See here to learn what this is all about.

No liquid fake sugar has passed these lips for an entire week. I joked around a lot about this effort to quit diet soda, because the premise is kind of ridiculous and I feel like kind of an asshole that this is one of the large problems in my life, but man, in all sincerity, did (does?) this thing have it’s hooks in me.

I’m young enough to where I haven’t run into situations like having to eat a certain way for my heart or my cholesterol or whatever. I eat mostly well, but I don’t completely deprive myself of like bread or sugar. I’ve also never had a drug addiction. So this is maybe the first time where I’ve had to consciously deprive myself of something (non-person) that I really like. And it was difficult. With no comparison point, I felt like I had a genuine addiction. At first, it would be small things like I’m playing Playstation, and because I formerly was almost always drinking Diet Dr. Pepper when playing Playstation, my body was demanding Diet Dr. Pepper. Those cravings were easy enough to get past with some sort of diversions, but they came up a lot. I didn’t realize how much diet soda I was drinking until I realized how often my brain was saying that this is a time during the day when it was accustomed to drinking diet soda.

As the week went on however, it became really difficult. For some reason I had crazy headaches. I almost never get headaches but I was just getting all sorts of headaches. I felt weak and didn’t feel like walking up stairs. These were physical manifestations of not drinking diet soda! Clearly, I clearly had (have?) a problem And on the mental side I spent all day thinking about Diet Dr. Pepper. I was just sort of thinking all day about what it tastes like, how cold it is, even the satisfaction of popping the tab on the can. It was like when you first meet a girl you like and you just generally think about her a lot and how it will be fun the next time the two of you hang out. Only it wasn’t a girl I was gleefully daydreaming about—I just kept on thinking about Diet Dr. Pepper.

Around day five I started to feel somewhat better. Fewer headaches, less general malaise, less time spent thinking about it. But I don’t necessarily feel any better than I did a week ago and I still want some diet soda. Really badly. So do I keep this fast/cleanse/challenge going? Yes for now. It’s hard to stop doing things that probably won’t have any effect on you for a really long time. We’re probably much better at judging our current needs than predicting it against any possible future consequences. While I have some momentum, I may as well extend another week. It would be harder to start over sometime than to just keep going. And it’s still the right thing to do. It’s not good for me to drink the stuff. The desire for it is annoying though. Nobody likes to feel like they are depriving themselves all of the time. Willpower is an important thing to have, but it doesn’t last forever. Is it a good idea to use it all on this?

I’m flying to San Diego for a wedding next week. I KNOW when I’m on the plane and that flight attendant comes up the aisle, tosses me a bag of fiesta mix, and asks me what I’d like to drink, I’m going to want nothing more than to say Diet Coke. Maybe she’ll ask if Diet Pepsi is ok, and I will say absolutely. Or maybe I’ll say give me your finest sparkling water. I hope it’s the latter, but I don’t know. That will be my most difficult test yet. I’m on a plane with nothing to distract me except for the Skymall catalogue, and I already know I want that three foot tall Bigfoot statue.

One week extension it is. And I hope I have a breakthrough moment where my blood/aspartame level drops to zero and I don’t even have to think about it anymore. Otherwise at some point I’m going to slip up and all I’ll have bought myself is a relatively trivial month or so without it.