TEN SECONDS TO SELF-DESTRUCT…

I’ve been thinking lately about self-destructive behaviours, and why so many of us love to engage in them. Some examples? Overeating. Smoking. Tanning. I could go on…the point is, so many people have at least one self-destructive vice in their lives, and the amazing part of it is that we know the vice is self-destructive, yet we keep on indulging in it.

What got me thinking about this? Well, I read all about Jen’s trip to Paris, and remembered fondly my short stay there a decade ago. When we talked on the phone, I remarked on her pictures and on the beauty of the city. Her response? "Yeah, but I just couldn’t stand the smoking everywhere!" Turns out that even though Paris has enacted some non-smoking rules in restaurants, that only applies to the inside of the restaurants. Sitting on the patio enveloped in a haze of nicotine exhalations, Jen watched the people go by, most of them smoking. Pregnant women smoking. Women with babes in arms smoking. Young teenagers smoking. These are sights that are pretty much anathema here in most Canadian cities.

I uttered a number of shocked rejoinders, and was about to say, "how can they do that when surely they know what the health risks are?" when I realized that everyone does things despite knowing what the health risks are. A Parisian woman might come to any North American city and not notice the lack of cigarette smoke everywhere, but would certainly remark on the over-abundance of, well, over-abundant people. She would think, "how can they eat until they are so fat when surely they must know what the health risks are?"

Another self-destructive behaviour that we love to engage in is tanning. Not last week there was a story that ran on all the major Canadian TV news shows about tanning and the link to skin cancer. Did you know that Canada’s skin cancer rate has risen steadily over the past 30 years, despite the advent of sunscreens and many public education campaigns? Also, the rate of malignant melanoma (the more dangerous kind of skin cancer) has doubled since 1978, yet we Canadians (especially young women) continue to go out in the sun unprotected and — what’s much, much worse — continue to use tanning beds at an ever-increasing rate. Tanning beds are essentially skin-cancer ovens, bathing the skin in nothing but cancer-producing UV rays. A WHO study has shown that people who used a tanning salon before the age of 35 are 75% more likely to get melanoma; a finding which has been backed up by other subsequent studies. And yet, tanning bed use and sun-bathing are only on the rise in Canada.

So. We overeat. We tan. French people smoke. Pick your poison.

The point is, we all engage in some self-destructive behaviours, even when we know what the risks are. Reason tells us that we would simply say no to self-destructive behaviours, and for most of them, we do. I don’t smoke. At all. I am a fanatic with sunscreen and sun hats and wouldn’t even set foot in a tanning salon (although I did do it as a teenager, when they were thought to be safer than "real" tanning because they filtered out UVA rays). But overeating? That’s much harder for me to resist. So what’s behind it? I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have a feeling there must be something there, some reason why the feel-good factor of a bad habit outweighs the logical part of our brain screaming "NO! Don’t DO that! It’s bad for you!"

I just wish I knew what it was and how to overcome it, don’t you?