People smoke more, cook less and exercise: Our author Karina Lübke observes a trend towards vice and defends her little guilty pleasures.
My last three years have been underwhelming – in every way. I have neither started smoking or smoking weed, nor have I drastically changed my moderate alcohol consumption. But I cried, brooded and ate more, catastrophized on the internet and consumed chips and sweets to calm down. At the same time, I moved a lot less, what with the constant “Stay at home, don’t meet anyone!” However, it was also the top priority of the pandemic. Sitting alone on the sofa in front of a screen with washed hands seemed to be the safest place – even against inner insecurity in these frightening times, when “outside” from one day to the next the rules of previously normal behavior no longer applied and you had to meet fellow human beings on the Street dodged in panic like zombies in a computer game.
Was that healthy? Yes and no. Rather the lowest category of self-care work. And like for many, it’s also a lifestyle change.
The Corona period has exposed the modern illusion of autonomy and self-efficacy. We were so used to being able to determine, move and plan everything ourselves, from vacation to the next career step. But suddenly, for the first time in our lives, we had to realize with a shock that even in modern everyday life and despite all the information, relatively little can be planned; especially in relation to the incredibly great effort to foresee all dangers and keep them at bay. Even a trip from Hamburg to the North Sea was no longer possible!
Where is the sense of achievement?
We followed all the rules, no matter how absurd they were (I’m just saying jogging in the forest with an FFP2 mask!), and yet things continued to go in the wrong direction: Corona was followed by war, inflation, earthquakes – and a happy ending is not yet in sight. Psychologists call this a “stacking crisis.” There has been a lack of success and positive future prospects for too long. And at some point everyone was mentally exhausted: It’s no use anyway! Nihilism instead of optimism. Society is too constantly stressed to pay attention to its health. Because there are too many other construction sites.
Because of worries about the present, precautions fell by the wayside. Many studies also support this: For the first time in years, more people are smoking again – especially young women, where the rate has doubled within a year. Among 18 to 24-year-olds it was even 40.8 percent. A fashionable (un)kind of contempt for death? The last time smoking was fashionable, people didn’t know so much about the health risks.
I think the unexpected nostalgia could also be fueling the unhealthy trend: According to a survey, 56 percent of young people between 18 and 34 long for it a life in the good old 80s and 90s instead of looking forward to the future. Oh, be as carefree as Kate Moss was when she was drunk, on coke and with a cigarette in her hand! And she’s still alive!
Indifference: The New Trend
No wonder that the bad old “heroin chic” look is back, you see it a lot on Tiktok right now. Indifference seems to have become cooler than health. If there is no longer a clear connection between discipline, good behavior and profit distribution, anything that keeps the joy of life sparkling is welcome as an alternative. The principle well known from diets delayed gratification as opposed to spontaneous satisfaction of needs works best in peaceful times. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?! Just have fun for a moment, forget all your worries, enjoy, laugh, and don’t constantly think about the consequences. Alcohol, sugar, cigarettes and fatty pizza from the delivery service are not good in the long term, but they are really great in the short term. And even the most optimized life ends sometimes, albeit as a corpse with the lowest levels of pollutants in the cemetery.
According to a study by the University of Oxford, as a result of the corona pandemic and its measures, life expectancy in many countries has fallen more sharply than at any time in Western Europe since the Second World War – even more for men than for women. Two thirds of Germans complain about poorer health than before the pandemic. Closed gyms, loneliness, unergonomic furnishings in makeshift home offices – all of this leads to weight gain, shortness of breath, back and neck pain, among other things. Star chef Jamie Oliver complains that fewer people are cooking fresh food after the lockdowns than before. And 25 percent more cases of depression and anxiety disorders worldwide, that was the conclusion of the World Health Organization after just one year of Corona. Now there are likely to be many more. “It’s a custom from time immemorial: If you have worries, you also have liqueur”wrote the satirist and illustrator Wilhelm Busch, the forefather of the bad boys Max and Moritz, as early as 1865.
In general, a certain lack of discipline seems to have become fashionable: Under the hashtag #guiltypleasure, mostly female scapegoats confess on Instagram. However, the “sins” that were openly confessed there disappointed me greatly: While the weirdest fetishes should be viewed as normal these days, completely normal and good things are confessed to be sins here in the form of memes: “My ‘guilty pleasure’ is to be comfortable Wear clothes, light a scented candle and read a good book in bed. So please – sins have sometimes been more sinful! Is that what you want to brag about later in the retirement home?
It’s so distracting
Well, my ridiculous sins weren’t any better, or cooler. I hereby confess, for the last three years Wasting way too much time playing mini-games on my phone. I monotonously popped bubbles or jewels of the same color or hurled “Angry Birds” at cartoon pigs.
Of course I’m embarrassed! Hey, during all this playful time I could have been learning Spanish or mastering the basics of Korean! But it was such a nice distraction from the constant barrage of bad news and worries and had something incredibly meditative and calming about it. Just like the Crémant-assisted binge-watching of “Emily in Paris.” In times of strained nerves, this was the fastest therapy available.
A friend of mine, on the other hand, was consistently #ThatGirl – namely, she, that plans and executes her existence perfectly, has everything under control and also looks great. She hates dark chocolate, but still only eats hard chocolate because it is so healthy because of the polyphenols. Yes, THAT guy is her.
Celery juice is not a guarantee of a happy future
In the meantime, however, even she has had to experience how reality has kicked in the back of her theoretical ideals: Despite celery juice in the morning, there is unfortunately no guarantee of 90 years of happiness and well-being. For some time now, she’s been surprising me with hedonistic behavior – like keeping a constant supply of delicious chocolates – including ones filled with gin or grappa, which are the hipster equivalent of grandma’s brandy beans. When I gently asked her about it, she offered the following surprising explanation: “If you enjoy something unhealthy a LOT, it won’t harm your body, on the contrary!” That seems to me more wishful thinking than science, but who knows for sure today? I think she’s on to something great: the healthy middle ground.
Karina Lübke separates trash and words in Hamburg. Her favorite guilty pleasures are her car and not sleeping until after midnight.