The Hidden Truth About Sugar- Stop Consuming It NOW

Today, I say goodbye to sugar, who I thought was my lover, but was actually poisoning me.

I sit down with Michael Collins, also known as the Sugar-Free Man, to expose the harsh reality of sugar addiction. From childhood habits to adult cravings, sugar is often overlooked as a true addiction, yet it affects brain chemistry just like drugs and alcohol do.

Mr. Collins shares his personal journey of overcoming sugar dependency and how he raised his children completely sugar-free, shedding light on the connection between sugar, emotional regulation, and intelligence development.

The conversation dives deep into the science behind sugar addiction, how it rewires the brain, and why many people unknowingly use it as a coping mechanism—especially those in addiction recovery. They discuss how processed foods, hidden sugars, and even "healthy" options are part of an industry designed to keep people hooked. Mr. Collins also reveals the shocking parallels between sugar addiction and other substance dependencies, offering insights into withdrawal, relapse, and recovery.

Most people start cutting off sugar to manage diabetes or to lose weight, yet, they realize that it's actually an addiction. From an industry that glorifies it and makes it more accessible than healthy alternatives, real food, and natural sugars, to sheep-mentality and childhood habits, sugar is everywhere. Learn practical strategies to detox from sugar, regain control of your health, and break free from the cycle of dependence.

https://www.sugaraddiction.com/sugar_detox_ebook_wp_st1

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Transcript

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today's subject is I almost want to say personal. I, in my youth, still in my youth, you know, was definitely a sugar addict as I've gotten older, the amount of sugar I consume has gone down a lot just because of more conscious and healthy eating habits, as well as my body just, I may have given it too much when I was young, but it got to the point where if I didn't have sugar, I would get withdrawals, you know, very angry, very irritable, needed to eat it, you know, almost throughout the day.

Definitely every day had some kind of donut or brownie or cake or candy and I did eat M& M's for breakfast this morning So I guess I'm not as as cured as I'd like to be I did have birthday cake and M& M's for breakfast  You know, but that's okay. It happens, but we're gonna talk about why it's not okay and how bad you know Sugar and processed foods really are for you.

We're here with the sugar free man. Mr. Michael Collins. He's here to talk about How he has been sugar free for decades and about the reality of sugar addiction, calling it a gateway drug, which is very interesting because for those of you who have caught our episodes on addiction recovery as far as alcoholism and smoking, one of the top substances that alcoholics switch to after they become sober is sugar.

So, I'm excited to tie it all together in today's episode. Mr. Collins, would you please go ahead and introduce yourself for us?  Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's an honor. I, uh, I like to get the message out and I really.  Relate to  folks who are in the addiction recovery space. I've been  come the day after Valentine's Day.

I'll be sober for 40 years. And, uh, then my, my original work started as an addiction recovery program, helping drug addict drug addicts and alcoholics get sober and clean and, um.  I was just trying to get healthy. When I got sober, it was, uh, well, it probably even starts before then. My, my mom was my favorite sugar junkie.

Uh, she was, uh, it's kind of a sad story. Her, uh,  her mom, my grandmother died when she was only eight years old and I, you know, it was terrible. And, and she was the last one in the family. My grandfather and her had to move in with his sister, who was my great aunt, and she wasn't the nicest person in the world.

And so my grandfather made a deal with his cousin, Jim, who owned the country store across the way, that if, if anytime my mom walked into that store, he could have any, she could have any candy she wanted, just put it on his tab. Which was wonderful for that child, but still.  My mom grew up believing sugar was love.

Okay. And that's how I, I grew up, you know, covered up with sugar, just cakes and cookies and candies. And just, we used to  put three times the recipe is Kool Aid and  all the sugar on the cereal and scraping it up with the milk. It was just, and no one ever said no, like no one said, don't, Don't do that, you know, because she was so attached to her love of sugar and, um, anyway, fast forward and, uh, I ran into beer at 14 years old, 13, 14 years old,  and here's an important part of the story, an important part of the, If you will, the transformation process that people in recovery or out of recovery, and I'm going to tell more about that story  need to understand.

And this is really not really understood. And this is kind of my message, if you will, is that. I knew that beer changed how I felt. It changed my state. I was kind of shy and I could go behind the,  you know, the high school and drink the beer and be able to talk to the girls at the dance, right? Well, anyway, we can talk about that.

I know that this is kind of about your subject matter, but that party lasted until I was 28, crashed a few cars, wet the bed a bunch of times, got arrested, you know, a lot of crazy stuff, ran the biggest nightclubs and that kind of stuff. But, um  I got sober at 28, and I went right back to sugar. So sugar became, and this is in the big book of AA a couple times, you know, that sugar becomes the substitute.

