My husband, the ever-healthy tea and water drinker, never complained when I filled up my glass with some fountain diet soda. He never made me feel guilty, and never denounced my drink. I did that on my own. Looking at his ever trim physique as he sipped H2O with a slice of lemon, I vowed not to buy another fridgepak. And so I watched my soda supply dwindle to zero.
Monday we went out to eat. I ordered a Diet Pepsi. I was not planning for it to be my last diet drink, but last exchanges rarely are expected.
Thus begins the seven day story of my attempt to purge soda, caffeine, and other appetite inducing beverages. I will tell days of success, days of headache, days of relapse. Will seven days be enough to get over the caffeine addiction hump?
the beginning – Tuesday
I arrive in my cubical wielding a Propel Zero, sweetened with sucralose. Sucralose, although not aspartame, is still a chemically altered sugar with intensified sweetness and the majority fails to be absorbed by the body. My goal this early in the week is to eliminate aspartame and caffeine, although in the future I will wish all artificial sweeteners to bid adieu.
After the artificially sweetened morning drink, I cleanse my palate at my mid-day meal with refreshing pure unadulterated water. Nature’s cleanser.
I regress in my afternoon. I feature more water but flavored with Crystal Light Pure – sweetened with small amounts of sugar along with Truvia, a branded and altered version of the natural sweetener Stevia.
It is now 2:30 in the afternoon and the headache begins. Oh, the agony. The eye-pain. The neck-pain.
I continue to drink Crystal Light Pure. Two packets later and my stomach is wrenching. Could it be the headache? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I suffer through the rest of my afternoon the best I can, dreading my half-hour commute home.
My neck aches and my vision blurs as I reach out to open the front door. I throw my bags on the ground, narrowly missing my bewildered cats who are questioning why their normally sane mother is ignoring their welcoming cries. I kick off my clogs as I tumble into the bed, holding the pillow over my eyes to satiate the pain of my caffeine withdrawal.
And I sleep. For hours I sleep.
My husband jostles me awake for dinner… Macaroni & Cheese – all I can muster in my still gurgling tum. I down a couple antacids while I’m eating and, following a bit of reading, fall to slumber until the morning.
Wednesday. What perils for me will you bear?
