Putting Treats on the Altar

This piece may be more than what some are able to hear today. I implore you to center yourself on our shared belief that a better world is on the horizon and we will not be oppressed forever. There is a path forward without capitalism and oppression, and we will destroy their systems in our venture forward. Our collective future relies on our ability to critically release our relationship to capitalism as it stands along with the nefarious tendrils it extends into what may seem to be our fond companions.

Our best chance of success in the face of facism today is looking to our revolutionary predecessors who left us detailed instructions; Malcolm X, a Muslim and Black revolutionary, worked personally on an addiction recovery program in his autobiography. In Malcolm’s youth he relied on the black market of drugs in Harlem and openly admitted to using multiple forms of addictive drugs. Later he identified that the same system he relied on in childhood was designed to keep him and his community under oppression. Malcolm developed a 6-step program for addiction using the following tenants:

The addict has to admit that he is an addict
The addict is taught why he used narcotics and alcohol
The addict is taught that there is a way to stop their addiction
The addict’s self-image and ego are built up and anchored in self-power
The addict must voluntarily go through a cold-turkey to break with the drugs
The addict’s characteristics of hostility and suspicions are addressed

Full of empathy and understanding, Malcolm’s efforts to reduce addiction and abuse were honorable and full of hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also no stranger to the perils of addiction. From an article by Hampton Sides in 2011, King himself struggled with alcohol use, increasing his consumption toward the end of his life to cope with the strain of fighting oppression. In a 1958 advice column King responds to a young man’s submission saying, “Alcoholism is a disease which needs the most expert medical care. A person whom he trusts can probably persuade him to seek this expert treatment… [If] you solve this [problem] each succeeding [problem] will be easier. You have youth, health and strength.”

Fred Hampton, leader of the Black Panthers, aptly referred to the same sickness of addiction as “chemical warfare” and encouraged members to be wary of the role of addiction in their lives and communities. As a party, they endorsed the formulation of Capitalism + Drugs = Genocide, an inflexible equation of the inevitable. In an interview with Rev. Julian DeShazier by the Huffington Post, he says King would hold a similarly wary stance on the war on drugs (before it truly began under the Nixon administration), “When we as a society make something illegal – in this case drug use – we should be very careful. We aren’t just telling people they shouldn’t do something. We are giving ourselves a mandate to arrest them, and very often to put them in jail or prison. The opposite of legalizing drug use is not some vague immediate stage of moral disapproval. It is incarceration.”

For revolutionaries in the U.S. particularly, our past leaders and great thinkers have clearly carved out consistent concerns of how the state relies on addiction to excuse their response of force. Addiction has taken many forms from the opium trade of Eastern Asia to Fentanyl use today, but the message remains the same: it will bring nothing but suffering for you and your community.

From the 2016 publication “Drug War Peace” by the Drug User Peace Initiative, “[Drug law] effectively criminalises people who use drugs themselves, and in some countries it is illegal to even have drugs in one’s bloodstream: it is illegal to be a drug user. People who use drugs are therefore inherently vulnerable to police interference and harassment, being publicly searched, being subjected to invasive strip and

cavity searches, being arrested, and being imprisoned.” In fact, drug related charges account for nearly half of incarcerated individuals at 43.8% representation (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025). These laws and disproportionate application affects our non-white, non-cis, and non-straight comrades primarily. Our society still struggles with its relationship to alcohol with a whopping 85% of people 18+ who have used the substance at some point – imagine getting 85% of Americans to agree to anything. Beyond who is willing to try it, just under 25% of people 18+ reported that they had participated in binge drinking in the last month (NIH, 2024) and nearly the same rate of people generally say alcohol has caused problems in their family (Gallup, 2024).

Alcohol has obviously been a struggle for the working class and has been a vector for abuse and control over the proletariat, but according to statistics by Dr. Kristen Fuller, MD, “Gen Z is the first generation to take a noticeable stance on abstaining from alcohol… they are known as the ‘sober curious’ generation.” It seems the state’s tool of incapacitation and violence is not as strong over the newest batch of revolutionaries, which begs the question: is alcohol the only front in the war for bodily autonomy in our revolution today? After all, we know that capitalists are nothing if not excellent parasites hoping to squeeze every last drop from us and move on to a new sales pitch easily. In the same way that cigarettes went largely out of style (and exposure to children declined significantly), alcohol may also have seen its heyday and the people may be waking up to the consequences of capitalistic “fun,” Without the ability to use addiction to alcohol, what ploys does Capitalism still have hidden?

One front could be our relationship to caffeine and processed foods. I know this is a deeply personal relationship to a lot of my comrades and many will feel resistant to the concept of forgoing our treats, particularly treats that represent the few ways we still can achieve a little serotonin boost during the day. For many of us food represents control or joy or consistency, and I do not wish to reduce anyone’s sense of control or joy or consistency in the world. But now is the time to consider being more uncomfortable for the good of humanity and free ourselves from anything we cannot produce ourselves. This fact rings true: we cannot rely on the current systems of production and vow to overthrow them. Revolution requires free thinking, uninhibited by our desires and addictions. It is our responsibility right now to take as much control over our selfhood as possible and rid ourselves of any footholds capitalism still has in us.