You mentioned it earlier that it becomes the substitute for the drinking and stuff, and a lot of recovering folks stumble into that, as I did.  Well, anyway, I met a woman in recovery, actually, and we had a couple kids, and I raised those kids sugar free.  Um, from the womb until they were six years old, and it's an important part of the story because I just believe that their brain developed better.

And it's, uh, we'll go into the science of all that in a minute. But, um, they always said I should write a book. So I kind of, um, uh, you know, I had a regular life. I had a regular business, a regular career, and I, Okay. It wasn't until I was, I opened sugaraddiction. com in 2009 and I was still working and I put out good information, people, it helped some folks, but it wasn't until 2016 we started doing these Quit Sugar Summits.

That I really started to get back into it. And then the book came out in 2019 or 18 and it was very successful. And that's when it kind of kicked off. I was semi retired and I started coaching people. I started having online meetings.  And, uh,  and you know, it went along and I was kind of geared up when this, uh, like perfect storm hit and the perfect storm was and it was the pandemic.

Okay. So you guys remember this, you know, they, they literally bought out all the sugar, the flour, the case, the can, the candy, the candy. Ice cream, the alcohol, the soda, everything was gone. I mean, there was delivery problems and, you know, that kind of thing. Still, people were at home eating and gaining weight and they couldn't leave, right?

And the second part of the perfect storm was it intersected with Zoom. Like, uh, we are on right now. Even Graham knew how to use zoom. Okay. And so zoom became this, you know, comedy, this, uh, communication method. And so all hell broke loose. I had coaching couple times a day. Uh, I had meetings, support meetings, couple times a day.

Now we're up at five meetings a day. And, uh,  over the last, say, uh, four or five years since the pandemic, um, you know, it's just  chaos. It's just grown like insane. And, and now we have, like I said, the five meetings a day we have, we just got approved last year to, uh, with the National Board of Health and Wellness coaches. 

And so, and during that time, you know, the, somebody called me the sugar free man and that kind of stuck. So that's the short version of how I ended up being the sugar free man and got here, but, uh, usually brings up more questions than it answers, but that's the, that's the version of the podcast version, if you will,  for sure.

And, you know, when you mentioned. More sugar than the recipe calls for. I mean, I thought of myself and a lot of gentlemen and women down here in the south who do sweet tea and definitely put a lot more. Sometimes we say you have some tea on your sugar there. God, you know, because we put so much sugar. In fact. 

You know, you just remind me of, I haven't thought about this in a while. I had a shipmate when I was in the Navy who took almost half of one of those big square yellow domino sugar containers,  dumped almost half of it onto his oatmeal. And we said, Hey man, you've got some oatmeal in your sugar. You might want to, you know, pick that out.

Uh, because he would just add so much sugar to his oatmeal and then adding, you know, syrup and Brown sugar and cinnamon on top of it at that point, you know, it's.  No longer trending as much online, but specifically on Tik Tok,  there was this thing called water talk, which was young women were adding flavored syrups to water because, for some reason, a lot of women from Gen Z, Alpha Generation, and even Millennials  don't like drinking water, they just refuse to do it, and so people had started really using these flavor enhancement packets to make their water better, and, and young women would have a whole carousel of like, You know, 10, 12 different syrup packets or flavors.

Sometimes they would put more than one and a lot of the comments and concerns and, you know, commentation was that there was so much sugar they were putting in their water, multiple sugar flavored packets from syrup to powders that it was no longer healthy water, you know, they, they had purple, green, blue.

Some of them were some people even layered their drinks so that it had a purple top of blue middle and a green bottom. So at that point, it's really not water. And so we've seen how I want to tie that into you talk about having meetings and coaching and addiction accountability and how easy it is to slip up. 

You know, with alcohol and drugs, it can be a little now, obviously, we know, especially be hosting an addiction recovery show that addicts are great at hiding and covering their tracks. If they're drinking or doing drugs with sugar, it's even easier to hide because with alcohol changing your behavior and drugs changing your behavior.

It can be a lot more difficult to cover up, especially when you're in those later stages of alcoholism and drug addiction with sugar. If you sneak a little, you know, piece of candy or, you know, a little slice of cake or something, it's very hard to tell. So it's a lot easier to slip up and it's a lot easier to say, like, oh, it's just a little piece of candy compared to, oh, it's just one beer.

It's just one wine. It's even more easy to justify, especially when.  More so than alcohol or drugs, you'll find sweets being served at every restaurant at every party. You go to every occasion, whether it's soda or food. So I'd love to get into the accountability part of the conversation and how easy it is to not slip up.

And if you could talk about your own journey with temptation, you know, going on 40 years of sugar sobriety here. I mean, there have there been any moments where you almost slipped up or thought about it?  Oh, yeah. I mean, the most difficult part is the beginning, right? It's like you got to get detoxed and you have to think about, it's not really like life threatening like alcohol or opioids.

