. Inside were hardened, chalky remnants—pale, crusty clumps that could only loosely be called ice cream anymore. I paired these sad little survivors with leftover scraps of chocolate cake—no icing, just the crumbly remnants of a dessert long forsaken. Stirring them together, I created a grotesque concoction: sugar soup for the soul. It was objectively vile, but I ate it anyway. And still, it wasn’t enough.

As I stood at the sink afterward, rinsing away the greasy, sugary evidence of my overindulgence,........

© Psychology Today