Why You Can Quit Alcohol But Not Sugar — with Bitten Jonsson

Bitten’s own story begins with alcoholism in Sweden — where, as she puts it, being a woman and an alcoholic was one of the most shameful things a person could be. She hid her drinking for years as a “high-functioning” alcoholic, until an American she met brought her to the United States and eventually staged an intervention that landed her in a treatment center in Southern California. It was there, sitting in lectures on the brain and the dopamine system at the University of Irvine, that something clicked: her drinking wasn’t a moral failing. It was an illness.

She got sober, fell in love with addiction medicine, and years later quit smoking cold turkey after a two-day conference with addiction specialist Terry Gorski. But then, in her words, hell broke loose — she could not control her craving for chocolate and ice cream, even though quitting alcohol and nicotine had been comparatively manageable. A colleague finally said the words she didn’t want to hear: maybe you’re a food addict.

That contradiction sent Bitten on a decades-long path that began with a training in food addiction at Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago, and eventually led her to develop what she calls biochemical repair — a five-pillar framework for healing the addicted brain, built on abstinence, breathing, sleep, physical activity, and supplements.

We dive into ideas like:

• Why sugar and carb cravings can outpace even alcohol and nicotine cravings, and what that says about early, repeated exposure to “drug foods.”
• The five pillars of biochemical repair — and how each one evolved over decades of trial and error with real clients.
• The concept of the “addiction memory circuit” and “euphoric recall” — why a craving from childhood can resurface decades later, triggered by nothing more than a smell or a song.
• Why Bitten believes cravings never fully disappear, only lessen — and why she considers that reframe essential to lasting recovery.
• Her practical tools for craving management, including the “10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days” written exercise and her daily morning commitment ritual.
• The difference between a slip, a lapse, and a relapse — and why understanding that progression can be the difference between catching a problem early and losing years to it.

Bitten brings the perspective of someone who was doing this work before “food addiction” had any real acceptance in the medical world — decades of lived clinical experience distilled into a framework she still refines today.

If you’ve ever felt like willpower alone should be enough to stop the sugar, and wondered why it never quite was — this conversation is for you.