The brain has an uncanny ability to recollect taste and smell. Which really helps provide some objective frame of reference in our otherwise faulty memories.
Twenty years without stuffed cabbage. Back then I couldn’t bear the sight. Felt like eating minced meat in soiled rags. I can still taste it.
Case point: save for the taste which I can reconstruct as soundly as my middle name, the rest of that is fluff. To what extent did I really scorn stuffed cabbage? Were that the universal case or subject to one particularly rotten stuffed-cabbage fancy? Did twenty fortuitous stuffed-cabbage-free years really thunder by at a blink? And did stuffed cabbage play no other part in their development? On no single occasion?
Can’t be sure of anything these days, save for this: be it twenty years or a spare moment, I could scarce forget that despicably tasting delicacy.
Nowhere close in space nor time, the scent of soaked yerba mate leaves invades the proboscis. Even coffee doesn’t produce villainy of this magnitude. Shamanism? Encantamento, to which Don Quijote would ascribe the otherwise inexplicable?
Or is Yerba Mate the stronger narcotic?
Narcotic? Yes, if we’re to speak plainly. Similarly to coffee, tea and chocolate, it packs stimulants: predominantly caffeine, supplemented by others I’ve never pronounced. Thus between the ceremonious, the chemical and the olfactory, it lends well to habit formation.
The stronger narcotic? Lesser caffeinated per dry weight than coffee. More caffeine dispensing once consumed traditionally over enough water cycles, compared to even one powerful coffee cup. But the effect of the former generally distributes over many hours that might otherwise entice more coffee; and stimulates in a manner more subdued. So play the numbers as you will.
The better narcotic? Better than coffee if I’m to appeal to the generally documented properties. And very plausibly the single most marginally impacting element to my better stomach functioning.
Better than sugar, that other narcotic pervasive across mankind. Don’t care how natural or chemical. Better than most carbohydrates, likewise addictive.
Anyway, one can manipulate the figures all day, fitfully, willy nilly.
Society is a bunch of drug addicts to varying degree. That part should be obvious. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me.
And I’ve heard of (less met) few beings devoid of any notable sugar or stimulants or alcohol or sufficient carbohydrates. And if not that, I hold some dopamine inducing presence suspect. But such beings must exist as surely as the grey hairs on my chin. It’s something admirable.
Circling back to our impressive olfactory imprint. Though of benefit to the species, the greater benefit probably bestows our nature self-sufficient counterparts or predecessors; triggering all this hazardous cognitive byproduct otherwise. Room for thought.
Questions, comments? Connect.