Um, you know, it's like nicotine. I mean, it's annoying, but you, you know, you can get through it with proper nutrition and exercise and stuff. And that's really where the work begins, right? Cravings, what you're describing, uh, cravings is really What I study them. I studied cravings and denial. Obviously, we all know what denial is, right?

And it's very prevalent in the in all addiction, but definitely in the sugar addiction stuff, right?  but the cravings part is super interesting to me because  you know one of the things that people don't really and part of my message is is that People don't really understand that they're not looking for a sweet taste on their tongue.

What they're looking for is a dopamine hit. Like, just like alcohol or drugs, they're looking for And when I say dopamine, because it's become kind of popular now and people know what it is,  I really mean all of the brain and body reward chemicals, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, oxytocin, adrenal glands, endorphins, cannabinoid receptors, all of the brain and body reward chemicals are affected by sugar.

And when you have that craving, you, you know, when you're Trying to quit or trying to cut back. You're actually trying. You've got to know and feel in your gut that you're really trying to self soothe. You're really trying to not feel something very similar. And you know this. I'm sure some of your guests and I've talked about this is that when  Like, it's a very common construct in the world of alcohol and drug addiction that if you stopped using, started using alcohol and drugs at 14 or 15, you stop growing emotionally at that point.

And you have to think about it with sugar, if you're extrapolating it backwards to, say, 4 or 5, or probably in the womb, but 4 or 5 years old, and you get this,  Patterning just like I described in my story. You get this understanding that and you don't think of it consciously like it's not like. I'm 5 years old.

I will not hurt if I use a little bit of sugar. It's not like you're, you know, an adult and you say, I've had a crappy week and I just want a beer and numb out for a little bit. That's a conscious decision. And the problem, the reason the perfect storm, It continues to grow and the obesity numbers continue to grow and the type 2 diabetes continues to grow is because this is a very unconscious process.

People have not yet understood that their ingestation of sugar creates this emotional self soothing. Now, when you look at the worlds of  what they call emotional eating or comfort food, this is what, you know, They get that partially right. They have it part of it right, but they don't really understand the addiction piece of the puzzle that you can truly become biochemically addicted to sugar, and it can numb you enough, just enough to make you feel a little bit better.

Right. Very similar that when people go into treatment or they go to a meeting or they start to recover from alcohol, they start to realize that that's what they were doing. They never thought of it until, until recovery. But the problem with the sugar thing is it's everywhere. I mean, it's like three times a day.

You got to look at, you know, food, poulter process, carbs, flour. Just a lot of stuff is part of the equation and well Again, I'd like to relieve people kind of like, you know a priest like it's not their fault, right? It's the food system 85 percent of the food in the grocery store has sugar in it and and when people kind of Look at it that way and the other problem really is that the diet industry Has most people come to me for weight loss, right?

And so the diet industry has  manufactured this myth that if you eat less and exercise more you'll lose the weight, right? But it's just not true. If you don't, if you are one of the one third of people who biochemically have the difficulty processing sugar, and that you have become emotionally addicted to it, then you're not going to be able to just not eat, you know, to eat less.

You know, you're just not. And that's where that, those cravings come up, right? Because you are managing, you literally outsource your emotional life to sugar. And if you're doing that, if you have done that, when you stop, There's this, the common refrain is Mike, I'm losing my mind. Right. And that to about day 15, day 20, people are like weepy and crying and upset and depressed and hungry and hangry and not sleeping well and getting breakouts and stuff, and they don't know what's happening to them because they don't have a guide.

They don't have someone to walk them through it.  So it's a little more complicated, but it's not that complicated that if someone. Especially people from the addiction world, which would be your listeners.  A lot of my folks come to me because I'm open about my addiction, um, that are in recovery already.

But still, to a man, to a woman, they could not put down the sugar. They've gained a lot of weight, they've got a type 2 diabetes thing, and they haven't, as addiction savvy as they are, they have not put the two things together. They have not put sugar as an addiction. They just never wanted to look at it like that.

And then. You know, I've got to kind of ease them into it. I meet them where they are because they want to lose weight or get their type 2 under control.  Eventually, they start to realize, as does everyone who works in our program, that this is really an addiction recovery program. And that sugar, scientifically, through these summits that I've done in talking to the world's leading experts, that scientifically, sugar is powerful enough to act like drugs and alcohol in this case.

Right.  Anyway, it's a big topic, you know, hard sometimes. These podcasts are perfect because it takes about the arc of a podcast to explain what people are missing and why. And you know the  The, uh,  what the survey or the, um, the, the stats as well as I do, 95 percent of all people that lose any amount of weight, gain it all back in the first year.

