Confessions Of An English Sand-Eater

15 February 2001
My name is James, and I have a problem.

I stood watching the green-grey waves collapse and run up the shore, hoping that one of them could be bothered to run far enough towards me to make my feet wet and cold. But the tide was going out, so that was getting less likely by the minute. Just like the rest of my life; what was once so full of promise, was now looking utterly hopeless. Young, fresh, just out of a reputable university course and yet it had proven impossible to find work. I was faced with a mountain of debt, had no way of clearing it, and could not see any way out of the problem. I was totally alone in the world, and saw no hope, except for disappearing Reginald Perrin-like into the infinite distance.

I looked up and down the grey beach that was the place of many a joyous summer as an infant, making sand-castles and finding shells. I knelt down to feel and smell the sand, repository of many a happy day. I remember looking at the small pile of grains in my hand and feeling like there was nothing else that remained in my life of any meaning. But the rush as I tasted the grit on my tongue and heard it rasp and squeak against my teeth erased all that had been before. I had new purpose. With hindsight, it was an act of pure desperation that would lead on to many other desperate acts in the future.

After the mental and spiritual release from my desperate situation at that young and tender age, I pursued my new purpose with a passionate vigour. As I write, having now spent the larger proportion of my life experiencing and investigating the varied effects of sand-eating, I am surely in such a position of knowledgeable authority to be fully justified in preparing this treatise. I have cultivated an intimate relationship with my narcotic lover, based on a deep and broad understanding of her many moods and incarnations. As the aim of this work is to provide a balanced record of my tumultuous d'alliance, I will simply recount the results of my lengthy experience of sand-taking, both while under her control, and during the struggle to free myself from it.

One of my first realisations in the early days of my youthful adventures was that it is very difficult to find suitable sand on the shores of my home island. True, there are some sandy beaches, such as the one from which I launched my passage to infamy. But there are all too many pebble and coral beaches, which provide an altogether too painful alternative to my chosen catalyst. This has clearly resulted in the substitution of sand-eating among the land-locked counties for the taking of gravel. This more coarse version, as I have discovered during some discourse with its practitioners, while requiring some conditioning and acclimatisation to its ingestion, does produce similar effects on the mind and spirit as my finer choice. Personally, I find this practice extremely vulgar, as there always remains evidence of their habit in the U-bend of their toilet bowl. Unnecessary too, as I discovered the ease with which more subtle and foreign alternatives can be ordered for import. Geology departments of local universities are all too happy to provide samples to Western scholars.

Upon journeying the length and breadth of my home land, and discovering little in way of palatable variation, I turned my attention to the multitudes of foreign possibilities. I settled upon two favourites, each the other's opposite, but both exquisite in every conceivable way. The first, Philippine White, is as fine as flour and even whiter. The fineness of this sand from a particular Philippine island, continually pounded and ground by the relentless South China Seas, means that it can be enjoyed in any array of circumstance, either mixed with food (a throw-back to the consumption of inevitably sandy sandwiches as a child) or alone, or even inhaled through the nose. This latter diversion I have attempted, although I do not feel that it is as worthwhile an exercise as the normal method.

My second choice from across the seas is the foreboding Hawaiian Black. This volcanic sand is coarse and heavy, and can only be properly enjoyed when taken by itself. Indeed, it is this variety that I took with me at all times, contained in a tiny chinoiserie snuff bottle worn around my neck. With this variety, the quality is improved dramatically if taken from the correct part of the beach. My preference is for exactly at the high-tide mark. While this may require more filtering to remove jots of jetsam, it is neither too salty due to constant mixing with sea-water, nor too earthy, due to proximity to soil.

And so I spent countless years of my adult life researching and experiencing every possible type and combination of sands, and such a devotion now tells its toll in my autumnal years. The main physical sign of my past is the state of my teeth. Regular use of sand does cause a significant acceleration in the wearing down of teeth. I now require a full set of dentures, and have done so for some time. But by far the most profound has been the effect of my anti-social behaviour for such an extended period of time. I consistently chose to take my sand alone in private, and would often turn my friends away and out of my house so that I could renew my acquaintance with that more powerful love of mine. It is this effect, multiplied over many years, that finally caused me to fight off the entrancing seducer that is sand.

But what can be done to protect society from the ultimately evil temptress that so claimed my life? Should we restrict entry onto our nations beaches? Should legislation be passed? Should we set up 'rehabilitation' clinics that provide patients with gradually ever decreasing amounts of grit in their food? Should we educate parents to prevent eating sand as children, so that the initial taste is not there to return ever more powerful in later life? I fear that such measures, although they will finally make public what has always been a silent social assassin, will not solve the problem of habitual sand-eating. It is too ingrained in our social psyche (remember tales of old where soldiers used to chew pebbles to stave off hunger), and all to virulent a force to be overturned by simple acts of men. My only hope is that my small story here will inspire those already caught in the web to attempt to break free. My salvation came too late.