Diet Soda Fast Week Three

See here to learn what this is all about.

I’ve already awkwardly compared my lust for diet soda to a full on drug addiction a few times, and I kind of feel like an asshole for it. People have real drinking and drug problems. And I have neither. But it’s an easy analogy to draw. If I was building a birdhouse, I would compare it to the Egyptians crafting their pyramids. We all have delusions of grandeur. We all want to feel more important than we are, so we compare our mundane tasks to more important tasks. A real drug problem is maybe not grandeur, but it is clearly the cooler version of a problem with drinking too much diet soda. (Kidding kids, drugs aren’t cool. Hugs, not drugs. Shoot pool, not heroin.)

I recently read Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography, Scar Tissue (which I highly recommend). That dude did a lot of drugs. He got clean and relapsed many times too. Most of his relapses, he thought he could just do one drug (that’s how you measure drugs, right?) and be ok after the night or the weekend or whatever. But he always ended up slipping back into full-on addiction. Being a man that learns from what he reads, and a man that can be selfishly neurotic, and a man and that is drawing analogies, I’m worried that if I drink one Diet Coke I’m going to just immediately tumble back into a ten-can-a-day habit. I don’t know if that will happen, or if it won’t happen, but I think it will happen, and it has created this situation where I’m physically over the urges to drink diet soda, but mentally I keep thinking about it because I’m worried I might screw this up.

A normal person can walk into that store connected to the Chevron to buy a six pack of Pabst, see a Diet Coke and think “Boy howdy, that looks refreshing, I’m going to buy a Diet Coke and drink it and it will be delicious.” But I’m in fake-addict mode and I think “Don’t even look at that, don’t even think about it. Stop imagining what it will taste like. You’re weak, you’re an asshole, you’re a terrible person.” (I think in similar tones when I’m on the treadmill.) I think about that, and it just makes it worse. I think about this so much more than I normally would if I wasn’t going on a ‘fast’ or acting all hyper-aware.

I guess that physically, I’m over this. Three weeks in, and I don’t feel like I need to drink any diet soda at all. I didn’t miss it on the airplane to or from San Diego, I didn’t miss it when I saw X-Men: First Class. I don’t really feel any better but I’m hoping my body is happier, because my mind is getting a little weird over this.

This saga will continue until I commence thinking like a normal human being and not like a drug addict. Also, stop acting like an asshole John.