Addicted

One time when I came back to the US for a visit, I brought some of this with me. It looks like a little chalky rock, and people here enjoy it as a snack-ish thing. Pregnant ladies especially like to suck on it. Some of you tried it but didn’t think very highly of it. My dad compared the taste to how he thought drywall would taste. Not so appetizing.

However, the other day I was standing and chatting with my neighbor here in the city, and she asked me for advice on overcoming an addiction. She quickly admitted that it was this drywall-tasting stuff that she was addicted to! I quite frankly told her that I had no idea how you overcome an addiction to sucking on drywall-tasting stuff. She said that the prescribed way to overcome that addiction here (I guess there are more people addicted to it than just her?!?) is to go to the pharmacy and get the pharmaceutical equivalent – “argile vert,” or, in English, “green clay.” It’s supposed to be the same thing, but with less impurities in it. And, I guess, it’s supposed to be a step towards breaking your addiction. But, she added, the stuff from the pharmacy tastes too soapy for her tastes.

And I was left speechless. I felt bad knowing I couldn’t help her, but if the solution to your addiction to drywall-tasting stuff is to have soapy-tasting-drywall-tasting stuff and you don’t want that, I don’t know how else to help. Sometimes the things people say here are just so far out of my wildest imagination that I have no idea how to respond. Someday I should ask her if she was able to kick that addiction, though.