This FAR from mundane (to me) but it could well be pointless… This my 10th day without diet Coke!!! Aughhh!!! I decided to stop for two weeks because quitting forever is way too overwhelming. This is DAY 10 and I have not spontaneously combusted or anything yet. I normally drink so many diet Cokes a day that it’s ridiculous. Probably about 8 cans. On a good day, only 5. On a bad day, 10. I have been drinking diet Coke since I was about 13 (I’m 32), but only with this much volume since college. So I decided to quit cold turkey for two weeks just to see how I feel. I think drinking it makes me eat more because it gives me a sweet tooth and because I associate diet Coke with eating and eating with diet Coke, so when I have a diet Coke, I think my brain starts thinking, “What should I eat now?” Of course, there’s the caffeine and the chemicals, etc. Also, supposedly, it sucks the calcium out of your bones…
Day 1 was nearly unbearable. Every other second I would want a diet Coke. I realized that EVERYTYHING makes me think, “This is a good time for a diet coke.” When I arrive somewhere, when I leave somewhere, when I see a gas station, when I get off the phone, when I eat lunch, when I start a meeting, when I finish a meeting, when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m bored, when I’m tired, when I’m excited, when I’m frustrated…no wonder I drink so many! (There’s a refrigerator at work that stays stocked with whatever we want. It’s free. Small office.)
I purposely haven’t changed anything else these last two weeks, so as to isolate the variables, I guess. I definitely haven’t given up caffeine (one thing at a time, folks), so I haven’t had headaches, except for the first day. I’ve still had way less caffeine because now I generally have just 1-2 cups a day at work & maybe a cup of tea at night (which I used to drink in addition to the diet Coke).
Questions: You decided to quit to see how you feel. Were you concerned about your intake of Diet Coke? Did people make comments about your consumption? Did you just want to show yourself that you are in control of the choices you make (that you aren’t “addicted” to Diet Coke)? Do you get all your Cokes at work? If not, how much money have you saved? Have you compensated with something else to take its place (gum chewing, candy, drumming your fingers, etc.)? Is this in preparation to one day completely eliminate it (or, eventually, caffeine) from your diet?
My mother is a fellow Diet Coke Fiend. Once, when I was in High School, I drove to every store in our (small) town and couldn’t find any, so I had to drive 10 miles to he next town just so our house would be livable- as they say “if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” So I salute your effort to avoid Diet Coke Dependency. If not for yourself, do it for the children!
It’s like looking into the future for a friend of mine. She’s a dancer, and has the same kind of habit; right now she’s up to around three cans a day, and we all know she’s gonna get worse. We can just picture her dead for a few days, nobody knowing because of how well the formaldahyde has preserved her body.
We even use her Diet Coke addiction to prove several points in class.
English teacher: Incontinence is when you have no control over something.
Everyone: looks at the Diet Coke addict
Me: starts to take away her Diet Coke
Her: NOOOOOOOO!
And thus was our point proved. We’ve also proved in Model United Nations that Diet Coke causes AIDS and should be banned, and had to write a paper in Philosophy comparing her addiction to Diet Coke to how an Epicurian and a Stoic would view it.
When I first met my girlfriend, she was in the midst of a year without Diet Coke. She is a Diet Coke addict like you, and wanted to prove to herself that she could go a year without drinking it. (She also obstained from potato chips that year as well, something else she is addicted to). She was getting pretty cranky by the end of that year… (grin). And the night she was allowed to have a Diet Coke again for the first time…well, let’s just say it was memorable…
As a 15-20 Tabs a day ‘addict’ you have my sympathies (Mainly cuz the stuff runs through you faster than a medically prescribed diuretic).
But - Being hooked on aspartane, caffeine and a few other miscellaneous chemicals mixed with carbonated water isn’t such a bad vice. In fact, if you put your Diet Coke on a list with all other things people get hooked on and ranked them from worst to least harmful, the edited version would look something like this:
Heroin
Cocaine
Booze
Fast Food
Cigarettes
Gambling
Pot
Chocolate
TV and the Internet 10. Diet Soda
Coffee
TV
Reading
Jogging
Sex
When all is said and done, consuming your 8/10ths a gallon of diet soda isn’t something to fear. It can’t make you fat, rot your teeth, etc. Besides, running to the bathroom all those times per day actually burns calories…and those loud Vesuvius-like burps can be so much fun!
BTW: When you attempt to take the next step & kick the caffeine - I’ve heard the decaffeinated brands of soda provide a small placebo effect (which should overcome your headache concerns).
You know what, after I posted and looked at the list, in hindsight, I think coffee’s worse than diet soda. It stains your teeth and can cause serious burns to your genital area
One of my sisters is a diabetic, and has been addicted to diet soft drinks since she was a child. The sweetener aspartame was in all of her drinks. She drank several (or a lot) of drinks a day. She started having problems with her sense of taste, and with a chronically stiff neck. My other sister was having problems with memory loss. (Neither of my sisters are that old, by the way.) Quitting diet drinks helped the diabetic sister with her stiff neck, and her sense of taste seems to be a little better (she’s not sure if the aspartame was to blame for that). Don’t know if the other sister is improving her memory—I should ask. I think she mostly quit so that it wouldn’t get any worse.
You’ve probably heard about the problems with aspartame before. (Here’s a cite.) I don’t know how valid these claims are. All I know is my sisters are better off without aspartame. I never was a big one for diet drinks (though TaB is a special beverage and I absolutely have to have it when I go on road trips, JohnBckWLD!). I figure that I’ll still drink TaB very occasionally, and it probably won’t ever give me any trouble.
My diabetic sister now drinks Diet Rite and other drinks that have Splenda in them, which seems to solve her problem.
As for me, I kicked a several-can-a-day Pepsi and Shasta soft drink addiction many years ago. I forget what prompted this act. I think I decided I was getting jittery and hooked when I didn’t get my soft drink “fix” and therefore it alarmed me. What I did was start to drink mineral water (carbonated, flavored water—Perrier, Calistoga, etc.). It took a while for me to develop a taste for it, but I did, and damn—it did the trick! That monkey was off my back. It did take a while and it was tough, though, so my heart goes out to you during this time. You can do it!
Now I can drink a Pepsi (or TaB) now and then and it doesn’t bother me. I have those little 8-oz mini cans of Pepsi, since I find that I don’t usually finish a 12-oz can. Works for me.