And if you take a look at what I just explained, it's easy to explain, right?  Cause they're, things are okay when they started losing weight and they were exercising, which was helping their brain chemicals. And then all of a sudden something happens. And they're off to the races again, you know.  Anyway, it's a big topic.

It's a good question, though.  For sure, you know, it's interesting, actually, because my father, who struggles with alcoholism, he's never been a sweets guy. Has never liked, you know, he's not asking for chocolate or cake, and at birthday parties and stuff, wouldn't go after that stuff. During some of his, you know, periods of time where he was sober, for the time being, he started eating these huge bowls of ice cream every night.

And I never picked it up until later on in life. Why he was doing that because he was never a sweets guy now He's eating all the ice cream and it was wasn't even the flavors he liked He was started eating our ice cream. That was for me and my sisters You know that kind of stuff that he wouldn't like and I always thought it was so weird that my father and his like 40s Early 50s would suddenly start liking ice cream until after I started running my show and talking to people such as yourself and other addicts that oh That's what it's about.

It's not about the ice cream itself. It's not about the sweets and even liking it. It's about that feeling that, you know, can help him in his sobriety kind of, quote, stay calm, you know, feel that same kind of sense of relief. And it's so funny. My father did the same thing on the nights that he didn't drink.

He was eating ice cream. Yep. Yeah. So it's, uh, it's, uh, for y'all listening, if that's happened in your life and you were wondering, like, that's so strange that it just happened, it might be a, uh, you know, a relationship there. But one of the things is you mentioned children and youth and sugar. And I remember sometimes I watched a show, my 600 pound life, and there was an episode with two sisters who.

They thought for sure. I mean, the doctor was just dumbfounded when he heard them say this. They had been raised, and they believed this 100 percent that if they had a diet soda, it would cancel out whatever sugary drink or food they had. They believed that diet soda actually, like, destroyed the sugar, like, vaporized it.

And I remember the doctor's face, and I remember my face when I heard that for the first time, because they, they weren't joking. They 100%  That was the truth. And it's like one of those things where if you're raised, you're raised that way. And I'd love to go into two things for those just listening, not watching behind me is an array of.

various sweets and candies. What we typically think of when we say sweets, we think cake, donuts, brownies, cookies, and candy, especially. But Mr. Collins, what you hinted at, you said around, I believe it was around 85 percent of most foods in the grocery stores have sugar or processed sugar in it. So you're talking about sugar beyond the realm of just sugar.

Candy, can you kind of go into that part of the process? Because there's a lot of people who think if they cut out just cake and dessert at night that they're avoiding the sugars. So I'd love for you to dive deeper into the reality of sugar in our, you know, food system. Yeah, no, that's it's so true. And it's kind of sad, really, because People don't realize it.

You're right. They think about the, the, the candies and the sweets and stuff, but, or whatever, uh, the sodas and drinking your sugar, but they don't realize that the manufacturers of these products, ketchups and salad dressings and, uh, tomato sauces and all these kinds of different canned goods and boxes and bags and cans have sugar in them and they have them in for a reason because it brings people back to their product because they have this undiscernible light rays in self esteem.

They get that dopamine hit when they're having this, uh, particular salad dressing or what have you. They feel really good and, and, uh, and they literally manufacture. There's a couple of books out there, Hooked and a couple others. that talk about these campuses that food manufacturers have, where they literally slide people into M.

R. I. S. And watch their brain chemicals, watch their brain scans light up as they put the new product on their tongue. You know, And it's, you know, it's weaponizing, it's, it's criminal in my opinion, especially with the kids and the cereals and that kind of start, starting them really young like that. Um, but it's absolutely true.

And we talked about it before we came on, but it's, you know, people don't realize they, they do focus on the sugar part. But the ultra processed carbs in general, flours, pastas, breads, these things keep those cravings alive too. Right, they like  your body's like it's getting part of the equation like it's a donut or whatever has the flour and the sugar in the body saying, where's the rest of this?

You know, it's like, where's the rest of the equation? And you know, your body gets attuned or gets basically addicted, but attuned to the whole thing. So, um, that's the story. You know, the two of them together and, and sugar, you know, flour, excuse me, turns to sugar right in your stomach. And what you're trying to avoid genuinely, and they're starting to call Alzheimer's diabetes two or three, and you know that, um, this is a brain illness.

This is a, you know, basically the word hijack comes to mind. It's like hijack, hijacking of your frontal cortex, right? Yeah.  When that happens, uh, via the sugar, people just don't have the will, quote, unquote, willpower is nothing to do with it, but willpower to resist, right? They think going out in the snowstorm, you guys are about to get in to get ice cream is a good idea.