The first component to begin breaking down is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Because corn is heavily subsidized, HFCS became a popular use of the product due to overproduction, leading to the cheaper sugar swap in many American food products. In a NIH paper, Richard Atkinson, a professor of medicine and nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says, “There are a lot of subsidies for the two things we should be limiting in our diet, which are sugar and fat, and there are not a lot of subsidies for broccoli and brussels sprouts.” For decades people have been warning each other of the seemingly addictive-parallel nature of excessively sweet and processed foods, based on their own experiences and little official scientific documentation. Similarly to the cigarette industry, food is difficult to research without the whims of powerful corporations affecting funding and release of information – what would Coke say and do to a study about how harmful it is to drink Coke? But brave researchers still tried to inform the public and HFCS has become a tumultuous topic, never to be addressed by the government who stayed staunchly invested in its production and use. According to the NIH, “We demonstrate that HFCS can impair dopamine function in the absence of weight gain or increased fat consumption. As reduced dopamine function has been implicated in compulsive behaviors and reduced energy expenditure.” In essence, HFCS’s effect on us is to make us want more and feel tired.

Feeling tired leads me to the more difficult aspect here: caffeine use and abuse. Capitalism uses exhaustion as a tool of oppression. By nurturing that problem they have offered the solution in the form of caffeine. In a 2014 study by the NIH, “at least 85% of the US population consumes at least one caffeinated beverage per day,” a statistic that seems to hold steady today, but I could not find a more recent official study. In addition to its constant use, caffeine comes with chemical dependency and therefore withdrawal symptoms, which can become severe. In a 2023 study researchers found “Withdrawal from caffeine causes mild to clinically significant distress and impairment of normal functioning. The severity of symptoms vary from individual to individual, and most commonly include a headache, fatigue, decreased energy/activeness, decreased alertness, drowsiness, decreased contentedness, depressed mood, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and feeling foggy/not clearheaded.” The study continues to note the rate of experiencing the most common withdrawal symptom (headaches) is about 50% and the rate of clinically significant distress sits at 13%.

In a Vox article from 2023, author Emily Stewart describes what we all feel to be true: drinking soda is normal and everywhere. It’s an acceptable alternative to alcohol, coffee, tea, even water. There is no environment where cracking open a bottle of Diet Coke wouldn’t be acceptable – even the Oval Office seems to have a high supply. But has anyone else noticed the price increase over the last several decades? From the article, “They’ve been pretty relentless in raising prices over the last few years, really ever since the pandemic. It’s not just Coca-Cola, but it’s PepsiCo and Keurig Dr. Pepper, too. They’ve just continued to raise prices with very little negative impact on their sales volume,” said Garrett Nelson, vice president and senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, a financial intelligence firm. Stewart goes on to explain that the increase in price has been inconsistent with the cost of production. “Shoppers are price sensitive, but they’re not very price aware, meaning most shoppers can’t name the price of more than 10 or a dozen different items that they buy regularly. Diet Coke is one where a regular purchaser of it will know what a good price is,” said Jon Hauptman, the founder and president of Price Dimensions, a retail consultancy.

I understand that the parallel I’m drawing between the alcohol addiction of yesterday’s civil right’s movement and today’s food and caffeine dependency might seem like evidence that I don’t understand true addiction and that we should not compare something so destructive like alcoholism to the mild effects of a missed afternoon pick-me-up, but to that response I would like to pose a question: if this addiction is somehow different, then why can’t we simply forego them? If we feel disruption inside ourselves at the suggestion of giving up a treat, do we really have control over our impulses concerning the treat? I would like to argue that capitalism has achieved something much more nefarious: an addiction so slight and ubiquitous that doesn’t affect our relationships because it is so socially accepted and therefore flies undetected, but remains an unactivated bomb in our hearts. In a scenario where we willingly remain squished under the thumb of caffeine and food reliance, we enslave ourselves to their form of production. It is in direct opposition to our struggle as a working class and has been a tool of colonizers that we must avoid in our communal future.

Sources

“Go after the black man in the mud”- Addiction, Malcolm X, and The Nation of Islam’s 6-Point Recovery Plan for Black People (2021)
https://medium.com/@sharrieff__/go-after-the-black-man-in-the-mud-addiction-malcolm-x-and-the-nation-of-islams-6-point-45d7cb5a4b0c

Revolutionary Discipline and Sobriety by Cliff Connolly (2020)
https://cosmonautmag.com/2020/08/revolutionary-discipline-and-sobriety-2/

Remembering Martin Luther King as a Man, not a Saint (2011)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/remembering-martin-luther-king-as-a-man-not-a-saint/2011/04/01/AFvQjTXC_story.html

Dr. King and the War on Drugs (2016)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dr-king-and-the-war-on-dr_b_9045106

MLK Jr Dear Abby
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/advice-living-12

Human Rights, Stigma, and Substance Use (2020)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7348456/#:~:text=people%20who%20use%20drugs%20need,and%20the%20possession%2C%20purchase%20and

50 Years Since the Panthers Formed, Capitalism + Drugs Still = Genocide
https://www.liberationschool.org/50-years-since-the-panthers-formed-capitalism-drugs-still-genocide/

Drug War Peace, INPUD (2016)
https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/INPUD/DUPI-Violations_of_the_Human_Rights_of_People_Who_Use_Drugs-Web.pdf

Offense Statistics – Federal Bureau of Prisons
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp

Alcohol Consumption in the US (2024)
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics-z/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-use-united-states-age-groups-and-demographic-characteristics#:~:text=According%20to%20the%202023%20NSDUH%2C%20172.9%20million%20adults%20ages%2018,drank%20in%20the%20past%20year.&text=3%2C4-,This%20includes%3A,69.1%25%20in%20this%20age%20group)

Gallup Alcohol Consumption (2024)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1582/alcohol-drinking.aspx#:~:text=The%20table%20presents%20data%20on,drinking%20and%2030%25%20not%20drinking.