Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Health & Body

Death in custody from "excited delirium"?
Some coroners say suspects are dying not from police brutality but an obscure medical disorder called "excited delirium".
By Christian Parenti
[09/29/99]

Urge
Cover me
In a family of exhibitionists, I'm the prude. Now please pass me my towel.
By Anna Mantzaris
[09/28/99]

Urge
Girl trouble
Between good friends and great clients, nobody is as they seem.
By Tracy Quan
[09/27/99]

Urge
Nice married guys
For a single gal in New York, a brush with a married man teaches her all she never hoped to know.
By J. M. Fitzroy
[09/25/99]

Column
A terrible thing to waste
You do not need brains to go to the Harvard Brain Bank, only a brain.
By Mary Roach
[09/24/99]

Complete archives for Health & Body

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About this soda: I'm not having a big party or buying in obscene bulk to split with friends. Nor am I sustaining a family of four or a troop of thirsty boy scouts.

No, it's all for me. These four cases are my stash for the next two or three weeks. After about 10 years of guzzling about four or five cans a day, I am a confirmed, unabashed diet cola addict.

And this is my story -- of how I got here, what I've learned about soda, and how I tried, for one measly week, to kick the habit.

But first, can a person truly be addicted to soda, in the same way a person is addicted to cigarettes or painkillers? "Well, it depends on how you define addiction," says Sharron Dalton, Ph.D., associate professor at New York University's department of Nutrition and Food Studies. "A physical addiction means that there will be withdrawal symptoms when the substance is taken away." Critics of the caffeine in most carbonated beverages claim that these symptoms can hit hard. And after going a week without my fix, the word "hard" doesn't even come close to describing my soda woes.

However, my habit goes back to my teens, when I first discovered my taste for the bubbly and my need for the bubbly -- cruising through the rest of adolescence on a carbonated wave. Whenever my mother started buying it, I started drinking it. I littered the house with cans of Diet Rite, Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke. Like my mother, I too, am somewhat of a soda slut -- meaning I have little brand loyalty. Given a choice, however, I'll usually take Diet Coke.

Other than a few summers in Maine -- when I was forced to go to a camp that banned junk food -- I'd estimate that the longest I've gone without a soda is about three days. Sure, I've been temporarily stymied, but I've always gotten my fix. And oh, the things I've done for a soda!

When I lived in Paris, I'm ashamed to say how much money I spent on Diet Coke (or Coca-light, as its called there). At some cafes, I'd forgo the fois gras and I'd plunk down 25 francs (roughly $5 at the time) for a measly glass bottle you rarely find in this country.

And at work, I am known as a soda fiend. On a particularly "bad" day -- when it's 10 a.m., for example, and I am already reaching for my third one -- I am forced to get sneaky, to save face with colleagues, family and friends. When no one is looking, I replace an empty with a fresh can and quietly relegate the empty to the recycling bin. (A brief coughing fit disguises the distinctive pffftt of a can being opened.)

But even my own fanaticism has its limits and one night I started thinking. Can this virtual cola I.V. drip be doing serious harm? A knee-jerk reaction condemns soda as an unequivocal dietary evil. It's very easy to call soda names. Simply take a look at the ingredient list, says the Center for Science in the Public Interest -- a Washington organization that has famously bashed Americans' love affair with junk food -- in a 1998 report that derides soda pop as "Liquid Candy."

But should we?

Next page | If I drink this soda, will I have even worse PMS?