And I'm kind of hard on this, that, and this is a kind of a rough statement, but it's true  when people come to me, um, 20%, first of all, are crying, they're coming to me and they're. They're, you know, they've never told another person this stuff about their sugar. But when they come to me, they are really truly not in a place mentally, they, they're, they don't have the mental wherewithal to make the right decisions about their health and their weight.

And the reason I say that is because they tell me this six months later, when they're off the sugar, they say to me,  like, I don't believe I did go out in a snowstorm for ice cream. I don't believe that I. Through stuff in the garbage and I started, you know, an hour later, I came back and ate the same cookies out of the garbage kind of thing.

They don't think they've, I've ever heard these stories before, but I've heard them hundreds of times, you know, and so the, you know, the problem with.  Sugar is because of what we're discussing. It's prevalence and it's, it's almost free and any child can get it. But the problem is, is the dose makes the poison, which is important.

I'm teaching. I tell people to write that down and they should write this down.  The dose makes the poison. You are, you know, you'll take a little alcohol, you'll take a little heroin, you'll smoke a little marijuana, whatever. The problem is, is we are pounding 20, that's average, 20 teaspoons a day. Anybody that comes to me with any habit at all is at 30, 40, and sometimes even 50 teaspoons of sugar a day.

And you're, Most people have never gone even 24 hours, let alone a week or a month without sugar. Right. So they don't know what their body, what reactions their body will have emotionally, physically, even spiritually. They won't, they don't realize what  is going to happen to them. And when it happens, they're, they're in shock and unconsciously they know if they Eat a little bit of sugar, all of those fears, worries, and anxieties will, will, will subside for 20 minutes and so it's just a pattern.

It's just a pattern that they fall into. So, yeah, it's a,  again, it takes about, you know, 40, 30, 40, 50 minutes to. For people to kind of understand that it's just not a little sweet taste on your tongue. That's just like the body's adaptation  to how does it get the dopamine in, you know?  Or how does it get the dopamine activated, put it that way.

Right, going back to the cereal. That's a great example, especially in America. I mean, there's just an aisle dedicated to sugary cereals alone and on  Most stores, either on the left or the right end, you'll find the healthy cereals, but even those, you gotta be conscious about reading the back labels. Sure, it has 6 or 9 or 15 grams of protein and it's marketed as healthy.

But what is the sugar content on the back? Because it's easy to distract people from sugar content when you've got protein, you've got organic, you've got all these key health words that are distracting from how much the sugar is. And I think part of what makes it so  vicious, you talk about weaponization and target marketing.

is the fact that sugar seems to be the most time efficient.  Think about the sugary cereals, for example. Moms and dads who have kids and they're busy, it's easier to give them the cereal that's loaded with sugar and whatever, than to stop and make a healthy breakfast or a salad. I mean, it's time management.

Think about even fast food, with processed food and sugars. It's easy to Pick that up, then make an organic meal. And so it's really easy to market processed foods and sugary foods because they're efficient. They're quick. They can be in the, and they come in a lot more, uh, so to speak, cold forms that require a little prep compared to warm foods.

So it's definitely, you know, easily. Marketed to a lot of the youth and I want to go back you talked about children You know most having sugar from from in the womb. I want to focus specifically on pregnant women You know, would you advise pregnant women to be on a sugar free diet?  Wow, you're going right to my heart my friend.

So look Um, I raised those boys sugar free and, uh,  they,  you know, uh, this is my own personal opinion and we've done a sugar free,  uh, kids summit before too, okay, where we talked to 40  of the world's leading experts in pediatricians and doctors and nutritionists and stuff about sugar. And now even the government, um, uh, Which is woefully  behind on the recommendations of food and the food pyramid and stuff.

Say that kids under two should have no added sugar in their diet, you know. So that's a bonus, but this was 35 years ago when I was. Right, right.  And um. You know, they, uh, you know, you're going to think, um, this is just dad bragging or, you know, whatever you think I'm lying to you. But my boys are like rocket scientists, smart, and I'm just not that smart.

They, I, they, their brain developed better genuinely. And now there's two or three. And one of them's got a simple name, First Thousand Days, okay? The first stop from conception to, uh, two or three, the first thousand days, the brain is growing so much. And if you look at it on the other end, with the diabetes, uh, three, the Alzheimer's, You know, and you start to understand the actual science that's exploded in the last two or three years, and we've talked about the frontal cortex and the dopamine and stuff, that the brain, this is a brain illness, and that the brain development of children is so important to,  you know, if a woman develops. 

To a child. If, if a woman finds out that she's pregnant and she's got a u uh, substance use disorder, alcoholism or drugs, she c she can quit that day. Like it's, she don't need to go to treatment, she doesn't need to do anything. She will quit that day. Same with smoking. Quit that day. Walk out, throw the cigarettes in the garbage.

