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On June 15, Roanoke Times writer and Coca-Cola enthusiast Neil Harvey began an attempt to abstain from drinking sodas for 30 days. This is his online journal... What overall effects did I notice? Did I go back to drinking the odd half-dozen Cokes a day? And how are the other soda-banners doing with their bans? To quote the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka, "The suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts." And it looks like it'll last over the weekend, but I'll be back on Wednesday, July 27, with more updates. And if you're a soda-banner who hasn't written in, please drop me a line and let me know how it's going. Don't be shy if it didn't work out the way you'd hoped, you can always start another ban if you want. Yep, as of about 1:15 a.m. this morning, it has been exactly 30 days since my last sip of soda. If you've followed this column at all, you're probably wondering: How did I react to my freedom from my self-imposed ban? Did I immediately run out and toss back a 2-liter of Coke? Did I renew my vow to remain phosphate-free for another month or maybe longer? And the answer is ... I don't know. Because of the time delay between my writing this (for the print version) and your reading this, it's still Tuesday night my time, so I'm not quite done yet. But even on the edge of 30 days, I've gotten a lot from this experiment. I learned a lot about moderation and making soft drinks occasional treats instead of frequent staples. I won't stay soda-free forever, but I also won't go back to having six or seven a day. That's just craziness. I even made a little money: I frequently stashed away a dollar here and there, whenever I felt like grabbing a soda, so this weekend I'm going to crack into that fund and maybe buy myself some cool new sneakers. And whenever I'm wearing and enjoying them, I can take smug satisfaction from the thought that, but for my soda ban, I would've wound up drinking those shoes, instead. Best of all, I've somehow managed to rope some readers into this endeavor. During the past month, I found that quitting sodas was infinitely easier when lots of people knew about my ban and were able to give their support and constructive criticism. So last week I offered to afford the same "incentive" to others. About a dozen people were brave or reckless or crazy enough to actually take me up on it. They include: Andrew Troutt, a former Blacksburger who now lives in Champagne, Ill., and has been soda-free since June 30 ("It's tough"); Laura Robinson, from Pilot, who started her ban Monday; Laura Woodward, a fellow Bob Dylan fan from San Diego, has pledged to begin her 30 days; Tim Hunold, who stopped on the first of the month and, like me, is appalled at the difference between the cost of soda and the cost of juice; A Roanoker attending the University of New Hampshire, Scott Yates, signed up; Ariel Clark, a graphic designer at the paper, says she plans to include recycling and gym visitation as part of her soda ban; Sandra Hale and her 12-year-old daughter, Ashley, are in; Gaile Pack of Roanoke has traded her six-to-eight Diet Dr Peppers a day for water with lemon; Sarah Spain, from Lexington, quit soda, citing kidney stones as a major motivation; Phillip Cullum, as big a fan of Cokes as I was, took his pledge Wednesday; And Michelle McNeil, from Roanoke, began her ban Tuesday. And more are wandering in each day. I'll have more online updates, and if the new soda-banners write me, I'll post their adventures, too. And if you know any of these people who are taking this plunge, give them a yell, give them a little hell, maybe buy them a cold bottle of water or, if the soda moves you, you could always join them. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 14 -- This is neither here nor there, just a random and possibly nutty-sounding soft-drink-related thought: I've gotten some mail regarding the useage of the terms "soda" and "pop." Some say it's "soda," others call it "pop." Growing up in Radford, I always used to call it "pop" all the time but at some point, for unknown reasons, it became "soda" for me. Is this a geographical distinction? An age thing? Or just an individual preference? And what of people who go whole hog and call it, "soda pop" ? Meanwhile the clock continues ticking. My 30 days are over in about 8 hours. Which is not to say I'll be tearing the lid off a Coke at midnight and bringing it to my lips with shaking hands, but it's definitely better to have 8 hours left than to be just 8 hours in. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 13 (3) -- It's not quite a "fark" like response, but I'm actually getting a few takers on my soda challenge -- e-mails from readers who are signing up to do a soda ban of their own. I've now got more than a dozen people who are going to give it a shot, with more popping up each day, it seems. I'll have more about those guys in Friday's Extra and, hopefully, they'll actually send me journal entries of their own that I can post here. I just got an e-mail from a guy who's starting a ban this week. Later in the month, he's going to be driving from Oregon to Blacksburg with three young kids and no caffeine for himself. Now that's a challenge. