Seriously, I have just discovered that I “need” a caffeinated soda to get going in the morning. It’s 9:35 and I think I have to go get a diet pepsi because I’m crabby, lethargic, and headachy.
I don’t think this is a good thing.
I don’t drink coffee, by the way.
Anyone want to ring in with reasons why this is horrible? Not horrible? I know about caffeine leaching calcium out of your bones, but no idea how dire that is. Other problems? Joys?
Mmmmmm. Coffee. Every morning I have a big mug of it. I’m still palpitating as I type. 
I’ve found that if I don’t drink any, I’ll get a headache. I don’t worry about the calcium factor, since I go through a gallon of milk a week.
Of course, caffeine is a bad thing if you have heart problems, and I seem to remember reading something about caffeine causing women to be more prone to getting lumps in their breasts.
You want caffeine? Go to a Thai restaurant and get Iced Coffee. But trust me, don’t order it after 7PM or so (did you know that NBC repeats Conan O’Brian at 3AM?)
I drink coffe by the gallon and have a “serious” addiction. Iover the years I have quit drinking coffee many times and it is always the same: first few hours, nothing. Next day, strong headaches that last a couple of days and then diminish gradually over time. After that it is just thinking when will i start drinking coffee again. Usually I’ll go for two or three months without then gradually start again. But yes, caffeine addiction is real.
sailor, I go thru the same as you, except with Diet Coke. Today has been a 3-can day - I haven’t been getting very good sleep at night… could it be due to the caffeine?!? I really need to quit drinking this stuff, 'specially since I’m on BP meds. You’d think I’d know better… <deep sad sigh>
Cranky, I’ll quit if you will…
I cut myself off of caffeine a while back. I now limit myself to two cups of coffee before 11 am and the occasional coke in a restaurant.
I got headaches a little but they eventually stopped AND I got a lot more energy back. Caffeine eventually makes you tired all the time.
It can also cause kidney stones, as I discovered one hellaciously painful morning two years ago.
It’s also not a good substitute for sleep. I can’t tell you how many people I know who say, “But I NEED to drink Coke all day because I only slept two hours last night!” They slept two hours because they were buzzing on caffeine. Me, I prefer cutting down the caff and actually getting sleep.
Yes, this is true. Not cancer lumps … just lumps. I remember a few years back I noticed a lump or something in my breast. I went to the doctor and had an ultrasound. Turns out they (there was more than one) were just your ordinary breast lumps (I forget the technical term for them). The first thing my doctor told me to do was cut caffeine out of my diet.
I wasn’t drinking coffee then, but I was drinking a lot of pepsi. I stopped and the lumps went away.
Mmmm, caffeine Gotta have my fix - strong black coffee, little bit of sugar if it’s instant, otherwise just straight.
I’m on a lifelong crusade to find the perfect short black and the perfect Turkish mud-- um, Turkish coffee. Love it!
Hehehe…
My caffeine story. Through out middle school and high school I lived on Coke. I’d drop a six pack in my back pack for stressy days. (Which were most of them.) From 5am to 10 pm I’d just drink Coke. If I had a lazy day I’d snag a 15 min lunch somewhere in there.
Then I came to college. Pepsi campus. I drink Coke, but not Pepsi. I switched to ice tea and water. The withdrawl was unnoticable. Until I got the money and started buying Coke agian. I bought a couple 12 pack boxes and stached them in my dorm room. And drank them like water (like I was used to). I got flinchy, I had nightmares, I’d lay down to sleep and my heart would be beating so loud and fast I was worried I was ill. after a week, I made the connection.
Just a tad too much on a system that wans’t used to it anymore. Oops.
Coffee, coffee, the joy of my life;
I don’t need my kids, I don’t need my wife;
If I can’t drink it, I’ll smoke it and sigh;
Without it I surely would die.
I understand how you feel, Cranky. Been there, done that.
When I was in college I worked in sales and learned to drink coffee by the gallon because that was all there was to do on slow days. By the time I got out of law school I was drinking 2-3 pots of high-test a day and drinking soda on top of that.
Needless to say, I was a bit jumpy most of the time.
After years of trial and error, I’m finally down to 2-3 cups of coffee a day and a soda or two. My advice is to phase it out gradually and maybe switch to decaf soda or seltzer if you really like fizzy water. Don’t do it too fast, though.
[sub]but I still can’t pass a Starbucks. . .[/sub]
Good luck,
Zappo
I, too, am a caffeine addict. I love coffee - the taste, the smell, the buzz - everything about it. But I only drink one large cup a day (which is about 5 “cups” according to the markings on the coffee maker). Without my daily dose I’ll be extremely lethargic and eventually get a pisser of a headache.
I have somewhat high blood pressure, so I quit caffeine for about 3 weeks a while back, thinking it might help. It didn’t change my blood pressure one bit in either direction, so I resumed my much-missed coffee-drinking habit.
I’m not at all worried about the calcium factor, since I can easily drink a gallon of milk per day. I think I have a milk addiction, too.
Mauvaise, those breast lumps are called fibrocysts - used to be prone to them myself if I drank too much coffee near my period. Fun.