I've seen it and, and, you know, they, they've been trying to quit drinking for years, but then accidentally or whatever, they get pregnant and they'll just quit that day. It's amazing. Well, the same thing with sugar, you know what I mean? Except, you know, my mother gained 60 pounds on a,  on a, uh, on a hundred pound frame, uh, when she had me and she told me she just, she only ate sugar.

Like she, you got to think about it, especially in a first birth, like they're nervous and their go to has always been a sugar. And so they, and it, and it's always kind of cute, you know, you, you have the hot fudge sundae with pickles on it. It's like a kind of a myth or something that they have funny tastes and whatever.

And, you know, it's just.  It's insidious. I think it's criminal to, uh, to ingest sugar during a pregnancy and or to give children sugar. They're 1, They don't shop. They don't drive. They don't even know that they're eating sugar. They don't care. Yeah. Like, what's the difference? Like, feed them whole food, right?

And  again, you know. This is no measure, but it's a kind of a societal measure that my, my boys, uh, got perfect scores on their college entrance exams. That's Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates kind of stuff. It's almost impossible to do a damn near impossible to do and to them. Substances  were not are not are not attractive like they don't you they never have used substances didn't develop like my I did alcoholism because they didn't think of it as a self soothing method because their original gateway drug is we started this thing. 

They didn't have an attraction to a substance to help them self soothe. It just didn't  in their life. Right now. You know, I mean,  The answer to your question is  categorically, I don't know what the way it was phrased, but children should not be using sugar.  I believe 50 years from now, they're gonna have a, they're gonna say, you know, they used to give sugar to kids, right?

They're gonna, we're gonna have the diagnostic tools to prove the things that I'm saying about the brain chemicals and about the brain reward system, right?  And so, It's really important that people understand this and it's sad. Uh, you know, it's just like I've been doing this for, you know, a decade. I've interviewed 400 of the world's leading experts, all of my contemporaries, all the people who I used to be the chairman of the board of the food addiction Institute and all of the people there and all the people.

95 percent of our clients are women between 40 I like to say 40 was closer to 50 and 80 or 90 years old  and it's so mind boggling that Women of childbearing age do not have this awareness.  I Just don't get it really There are a few, but it's rare, very rare, and I think that it's time has come, it's coming, it's, it's, it's actually here now, scientifically, uh, that, and I, have I, have I emphasized this point? 

No, people who are pregnant should not ingest sugar. And, and they should stop as soon as they find out they are  pregnant. For sure. You know, we talked,  there's two episodes I'm going to reference from my show, where we kind of had a conversation about sugar and its effects in terms of children. The first was how to have, you know, childlike joy in your adult life with Moj, and we talked about how  Kids would naturally grow up liking vegetables and fruits, but when you give them all these candies, all these sweeter, you know, artificial substances, it makes it hard for them to grow up and develop taste buds that actually like, you know, fruits and vegetables because they have that option.

In a similar sense, in our episode with Logan Hufford on the tragic reality of men's pornographic addiction, he gave this analogy for pornography, but it's true to real life. He said that if you look at. Real life, real women, as whatever, you know, God designed fruit to be, a strawberry, watermelon, whatever fruit that you really enjoy that's sweet.

Now you take pornography and social media, and that's like your, you know, your M& M's, your Hershey bar, whatever. Candy it is. It's a hundred times sweeter than that strawberry or watermelon could ever be. It was naturally designed to only Be a certain sweetness and that was the sweetest but humanity went and made artificial enhancements to make something sweeter So in in the social media world, that's you know body enhancements.

That's Certain, you know content all that stuff. And so i've always enjoyed i've been thinking about that analogy a lot, you know, like  We have natural sugars out there that you know  Are good to some degree that are healthy to some degree compared to, like you said, the dosage. I believe that the dosage of, yes, fruits are high in sugars, but are they as high as these processed sugars that we're seeing that are far stronger, you know, that have additionally, you know, high fructose corn syrup on top of everything else.

So. I think when you're raising your children,  so many people even just give them candy to, to, to like, leave me alone, like here, have candy as a bribe, you know, candy is used as a, a bribe or as a cheer up and as a reward and or to cheer up, you know, like, Oh, you're sad, let's go get ice cream. And I'm not saying that's bad parenting necessarily, but that's that development of, you know, it becomes a comfort food.

You mentioned eating disorders and we've had a couple episodes of my show about eating disorders and people eating large amounts of  Not necessarily sugar because any food could be a comfort food or a eating disorder food But typically it is you know, the sweets or junk food or what people you know There's not a lot of people who go to salad as a comfort food, you know, there's not a lot of eating disorders where people are out here eating, you know, fruit bowls and salads as their comfort food.