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 13 (2) -- I finally got a chance to see "30 Days," the TV show I have so brazenly and thoroughly ripped-off with this here soda ban. That's the reality show by Morgan Spurlock (the guy who made "Super Size Me") in which people volunteer to experience a lifestyle that's different from their own for a full month. I kept missing it, for some reason. It comes on fX on Wednesdays and, inexplicably, I had a habit of not remembering I wanted to watch it until Thursday mornings -- I suppose I'm usually too busy piddling away my Wednesday evenings watching the episodes of "Stella" and "Celebrity Blackjack" that I taped on Monday and Tuesday. I'm almost glad I've missed it up to this point because those guys really have a tough 30 days. Granted, that show has a bigger budget than my diary (which, um, has no actual budget), but they really get into some interesting situations and dilemmas; it's much headier stuff than I've encountered this past month. Check it out if you're so inclined. It's a rarity: A reality show that actually doesn't seem to be fueled by humiliation, greed or malice. Naturally, it probably won't be on the air for very long. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 13 (1) -- Coming down the home stretch. I'm less than 48 hours away from the finish line. I've even written my last print article, the one that'll run Friday. I'm close. Close enough to experience a moment of deep chagrin earlier, when I fed my dollar into the Coke machine to buy a yellow lemonade and, too late, saw three rows of pink lemonade but not a single yellow one. Why three pinks and no yellows? And why, for that matter, are the lemonades a quarter more expensive than sodas? What were my other non-carbonated alternatives? Orange juice and tea. Those bottles of quiet, brown cola sat behind the display glass, calmly maintaining their chill, seven inches from my nose, off-limits, including this new stuff, Coke Zero (which, I'm told by an unsympathetic reader, "rules the school!"). So now I sit here at my desk at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, listening to Miles Davis' "My Ship" on my headphones (which may account for the somewhat melancholy tone of this entry), drinking a beverage the color of a brand new pencil eraser. Ew. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 11 -- Somebody wrote me earlier today to ask if I caved in over the weekend. "Why no updates lately? Did you give up?" And, no, I haven't give up. But I am mildly discouraged. On July 6, I encouraged readers to join me in my soda ban. Flash back with me, if you will... "If you feel like giving up sodas for 30 days, send me an e-mail with your name and contact number. If I get a lot of willing participants, next week I'll list all the names and, odds are, everybody on the list will find it a lot easier to start their self-imposed ban. If I only get a few responses, maybe I'll profile those few." I did get a few responses, which was much nicer than dead silence (when I first wrote the invitation, I fearfully imagined the scene in the movie "Old School," in which an overeager Will Ferrell strips down in front of a crowd of people and goes, "Hey, c'mon, let's go streakin'!" and charges off only to find himself running down a suburban street naked and alone.) The weird thing is, more than half of the people who took me up on the challenge don't actually live in Roanoke. Most of them are from other states. There are a few native Roanokers who have moved away or are at college, but I only got a couple takers from people in my own area code. And that's OK. I completely appreciate getting responses from readers no matter where they are or where they're from. Still, what does that say about our little Star City? We're getting trumped by folks from out of town. Wherever he is, I just know the Soda Monkey is laughing. And on Friday, I'm going to have to write about it. There's still time to wail on that obnoxious little chimp. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 7 -- Previously, I mentioned the possibility of engaging in a highly unscientific test of all those "Coca-Cola will eat through a nail/tooth/T-bone steak" rumors I'd heard about. I wanted to find out for myself, utilizing a little homemade science. But, frankly, I just don't believe soda will eat through a nail. And I was a little skittish about the possibility of disintegrating a perfectly good steak. Experimenting on a tooth, however, definitely sounded interesting. "Where did I plan to get the tooth?" is the question you're probably asking (and, if you're not asking it, you probably should be). As fate would have it, my trusty, long-suffering cat, Beowulf, was going to supply the tooth. During a trip to the vet two weeks ago, I learned that in addition to being in desperate need of an oral cleansing, my cat needed to have two teeth removed. It was disheartening to learn that he was losing some teeth... but I instantly realized that I had in those choppers a perfect means by which to test the Coke rumor. Early Friday morning, he went under the gas, ready to give part of himself to science. Fortunately for my cat (but unfortunately for the experiment) it turned out that once they cleaned his mouth up, Beowulf didn't need to have any extractions. He was allowed to keep his teeth, tiny fangs he apparently uses for just one task: Gnawing on my feet while I'm trying to sleep. But