Some folks call him Puff Daddy. I’ve heard him referred to as The Mad Russian of Brookline. I simply call him the Miracle Worker.

I first heard about Yefim Shubentsov 12 years ago. People said folks from all over the world came to see him to end their addictions and that he had an 81 per cent success rate. So four years ago I made my appointment. I hadn’t decided what I was going to “give up” but I knew sugar would be involved.

As my husband and I drove to Boston I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to end. I knew I couldn’t give up sugar entirely, but certainly I could give up one of its cousins. Joel drives while I mull it over. I know I can’t give up pie. My daughter in law makes the best pies in the world. Ice cream? Not good for me anyway. Double badness. Heavy cream plus sugar. Ice cream is a possibility. Hold on to that thought. Except how am I going to live without Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and Breyers mint chip, to say nothing of Häagen-Dazs coffee?

Cookies? I’m very picky about cookies. I only eat homemade and the ones that I can’t resist are those round buttery ball things with the hazelnuts rolled into powdered sugar. So maybe that’s my best bet. But then it wouldn’t be that big a sacrifice since Christmas is the only time those wedding cookies come across the transom.

I moved on to cake. I’m pretty specific about cake as well. I like white cake with white frosting garnished with French vanilla ice cream. But that’s a combo that doesn’t often present itself, so what would be the big renunciation?

It would have to be Twizzlers. Truth be told, I am never without an extra large bag of Twizzlers somewhere within chewing reach. When my kids were little I kept them in my underwear drawer. I shudder to think of Freud — 100 per cent cotton bloomers, red dye number two and my kids on the doctor’s couch.

Once I made my decision that candy would get the hatchet job, I began to realize how much candy I actually do consume. People always say, oh my God, you live two minutes from Chilmark Chocolates. How do you resist? I don’t tell them that chocolate is too much of a class act for me. I also don’t say that I’m a bottom feeder in the confection department. Movie candy (Dots), Halloween candy (Starbursts) and Easter candy (marshmallow bunnies) are much more my style. Spearmint leaves and Necco wafers (just the pink and white ones) work too, but all compete for a close second to those twisted cherry red sticks.

As I am ascending the stairs of the lovely brownstone in Brookline, I have an epiphany. This is not going to be a private session. I am not sure how I feel about that. We sit in a huge semi circle with Shubentsov center stage. He lectures for two hours straight. With his thick Russian accent and all of us leaning forward straining to understand him, we get the main message. When we’re tempted to indulge in our particular addiction, we should “eegnore” it and think about something else.

Yeah right, I think, just like how it worked in natural childbirth.

He goes around the room from individual to individual asking why we are there. The first guy says cigarettes, the second guy says drugs, the third one is a woman and she says alcohol and it just goes on from smoking to drugs to smoking to alcohol to smoking again. I am close to the end and I am sitting there thinking, no way am I going to say Twizzlers. When he finally gets to me I feel like I am trivializing real people’s very real problems. Eating sugar doesn’t break up families, you don’t stop making mortgage payments because of your habit and you don’t slink around looking for someone to manipulate for money. And believe me I have asked myself a million times, what is the hole I am trying to fill? What is the sweetness I am missing?

I whisper, “I think I’m in the wrong room.”

“What’s problem?” he bellows.

“Candy,” I say softly. “I eat candy all the time.”

“No problem,” he yells.

After his lecture, where he must have said the word “eeegnore” about 20 times, he meets with each of us one on one.

“Look at you,” he says when it is my turn. “You are beautiful woman. You are in good shape. Sit down.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “When you feel something, open eyes.”

I have never been able to be hypnotized and I don’t even know if that’s what he is doing, but I feel nothing. After an awkward amount of time I just open my eyes.

“Stand up,” he says. I stand up.

“Every morning you wake up and you say I luf cendy, I luf sugar. Okay.” Then he opens the door and I pay my $65 and I am outside before you could say Shubentsov.

I can’t explain what went on in there. All I know is this is year four and I have not eaten one piece of candy. Zero, zip, not one, nada. But then last week our friends sent photos of the summer clambake where I had resisted the s’mores around the campfire. At the time I didn’t care about the graham crackers. I certainly didn’t care about the Nestlés chocolate. But the marshmallows, well, they are right up there with my Twizzlers. Still I deferred.

That resistance must have turned into a longing that then turned into a subconscious itch that turned into a burning need that ultimately bubbled to the surface. And without thinking, as if I were sleepwalking, yesterday I bought a big bag of the jet-puffed babies. I proceeded to eat every one of them. Now it feels as if I am creeping back and falling down to the lower depths of my corn syrup universe where being a bottom feeder is where I belong.

My friend Gerry says buying that bag of marshmallows was the thin end of the wedge. And now I’m getting really worried.

So if you see me in Cronig’s or Stop & Shop or the Mobil Mart fingering, touching, considering or even buying those little white pillows or even (God forbid) those crimson ropey things, please help. One word should do it. Yell across the aisle, Nancy, eegnore, eegnore!

Nancy Slonim Aronie is the author of Writing from the Heart (Hyperion/Little Brown). She is a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and founder of the Chilmark Writing Workshop.