It's typically ice cream, I would say, is probably the number one snack, chips and ice cream, but there's plenty of other ones. So I think it's interesting, like you said, I mean, as far as, as whether you're a believer in God or just the natural world. Kids were meant to come out of the womb and eat all amounts of chocolate and candy.

They were meant to eat regular natural food that's out there, which is meat and plants and vegetables. So yeah, no, you're right. That's true. It's hard. It's hard to watch. You know, being an obese kid is hard. You know,  it should be child abuse in my opinion. When I've seen children, you know, young, young children who are so overweight.

And to me, that's just child abuse because it's not the kid's fault. Like you said, they don't even know what they're eating. They don't have conscious eating habits or that information. So to me, when I see that, I say the parents are neglecting or, you know, they could be uneducated, but it's just, it's just cruel to see that.

Like you said, I believe it, man. And it is, you know, like the kids don't mean to be mean. They're not trying to, you know, but they, they go with the crowd and, you know, to have that. Uh, you know, fatty, fatty, you know, name calling and stuff that hurts a kid's development, you know, it's just hard not to mention we have an epidemic of five year olds with fatty liver disease.

That's like an alcoholic's disease, right? Yeah, that's awful to hear that. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. And so talking about you've mentioned a couple of different books and scientific studies, but you also have your own book, The Last Resort Sugar Detox Guide. Can you tell us a little bit about that?  Yeah, the book came out in 2018 and, uh, you know, you can get it free on Amazon if you have a Kindle, um, and  it's probably in need of a little updating on the diet plan, the food plan part of it, but it's really my story, the story of me and the kids and how I came to understand all this.

And, uh, it's got a lot of great recommendations. Um, you can download it from the website, sugaraddiction. com too, it's also free there. Um, but, uh, you can get a hard copy on Amazon, but, you know, it really kind of kicked off as I said earlier, the, the,  you know, the recognition that, you know, we've got these support systems, we've got these coaches, we've got all this kind of stuff.

So, yeah,  for sure. So would you say it's a, it's a great resource for people looking to, would you say it encourages them to try? You know, detoxing themselves of sugar as well as a guide for people who are struggling to stay, quote, sober from sugars to stay sugar free.  Oh, absolutely. We also have a 30 day detox, which is, you know, I've redone four times.

That thing is real.  It's comprehensive because it's, you know, after 40, 000 plus detoxes, it's, it's almost pattern recognition. I've seen it so many times. I can pretty much tell on what day, depending on how you come in, where your habit was when you came in. What day you're going to feel this, what day you're going to feel that, when you're going to, you know, it's going to come back out a little bit, you know,  when you're going to have to start working on your emotional life after the physical and all that.

So it's a very comprehensive way to ease yourself out of it. You know, you got to get 30 days of abstinence before you even begin the work. Most people in recovery understand that concept. I love the phrase. In, uh, in recovery, and if you've heard it, it's a good one, though, is, uh,  uh, treatment is discovery and meetings are recovery.

And I love that because that's the same with our detox. You got, you look, you got to eat whole food. You've got to  some level of abstinence. So you can kind of dig into your psyche and, and, and understand why you may have abused this drug, this substance, right? Why? You know, to break the chain of the unconscious use that is societal's, society's  view of sugar.

Um, and once you do that, then you have to start working on, if you had a real bad habit, weight is only a measure of the habit, you know. There's a lot of fins, sugar addicts. I got a coach who's an ultra marathoner, who's, you know. Yeah. You don't have to be overweight to be a sugar addict. But, self reported now, 74%  Of obese people are sugar addicts, you know,  for sure.

So you've talked about witnessing thousands of detoxes. So I have a big question for you. That's been on my mind. Is it better because I'm sure anyone thinking of of detoxing themselves trying this at home are going to see that there's two options really for them.  Either just completely cut out, like starting today or tomorrow, zero sugar, or  we can slowly cut back, cut back, cut back, cut back, downward until it's zero. 

Have you seen both approaches? Is one the right answer? Is it depending on the person? How should we go about this? Yeah, no good question. So look, um, no matter how far you cut back when you pull the band aid off, you're going to have the withdrawals. And the withdrawals, from people who've been through it three, four, five, six times, the withdrawals are pretty much the same, your withdrawals are going to be pretty much the same each time, no matter what you did.

Whether you start, you know, cut back or didn't cut back. The day you go zero, You, you get pretty much the same. And I will tell you that every time that you do it. So say you, you know, fail and fall back a couple of times, though, each time you try it, it gets a little harder, a little bit more difficult. So, and it looked very few people.