the "nail/tooth/T-bone steak" question continued to swirl in my brain. As Fark.com responses rolled in, many of them either verified or refuted the mystery of Coke's supposedly corrosive effects on hardware, teeth and red meat. Lots of the e-mails directed me to the Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters," and a particular episode that apparently disproved the theories. But as far as I can tell, that episode isn't re-running anytime soon. So I got to searching and found a page dedicated to the question on the usually-reliable snopes.com. You can see what I found here. They say it's just not true. Cola might stain a tooth, but it won’t dissolve it. Supposedly, according to the site, cola contains about half the phosphoric acid of an orange. Granted, that's just one site's take, though they do have some pretty snazzy footnotes at the end. Understand, this is not the kind of empirical data I was hoping to present - I wanted to add to this journal a day-by-day account of the effects of the soda on my cat's tooth, possibly with photographs done up as a flash presentation complete with sound effects - but, alas, it just didn't happen. I promise, however, that if I come into possession of any teeth before the end of my 30 days, I'll delve right into the experiment. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 6 -- I mentioned last week that I'd gotten a lot of response to my self-imposed soda ban, but last Thursday, just as the feedback seemed to taper off, I got an e-mail from a reader. From Bellevue, Wash. Then I got another one. From Birmingham, Ala. Then one came in from New York City. Just as I was about to loudly exclaim, "New York City?" I got an e-mail from fark.com. Fark.com is a Web site that picks up online news items and provides its readers links to those stories and a place to post feedback. The e-mail explained that fark had picked up my online diary and post- ed it as one of its daily links - and I was pleased to see that my story was designated a "hero" story, as opposed to "stupid," "weird" or, worse, "asinine." Hence the geographically scattered e-mails. But they didn't stop coming. In fact, over the next three days, I received more than 70 notes from strangers, and the bulk of them were either from people who drank a lot of soda and had quit or from people who drank a lot of soda and wanted to quit. As of Monday night, the fark link had garnered 33,500 hits and, of the 90 topics for that day, ranked fifth in number of postings received. The point of all these numbers isn't horn-tooting (trust me, a huge chunk of the other 90 stories that day were far more interesting than my goofy little soda diary). The point is that, apparently, soda abstinence is a subject some people take very seriously. Given the availability, omnipresence and tastiness of soft drinks (and take it from me, they're available, omnipresent and extremely tasty), there's plenty of potential for people to consume too many of them. And if they're consuming too many of them, they're probably aware of that fact. And if they're aware of that fact, they probably want to quit or cut back. So on this 23rd day of my soda-ban, I'm going to attempt a constructive experiment. I could not have quit for 23-going-on-30 days had it not been for the fact that so many people had read about it. If it had just been me trying to exercise a little self-control on my own, I'd probably have given up during the first week. So I'll extend that same incentive to anybody who wants to try it on. If you feel like giving up sodas for 30 days, send me an e-mail with your name and contact number. If I get a lot of willing participants, next week I'll list all the names and, odds are, everybody on the list will find it a lot easier to start their self-imposed ban. If I only get a few responses, maybe I'll profile those few. And if I don't get any replies, well ... hopefully this time next week not many people will remember that I asked. But if you're reading this and you're thinking about trying to curb a little cola (or even coffee, if you're a java drinker who thinks you can handle it), drop me a line. There's nothing like a public vow to strengthen one's resolve. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 4 -- Still sick (see July 3), mildly delirious, so this entry may meander a bit before it touches on the subject of soda. I finally gave up on trash TV yesterday after a run-in with "Beauty and the Geek," a reality game show I'd never seen before but whose appeal is readily apparent: Literally any viewer watching it will instantly feel smarter than the models and smoother than the nerds. Asked who the president was during the Civil War, one of the show's contestants answered, "Hoover." "No, Lincoln," said the host. "Oh, that's right," she said, and then inexplicably added, "D-Day," as if to say, "Duh!" At that, my cat fled the room in disgust so I turned off the TV and switched over to the book I've been reading lately, a novel called "All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers." It's an early Larry McMurtry story about a young writer who finds success but endures all manner of wacky problems. When I was in college, it was one of my favorite books but it seems we've drifted apart since then. I'd previously overlooked, or maybe never noticed, its rambling narrative and occasionally creaky humor. I'd also forgotten the main character's love for Dr Pepper. The main character, Danny Deck, is, in the parlance of our times, a Pepper. "My room had a view of the city," he says on page 127. "I had some Dr Peppers sent up, hoping they would steady my nerves but they didn't really. "As I was finishing my third Dr Pepper, a bellboy arrived...." He falls in love with an artist who convinces him to trade cola for tea but they don't work out and she moves away and when they talk on the phone, he taunts her with his return to bad habits: "'I don't want to live like I used to live.' 