Oh, I am most assuredly a caffeine junkie. I drink 4-6 cups of coffee in the morning to get going, but that’s usually it. I don’t drink soda at all. When I’ve given up ocffeee, I get rip-roarin’ headaches by 11 a.m., and they usually last a couple days. I don’t usually make it more than that before giving into the coffee demons again.
I don’t think one can of caffeinated soda is going to do you much harm, physically. However, you might eventually end up needing more to get the same boost, as with any addiction.
I quit drinking coffee in the morning, more for digestive than for caffeine issues, and I find that it is a relief not to have to worry about getting my dose.
It was pretty easy for me to cut down, by the way. I just gradually drank less over the course of the week and had a diet coke or something later in the day if I got a headache. After about a week it didn’t matter whether or not I had caffeine during the day.
I’m definitely addicted to caffiene, but in another form…good ole Mountain Dew. For a couple years I drank nothing but mountain dew unless it was Dr. Pepper, and I always had a dew on hand. I noticed that when I didn’t drink much of this wonderful flourescent green nectar that my mouth would get dry, my head would hurt, and I’d be generally irritable (not much difference there 
Lately, if I get real thirsty, I’ve been chugging down orange juice or other juices, and occasionaly even (gasp!) water. I try not to drink dew after around 6pm, and since I’ve been doing this I’ve been sleeping much better, and I’ve had a ton more energy. If you don’t quit, try cutting back. After a while the lack of drugs in your system can be as interesting as the presence of drugs.
I fight to get the caffiene monkey off my back every so often. With me, it’s sodas. I first noticed this when I worked nights, and drank Diet DrPepper to help me keep awake. It was not usually more than 2 per night, and I never really got a buzz. Then, I ran short of cash one week and stopped drinking them. It gave me tremendous headaches. So I decided to quit caffiene then and there.
I did for a good while, maybe a couple of years. Well, I eat chocolate, which has some caffiene, but not much. Anyway, the last year or so I have started drinking it again, a little every so often. I’ll have a diet Coke with dinner or something like that. Or I’ll treat myself and get sweet tea from Grandy’s, which Mr.Mielikki calls ‘crack’. But I try to avoid drinking it every day, and if I get headachy from missing it I’ll stop for a week or so. I should just up and quit altogether, but I’m a hedonist so there you are.
In addition to lumpy boobs, leached calcium and headaches, it also dehydrates you in that it makes you pee out more fluid than you took in. Especially avoid it if you have a UTI.
Does your family have a history of osteoporosis like mine does?
I’m careful about my caffeine and soda intake - just don’t want to have to have something in the morning.
I usually drink about 1/2 or less of a 6 oz cup of coffee with so much milk and sugar in it, it’d make you black coffee drinkers retch.
I used to work with a broker who drank so much coffee (at least, at the minimum) 4 pots a day, his hands shook when he wrote out his tickets. He looked like he had Parkinson’s disease. Oh yeah, he smoked too.
Cranky, you have to watch out. You will find yourself hunched down outside a convenience store, afraid to enter cause the clerk has pimples and leered at you the last time you bought your gasp caffeinated drink. You will shakingly ask small children as they pass to buy you a soda. Their parents though have taught them well, they don’t talk to strangers and it is harder to get stranger than when someone is going thru caffeine withdrawl.
You will find yourself digging thru your purse look for change for the soda machine. You will not find enough and have to go begging from your co-workers. “Anyone got change for a $5”. You beg, you offer free lunch, you end up in tears to achieve that much needed change.
And then the last sign of this degrading disease is when you have to order pizza on a Saturday afternoon so that you can get a free delivery of a 2liter bottle of your sweet soda. At that point you are hurting your children’s health, cause the only pizza you like is the one with Anchovies and you know they give the little one gas.
Oh repent now. Spare the suffering of the children.
Amen.
Caffeine in sodas is actually more detrimental to you than in coffee or tea. When caffeine occurs naturally, it is most often accompanied by tannic acid, which irritates the degistive tract and helps your body know when you’ve had too much.
When you drink sodas with added caffeine, you don’t have this built-in guage, and you find it much easier to drink far more. (The kola nut contains tannic acid as well, but it is significantly watered down in cola drinks.)
I used to be pretty seriously addicted to caffeine. My drug of choice was a stright double espresso, repeated a few times a day. If I didn’t have my doppio in the morning, I’d be sluggish for a while, then have nasty withdrawal headaches.
I quit cold turkey about two years ago. The first few days were pretty bad, but I actually felt better by the end of the week. I haven’t touched a caffeinated beverage since.
Join the club, I physically can’t go a day without a coca-cola product.
Count me in with the Coke crowd – I usually have 50-some-ounces in a typical workday, and a little less on weekends. I don’t get headaches or anything if I don’t have them (at least, not to my knowledge), but it definitely helps me wake up in the mornings. Have been doing this for 10+ years with no obvious ill effects.
Should I be worried and try to stop? Or just sit back and have another sip?
Yep…that’s my drug of choice. I “mainline” the stuff. I have to have some sort of caffine in the morning, and if I don’t I have a terrible headache and a stiff neck for the rest of the day.
The deadline for me seems to be about 2 pm. I must have caffine before that or I’m miserable. Anyone else have a drug mandated deadline?
–==the sax man==–