Dreamscape Diaries: A Bittersweet Dream

March 17th. 2:58 in the night.I just woke up.And I don’t feel too many weird symptoms in my body. But when waking up, I came directly out of a dream, so I’m going to try to relay the contents of that dream, which was a bit bizarre.What I can remember is this:Picture the scene. I think I was partly sitting up in bed in some room. If I remember correctly, the room was quite spacious. There was a large TV screen in front of the bed, some distance away. And I think the apartment had a second room with a few steps leading up to it—just three or four stairs. To the right of the TV screen there was a bigger opening where those stairs were, so it had a kind of open-plan layout.Anyway, it was me, and maybe my girlfriend as well, sitting in bed watching TV.And what was showing on the screen was some crappy mainstream entertainment show that was pretending to be fully live-broadcast, but obviously wasn’t. It was like those Swedish morning shows that I was partly exposed to when I was younger, where a host runs through a set of different guests each morning and they all present something.Maybe someone has just released a book. Maybe someone is a cook and is going to show a recipe to the audience. Maybe someone is a sports star who has recently competed internationally, and now Swedish viewers get to hear how it felt. Or whatever.Very mainstream, very banal stuff.Sometimes they might have some light discussion, like how to promote health, but in a very watered-down way.And in this show, which resembled that type of format, the host was discussing sugar consumption with someone else. Maybe even candy consumption specifically.The way it works in Sweden, of course, is that Sweden has developed an enormous consumption of pick-and-mix candy, but there is also a heavy consumption of sweet buns, sweet breads, and things of that nature.And in this discussion, they were talking about what people’s relationship to sugar and candy looks like. I think the other person in the discussion was some kind of pseudo-philosopher or something. And he brought up the idea that there are three main personality types when it comes to sugar.One is the abstainer—the one who is completely abstaining, almost religiously, from sugar. That might be due to health reasons, or it might be for other reasons.The second is the one who denies that sugar has any negative effects at all.And then there is the third type: the one who consumes it out of convenience, but manages to live in two worlds at once.That is the person who can convince themselves that they do not eat a lot of sugar, but then mentally switch modes at certain points during the day or the week—as is often the case with Swedish people. So their baseline mentality is that they are not really a sugar eater, but then their mind leaves a little room, a bit of wiggle room, so that throughout life they can slot sugar in here and there and convince themselves that it isn’t really bad for them.So they live in two worlds simultaneously.And while I was watching this, for some reason there was candy around me. I was about to go to bed, but I started nibbling away at it.And bear in mind: I haven’t touched sugar, literally, for all of these eighteen months. And before that, I was already very much not a sugar consumer, especially not in candy form. I might have had an ice cream or two throughout a given year, but that was about it.Still, what has happened in my history is that I was brought up in Swedish society, where I was heavily exposed to things like sweet breads, and especially pick-and-mix candy.So I did have a habit as a child of binge-eating pick-and-mix candy. It was basically indoctrinated into us.Every Saturday, company agendas had successfully pushed the idea that Swedish families—parents and children alike—should have a free day of free rein to binge on candy. It even has its own term: lördagsgodis.It’s similar to how Santa Maria managed to push the agenda that all Swedish people should eat tacos on Fridays.And some Swedes might remember how, a decade ago or more, a Swedish chicken company tried to claim Fridays too, with all those commercials saying Friday was chicken time.“På torsdag är det soppa, på lördag är det fest, men fredag är ändå den dagen som känns bäst.”Yeah. Disgusting stuff.I don’t know the full background of how pick-and-mix candy became associated with Saturdays, but obviously there was a lot of advertising money behind that as well. There were probably a few jingles along the way too.Candy in the DreamBut in the dream, I am now nibbling away at this candy, and I think that by the end of the show it has amounted to quite a substantial quantity.Which I feel disgusted by even just conceptualizing.And then, in the dream, I fall asleep.And then I suddenly wake up in the dream.So I’m still not actually awake. It’s not that I wake up in real life and think this happened. Rather, inside the dream, I wake up and think that this actually happened.And then, in the dream, I start pondering the cancer effects of sugar—and specifically the effects of acute sugar consumption in this kind of binge format.Because in the dream I can still somehow relate to my actual cancer situation, the ongoing one, with me having metastatic cancer.And I think I land on the conclusion that a sugar binge might well have some sort of short-term effect, even if it is not the be-all and end-all. So my tumor tissue is not going to suddenly explode because of one sugar binge, but it is definitely not a good thing.I don’t think I had time in the dream to reach any final conclusion about how I would approach sugar going forward.But somewhere around that point, I woke up for real, and I was just laughing to myself about the whole thing.Why would I be sitting there watching this crappy mainstream TV show?Why would I have candy around me?And why would I be binging on it?Aren’t human minds funny and intriguing.So I’m glad I could remember at least some of it and relay it here.Now I’m going to try to fall back asleep. I just need to go and urinate, and then I should be ready to sleep again.So I’m wishing you sweet dreams.But if not sweet, then at least funny.Namaste. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victorsalander.substack.com