'What do you have for breakfast?' she asked, ominously. 'A Milky Way, usually,' I said. 'Sometimes a Coke.' 'Danny, you're being deliberately cruel!'" Later, he hits the road and goes to visit his Uncle Laredo, a crazed cowboy who lives in the middle of nowhere and whose water isn't potable. "I had brought a case of Dr Peppers with me, as protection against the water on the ranch. I drank three of them with lunch. Lorenzo's frijoles were incredibly peppery. I gave Uncle L a Dr Pepper and he took one sip and poured the rest on an anthill." Here's to Uncle L. Comments | Write Neil Harvey July 3 -- There's nothing like being deathly ill across a long, hot holiday weekend. And, man, I am ill this long, hot holiday weekend. Not ill because of latent caffeine withdrawl, mind you. No, I've just got a vicious summer cold. I can't go 30 seconds without sneezing. I've got a bug that could knock over a marauding Martian tripod. I've spent the entire weekend blowing my nose, trying to resist the urge to cough and watching terrible television because anything too serious or heavy makes my swollen, pulsing face ache even more. I've spent the weekend watching the Real World kids misbehave and learning more about Bobby Brown than I really wanted to know. I've also spent the weekend resisting the call of the Soda Monkey because when I get a cold, my primary remedies are Advil Cold & Sinus, popsicles and ginger ale. This month I can only use two out of three of those. I know what you're thinking and, please, no need to e-mail me. I know the best beverages for overcoming cold and flu are water and orange juice in copious quantities and, trust me, I've had plenty of both. But there's something about the phlegm-cutting, stomach-settling ability of an occasional ginger ale that water and OJ just can't touch. A vow is a vow, however, and I'm sticking to mine. Maybe the Soda Monkey will catch my cold and keel over. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 30 -- I realize that not everybody in the world drinks sodas. Some days, however, and today specifically, that does not appear to be the case. I can compare today to a scene from "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" (but, then again, a few too many of my days are like that). The scene I'm thinking about takes place just after Pee-wee's bicycle has been stolen by a bully working for Pee-wee's arch-nemesis, Francis Buxton. Lost without his prized possession, Pee-wee wanders the streets (or at least a mini-mall) where it seems everyone else has a cycle of some kind. It's a wordless sequence, like a silent movie, like a Buster Keaton moment. As Danny Elfman's Bernard Herrmann-esque score slowly ratchets-up the tension, Pee-wee finds himself surrounded by reminders of his red bicycle -- kids on tricycles, unicycling clowns, couples on tandem bikes, even a remote control motorcycle speeds past. That's where I'm at today. Summertime soda promotions seem to be everywhere. At the gas station, at the grocery story, on the sides of passing trucks. The radio is jammed with Coke ads, as is the TV (I swear, if I see those freakin' bubble dancers one more time....) Worse yet, I can hear a soda can being cracked open from 50 yards (I kid you not -- I wouldn't believe this if I read it -- but as I typed that last sentence somebody across the room just opened a drink!). Earlier today, a co-worker, who was heading down to the snack machines, offered to get me a Coke and then went, "Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry! I forgot!" She really had forgotten. But then I had to loan a dollar to another co-worker who wanted her to get him a Mountain Dew but had no change. Paying for drinks you don't get to consume is not a fun pasttime. But not long after, I watched the first co-worker crack open a can of Coke and nibble on some Gummi Worms. And then, to quote Jules Winfield, I had "a moment of clarity." The Coke/Gummi Worm combination seemed so wrong, so fizzy, that I completely forgot about my temporary craving. I think that's a good sign. I think I'm making progress. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 29 -- So here I am, two weeks into my 30-day soda ban. Despite my frequent hyperbole, I have no illusions about this endeavor: Cutting out soft drinks for 30 days ain't gonna kill me; in fact, when you compare it to the bulk of sacrifices some people make around the world every day, it radiates a bright glare of triviality. And yet, any long-term habit is tough to just drop. I've found that to be true, and it's also something that seems to have struck a chord in more people than I expected. One of the most surprising aspects of this whole thing is how much feedback I'm getting; almost every day since I started this project I've gotten several e-mails from readers who have thoughts on the matter. Some are educational. Dr. Darryl Rich of Roanoke wrote, "The high fructose corn syrup in soda coagulates the blood leading to a violent spike in blood pressure. Theacidity of the phosphoric acid will cause bone loss and may well produce a near epidemic of osteoporosis when our current adolescent females reach menopause." Other offerings are thought-provoking but not as easy to verify. I'm told my soda ban will cut 91,000 calories from my diet and cause me to lose 30 pounds in a year. Others have written that cola is used as both an industrial engine cleaner and a pesticide in some countries; that cola syrup, when transported, is designated a hazardous material; that cola works as a handy stain remover; and that cola, when baked with a moist, foil-wrapped ham, transforms into sumptuous brown gravy. Another claim I'm getting a lot of is that objects placed in a bowl of cola will dissolve over time: nails, teeth, T-bone steaks. And while I've heard that such claims are urban legends, I definitely plan to investigate them this week in my roanoke.com journal. A lot of personal experiences are coming through, too. One reader quit drinking sodas only to take up smoking. Another related a run-in with Oprah Winfrey's security staff in the drive-through lane of a Chicago McDonald's (trust me, it made sense in context). Yet another reader, who claims he once ate six hot dogs a day for two years, challenged me to a no-fast-food face-off - but I need to get through this challenge before I take on another. I also get a lot of feedback from people who still consume caffeine. Their letters tend to be longer and more revved-up than the ones I get from reformed caffeine addicts. There's a definite tone of elitism from coffee drinkers, who seem to view soda as kid stuff, and there's a definite tone of elitism from energy drink drinkers, who seem to view soda as insufficiently extreme. And after looking into some hard data about the staggering differences in caffeine levels of soda versus coffee and energy drinks, all I can say is these people are definitely entitled to their elitism; I won't argue. I don't want to excite them. Based on the caffeine levels I've researched, their heads could explode at any moment. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 28 -- I still notice good deals on soft drinks when I'm grocery shopping. I still see the signs and price tags, still get that, "oooh, it's on sale!" buzz before I realize I have rendered myself ineligible for such bargains. That's irritating. It's particularly hard to avoid the sight of soft drink promotions in the summertime. Yesterday, while picking up more lemonade at the grocery store, I saw a sign advertising 10 2-liter sodas for $10. Ten bucks for 20 liters is pretty cheap but, even in my soda abstinence, a thought occurred to me: Twenty liters is one heck of a lot of soda to bring home from one trip to the store. I wondered how many trips it'd take to ferry 10 2-liter bottles from the car to the kitchen, imagined the bottles that wouldn't fit in the fridge stuffed in the cabinet under the counter beside the cat food and the crock pot. Ironically even this page, the "Deprivation Diary," isn't a soda-ad free-zone. Check the little ads at the very bottom of this page. Those advertisements are determined by a program called Google AdSense, which determines a page's advertisements based on the content and recurring words. So, since I have the word "soda" written about a thousand times on this page, as of Tuesday afternoon, those bottom-of-the-page advertise "POP: The Soda Shop" ("with over 400 soft drinks from all over the world") and "Get Cola Collectibles," ("choose from over 1,000 different Cola collectibles at low prices!"). I'm dreading the day when the ad becomes something lemonade-related. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 27 -- Yesterday, not two hours after I posted my previous entry - the one about my six ginger ales - my parents stopped by my house for a quick visit. It was the strangest thing: Out of the blue, my dad just went into my fridge, plucked out one of the Seagram's and drank it on the spot. This is atypical behavior for him. The usual pattern during their visits is: I offer him snacks, he declines. "Dad, have an ice cream sandwich." "No, thanks." "Have one of these Swiss Cake Rolls." "Nah." "Have a seedless Clementine orange." "No, that's OK." He accepts nothing. He never takes anything. I think he's just too polite to eat all my snacks but it usually makes me wonder if my kitchen smells funny. But yesterday, of all days, not long after I had resisted the tempting whispers of the Soda Monkey, dad came in and helped himself to one of my ginger ales. Right in front of me. Cracked it open with a crisp, cold snap and drank it down. And if he somehow wasn't aware of the tension involved with my soda ban, he had to have noticed the look of horror, disbelief, confusion, paranoia and outrage in my wide, almost teary eyes as he handed me the empty can. "Toss that in the trash for me?" He handed me the empty can! I don't think he's ever handed me garbage before in my life, certainly not lately, but there it was. So there are obviously only two possible explanations: 1) Either my recent abstinence from caffeine really has created disorder, in which case the incident was merely a commonplace occurrence and I'm suffering some kind of paranoid delusion (I was standing in front of the garbage can, after all). Or, 2) some kind of big money, possibly Vegas money, is riding on the outcome of this 30-day ban; and my dad is, clearly, in league with the Soda Monkey. Either way, man, the Soda Monkey plays rough. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 26 -- OK, I'm almost two weeks into this thing and I am officially sick of apple juice, orange juice, lemonade, Kool-Aid and all my other soda substitutes. They're just not doing it for me anymore. Nutritious they might be but satisfying they are not, not when what I crave is something toxic, something with phospates, something with bite, something that makes a noise when you break its seal, something with fizz, something that chews into ice cubes with a hearty crackle, something that tickles the nostrils when inhaled. Soda may do a lot of nasty things to the human body but it at least settles the stomach (even if that settling feeling is just caramel and carbonation whipping it into submission). Fruit juice doesn't do that and generally lands in the belly like a sock full of loose change. After a while, if you drink enough of it, it lingers on the tastebuds like bad granny candy. And while everybody says that was water Tom Cruise got squirted with last week, I swear it looks to me like sickly pink lemonade. I was seriously tempted over the weekend. I came home from work Friday evening, worn out and hungry and, while surveying my dinner options, my eyes fell on the six-pack of Seagram's ginger ale that I shoved far to the back of the bottom shelf two weeks ago. The cans gleamed a rich emerald green like forbidden jungle jewels and I thought, "Two weeks is long enough, especially considering I probably haven't gone two weeks without a soda since I was in elementary school. I could live with just one with dinner. There's no caffeine in it and probably no more sugar than the glass of lemonade I'd have instead." But, alas, I quickly realized that was just monkey talk. I'm almost halfway home, I'm going to do this right. So I settled on a nice '05 Welches grape juice instead. I used to love grape juice. I don't think I do anymore. |Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 24 -- An amendment: In Wednesday's journal entry, I mentioned a former teacher of mine, Brenda Whisonant, and I referred to her as "my old nursery school teacher." I explained that she had sent me a very helpful headache remedy (an icepack placed against the back of the neck). She noticed the mention and wrote me a very kind e-mail, and also pointed out something I knew but had carelessly overlooked: She wrote, "an adjective tends to modify the noun which immediately follows it. Therefore, an 'old nursery school teacher' could refer to an 'old teacher' who taught nursery school or to an 'old nursery school' in which there was a teacher." Years later, she's still teaching me valuable lessons. So to clarify my earlier statement: Neither the teacher nor the school are old. The only thing truly old are my mental reflexes which, admittedly, haven't been the same since I cut out caffeine. And, with the way my luck's running this month, I've probably made a few grammar errors here, too. Comments| Write Neil Harvey June 23 -- Here's a weird nightmare I had recently: I'm riding in a car, with a driver I can't see (it's not a spooky driver, I just for some dream-reason didn't look over in that direction), and we're tooling down U.S. 460 headed into Christiansburg and it's just about sunset. The windows are down. The breeze is good. Suddenly, I realize I have a Coke in my right hand and, guiltily, I toss it out the window. Then I realize I'm also holding a Coke in my left hand, too. I'm two-fisting Cokes. I remember thinking, "Wow, I have really screwed up my 'no soda' ban," just before I woke up. It was, as they say, only a dream. I think I even said, "Whoa. It was only a dream." That's how strangely, inexplicably committed I've become to this thing: I'm not dreaming about the tall, 16 oz., green-glass Coke bottles that, as a kid, I once sipped to cut the spicy burn of pepperoni pizza at the Pizza House in Radford. I'm not dreaming about giant, red-and-white two liter Coke bottles dappled with condensation and looming over me like some monstrous, kooky Jack White- designed stage prop sculpture. I'm not even dreaming about the carbonated kiss a bottle cap makes when it's wrenched off the neck of one of those little 8 oz. bottles that a friend of mine calls, "hand grenades." In other words, I'm not dreaming about the good parts of having the vice. No, instead, I'm having nightmares about the guilt I'd feel if I caved. Hey, I said it was weird. And I'm not sure what Freud would say about that rather odd dream, but then again, as much as he knew about dreams, the guy wasn't exactly an expert on the subject of moderation. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 22 -- Here’s something I wish I’d known about before I undertook this self-imposed 30-day ban on drinking sodas: Back in October, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine released a study, based on 170 years worth of research, that said caffeine withdrawal should be classified as a psychiatric disorder. A psychiatric disorder? Some scoffed when I decided to give up Coke and Pepsi products for 30 days (a woman who cut out sodas during her pregnancy understandably wrote, "Really, 30 days? Get back to me when you’ve been off the stuff for 9 months.”). On the other hand, others said they wouldn’t want to try it for even a day. And more people warned me I was due for a barrage of headaches. But nobody said anything about a psychiatric disorder. This had better not affect my health insurance. Anyway, according to the study, the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal disorder include headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, depression and irritability . . . all of which pretty much describe exactly how I’ve felt ever since I was about 8. In fact, I always thought the headaches, mood swings, lack of energy and short attention span had something to do with the five or six Cokes I was knocking back in a day. Oddly enough, despite the warnings from Johns Hopkins, the withdrawal has been relatively mild so far. Making a public oath does wonders for the resolve, at least as far as soda pops go, but withdrawal-wise there have been no cold sweats, no "Trainspotting" babies crawling across my ceiling, no headaches that couldn’t be cured by an ice pack to the back of the neck (a remedy suggested by my old nursery school teacher, Brenda Whisonant). I am, however, constantly on the lookout for the difficulty level to increase; the pessimist in me is always braced for a sudden blinding headache (“Oh, ow, those are the headaches I was warned about!”), embarrassing muscle spasms, some new symptom to add to the Johns Hopkins books. It's too soon for me to get cocky. I'm just seven days in and there are 23 to go. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 21 -- I'm six days into the experiment and the place I'm at now is kind of weird. Basically, I'm at an impasse: Now that this diary has started, I've decided that giving up is clearly not an option. I don't want to have to publicly admit that I couldn't resist the siren song of a drink machine. That'd be lame; besides, it'd make for an extremely boring journal (yes, even more boring than this). I also know I can't secretly go off the wagon and Jayson Blair the rest of the story for 25 days. Neither of those two options are at all workable so, basically, the only option is to stick with the ban. In other words, writing about this has completely gotten rid of the temptation aspect. Therein lies the key to quitting a bad habit, I think. Tell thousands of strangers you're giving up something you've done all your life, and the abstinence becomes a lot easier. It's akin to wagering a sum money you can't afford to lose or entering a war of wills with your arch enemy. Once you've gotten your mind around the temptation, though, then you settle into the boring point of resolve coupled with the abstract awareness that something is missing. The biggest thing is the life change. Like I said before, I like fast food but when I go out for a Quarter Pounder . . . ordering a large water just doesn't quite do it. So what's the alternative? Healthier eating? I shudder at the thought. Worst of all, going to the movies isn't the same because the big bucket of popcorn (a staple of my moviegoing) loses much of its appeal when its not sitting beside a large Coke. What beverage, other than a fizzing soda, goes with a gallon of salty popcorn? A bottle of fruit juice? The little concession cartoon will surely mock you for that; you won't see any bottles of fruit juice dancing out to the lobby. So, despite all my hyperbole, is all this a tragedy? Nope, not even close. It actually kind of puts priorities in perspective. There are lots of people all over the planet these days who aren't getting their giant soda with their giant popcorn. But you might be surprised at what suddenly seems stupidly important when you try to change old ways. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 20 -- I've been getting lots of feedback from readers on this experiment and one of the big questions people have asked is: Exactly how much caffeine did you consume before the 30 days started. It varied from day to day, but it was always above the healthy living level so I'll attempt to break it down, but I must warn readers. . . it's not for the squeamish. I tried not to have a Coke with breakfast but my success at that was pretty hit or miss, particularly on the (admittedly frequent) days I breakfasted on re-heated pizza. I mean, what kind of nut has orange juice with re-heated pizza?. If I didn't have one for breakfast, I'd have one before lunch -- sort of a "checking the e-mail," non-alcoholic aperitif. And sometimes I'd have one whether I'd skipped the breakfast Coke or not. And I always had one with lunch. And another one with dinner. And if I happened to be eating at a restaurant where refills are free, change those ones to nothing less than three. And if the restaurant served "go cups," change those threes to fours. Plus -- and this is the big one -- there's the "I'm having a frustrating day at work so I deserve a cold Coke," which, depending on the day, can cause intake to completely spike. If you're a soda drinker, you know of what I speak. Even if you don't happen to drink sodas, if you spend 6-11 hours a day working anywhere, I'm sure there's something you regularly lean on to ease you through the humdrum stretches -- candy, cigarettes, an e-mail or a phone call, a run or a swim. I'm of the opinion that a crisp, cold, caffeinated beverage trumps them all unless, you know, it's a really good phone call. Of course, as a friend of mine once said, these things can easily become "the treat that becomes the staple." So, basically, we're looking at enough Coca-Cola to stagger a mid-sized camel. I felt better about myself, however, after one reader claimed to drink about 12 Cokes every day. Still, when you're saying, "I'm not as bad as the guy who drinks 12 Cokes a day," you're really splitting hairs. And a person who drinks that much caffeine a day shouldn't try to split anything as fine as a hair, at least not without wearing work gloves. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 17 -- Apparently, I have not done a very good job of explaining the mission, which is to give up all sodas and soft drinks for 30 days. I was unwrapping a Starburst Fruit Chew the other day and somebody said to me, "Hey, aren't you not supposed to be eating candy?" "No," I explained, " I can't drink sodas for a month." I wrote that off as a fluke until somebody else asked me, "So does this mean you can't drink beer?" "No," I explained, " I can't drink sodas for a month." "What about a rum and Coke? Could you have a rum and Coke?" "Uh, no, that has soda in it." So it seems that, just two days into the challenge, I haven't fully explained the challenge. That might have been because I got bogged down explaining my love of fast food. Here's the deal: No sodas, colas or sasparillas until 1:20 a.m. July 15. No Cokes, no Dr Peppers, no Mountain Dews, no ginger ales, nothing. Also, I am not a coffee drinker, either, and get all my artificial stimulation from soft drinks but, even though coffee isn't a soft drink, I won't let myself resort to coffee, either. That seems a little too much like a ditching one vice for another, so I'm deeming it against the rules. Status update: Two days into the caffeine ban, I'm not exactly feeling terrible but I've definitely felt better. More on that later. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 16 -- So 24 hours have passed since I started this self-imposed ban on drinking soda and I have to say these are the first 24 hours I've gone without a caffeinated and/or carbonated beverage since I have no idea when. That in itself is probably a sign I needed to practice a little moderation in the soft drink department anyway, but I fear I picked a bad day to start the experiment, an almost all-nighter. My last Coke was consumed at a midnight screening of "Batman Begins," early Wednesday morning. I finished it about an hour into the movie, which means (for those riveted multitudes out there keeping score) that my 30 days technically won't end until 1:20 a.m. July 15. The movie let out a little before 3 so I came home, sat down and wrote a "Batman" review -- due by 11 a.m. -- that I finished about 5 a.m. At that point, I found I couldn't sleep (probably thanks to that 44 oz. shot of sugar and caffeine I'd consumed only hours earlier). So I set my alarm. Flipped channels. Noted, ruefully, that I could see sunlight blooming behind the blinds. Fell asleep around 6. At 7:25, the phone rang: My mother, having just read of my anti-soda vow, called to wish me luck. "Oh, shoot, I forgot you were staying up all night," she said. So I lay there till 9 listening to a morning lawn mower buzzing away somewhere in the neighborhood, irritated but thankful that I wasn't the one out there cutting the grass. Then I got up, showered and went in to work, thinking right about then that I could use a little caffeine but pleased that at least the feelings of withdrawal would be obscured by extreme fatigue. Comments | Write Neil Harvey June 15 -- Am I the only one who saw Morgan Spurlock's documentary, "Super Size Me" (in which the filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days), and thought, "Where's the challenge?" I love fast food: Filets o' Fish, french fries and 44 oz. fountain drinks. Sure, as I'm dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood by the irritable mother that is Time, I often consider changing my ways. But I like my ways too much. Too much, that is, until atrend-canny editor - inspired by Spurlock's new reality TV show, "30 Days" - asked me if I'd like do a variation on the same thing and write about it. Discomfort in public? Sign me up! So I'm going to undertake the flip-side of "Super Size Me." While I can't give up unhealthy foods altogether (I'd probably get the bends), I can take a big step and try to go 30 days without consuming carbonated, caffeinated beverages of any kind. No Cokes, no Mountain Dews, not a single sip of my beloved Seagram's ginger ale. For a month. That's what I'm going to attempt, and I'll document the experience in online journal entries. It's not going to be easy - bear in mind, I drink no coffee at all and am an avid consumer of the fine products of Coke and Pepsi. But I'll hold myself to a strict honor system - if I blow it, I'll 'fess up. And if you think it's going to be easy, clean livin' reader, when was the last time you set aside your beverage of choice for a month? You can always give it a try, too, you know. |
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