This is just relapse as part of the process. Very few people do it first time out the gate. You know, the goal is to don't quit quitting, you know, the goal is to just keep. Coming back or whatever phrases you want to use, but it's to just keep trying till you get it right. I've had coaches that, you know, two years in and out of the program, back and forth, back and forth.

And now they're coaches because, you know, they stuck with it.  For sure. And what I say is that the cutting back, I feel like. It leaves so much more room for temptation, because you can just overindulge just a little bit, just enough so you feel like you met your cutback requirement, but didn't cheat. So I think, you know, I think they call it cold turkey, you know, where you just drop everything.

Uh, but. Luckily, we have your free, online, or paid, uh, hardcover copy of the book to help guide us, as well as, I'm sure there are tons of resources out there to help us with this, like you said, it's getting more and more attention, which is what we want, which is why you're here on the show, to spread awareness, because really, like you said, people don't know, you know, we're being born and raised in a society where So, thank you You know, sugar is, is glorified in commercials.

It's available everywhere at the tips of your fingers. I mean, you can order, you know, milkshakes and, and candy to your door. You don't even have to leave the house anymore. So it's definitely an issue. One could call it an epidemic, but you said that you're seeing even the government now start to get some movement on that.

So that's great. And I'd love to just end things here. What would be your final message to everyone? You know, you've really talked about. Sugar, sugar foods, processed foods, addiction, and then just the, the effects of them that are really overlooked. So what would be your final message to everyone?  I think the important one, and you were talking about it earlier, you know, the science of all this is very real now.

It's just not an awareness in the public's eye yet. Um, you know, I've been lucky to be talking to the world's leading experts, but, um, it's like smoking as the science catches up with the reality of it, it's going to be a while. Um, but, you know, if you're serious about your health and your weight and your children's health and weight,  sugar addiction is real.

It's not yet in the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, but there are work groups to try and start getting that process going and to get that happening, and it will, in our lifetime, be something you'll be able to sign into a treatment center for, just like drugs and alcohol. And believe me, I know, because I've talked to tens of thousands of these folks who are suffering and struggling with, you know, they don't drink or they don't use drugs, some of them.

But yes, it's, it's very real and, uh, and reading up about it. And I always say here, my, my message is just let the information light on you.  Just going with an open mind and, you know, try and you've tried everything else in the world, like. All of these  diets, you know, there's the diet industry is 78 billion dollars enough to feed the entire unfed world every year we spend on trying to reduce it and we're still.

at 95 percent of people losing any amount of weight gain at all back. So we're failing miserably, and the obesity crisis continues. To look at sugar or ultra processed carbohydrates in this really reframe of your show and this message that it might be an addiction. Nobody wants to be an addict. I get that.

I understand that. You know, they think of the guy with the brown paper bag under the bridge. This is, this is not a  moral issue. This is a healthcare issue. And if you just let that information light on you and, and maybe accept it and maybe, you know, just give it a chance, give abstinence a chance and give the work around addiction recovery, basically codependency recovery, saying no, sticking up for yourself, stop people pleasing and setting boundaries.

Uh, you may be able to walk out of this thing. Okay. So,  you know, and, and most of all, be kind to yourself. Stop. Like, it's, I like to relieve people's stress that it's not their fault. It, we grew up in this society. Your parents didn't know the, the food manufacturers, they knew, but they didn't, you know, I don't blame them.

So, you know, just it, but it is your responsibility now that you know, and you listen to this show. To maybe take a, an alternative path to explore why you've not been able to lose weight or regain your health. So, that's, that's the short version of, of my long, of my long messaging, so. Right, you know, it's crazy to think, you, you mentioned smoking, I think that's a great example, because my mom and dad, they're in their late 50s, and when they went to high school, They had smoking lounges where they and the teachers would just smoke cigarettes together, you know, so in the same sense that I say That's crazy.

I can't believe they used to smoke in high school and have lounges for it Do you think that my kids might say dad you had candy and pop tarts in the vending machines in high school? That that is an insane thought but like you said as the science comes out as the truth comes out just like There used to, there used to be, you know,  asbestos, you know, was used to be built and everything, you know.

Time and science and the truth will, will come out and then things will change, but it starts with awareness. So ladies and gentlemen, what I want you to do today is, well, first they check out Mr. Michael Collins in description below, his website and book, but additionally  take a look in your life. Where are you with sugar?

What is that relationship looking like? Is it one, like Mr. Collins said to that, of codependency, you know? When are you eating sugar? Why are you eating sugar? And do you need to be? And the answer is no. So, ladies and gentlemen, Be sure to check out Mr. Collins in description below. And Mr. Collins, thank you so much for coming on the show and addressing a topic that is almost taboo that people don't want to talk about, like you said, for a number of reasons, but I appreciate you sharing your time today to put this out into the world. 

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been an honor.