The ideal pill

I don't know of this story first hand. What I mean is that I didn't know personally the mice who were part of the experiment. I don't know the scientists who conducted the experiment either. I read about it in a book.

Some mice drink from a bowl, and are given a shot so that a few hours later, they become nauseous. They learn very quickly not to drink from the bowl anymore. Some other mice drink from the same bowl, and two hours later they are given an electric shock. They do not learn not to drink from the bowl. The interpretation is that the mice are prewired to associate certain stimuli with certain reactions. It makes perfect sense.

(My girlfriend just gave me a present: some nougats from Le Pain Quotidien. I had to have one out of appreciation. Then I learned that she had bought them a long time ago and had just found them buried under papers in a drawer.)

On November 30, 1984, I went to the birthday party of a friend of my cousin. We were young, then, less than 21, even less than 18, in a country where you didn't have to wait. In the sense that I had gin with Coke, then more, and so much so that I had a black out. I couldn't drink gin for fifteen years after that. The smell was enough to make me feel like a mouse drinking from the wrong bowl.

I imagine a radical new diet, with a pill, that we will call N, that gives you nausea. You can eat as many sweets as you desire. Each time you do, you also swallow an N. If we follow the teaching of the mice, you should quickly stop going towards the sweets. On the other hand, please do not try to achieve the same with an electric chair. The mice would smirk at you.