coke addict

My name is David Learn, and I am an addict.

 

It's taken me some time to admit that I have a problem, but the symptoms are there. Spending money I can't afford to fuel my habit, I make one excuse after another to indulge. I'm facing the middle-of-the-day hump, and it'll give me the boost I need to get through; I'm tired, and this will give me the energy to get by. I lie to myself about my addiction, and I try to cover up from my wife just how bad it is. It's just one more, that's all. No one will notice.

 

I promise myself regularly that I'm going to stop soon, but soon never comes. There's always another hump to climb over, another spell of fatigue to overcome, another excuse to justify what has become an increasingly expensive and destructive habit to indulge.

 

I'm an addict. The evidence is insurmountable: the recycling bin full of plastic bottles and aluminum cans, the tooth decay, the weight problem, the cans that rattle around the floor of the car, the brown tongue, the increased urination. I'm addicted to Coke.

 

This past Monday, I faced up to my problem, and I called it quits. The effect was noticeable almost immediately. As I began filtering the caffeine out from my system, I bottomed out especially low around three o'clock. Those first few days marked the return of Mr. Grumpy Pants to my home. My children have been relieved, I think, to see him showing up less as the day has gone on.

 

How much sleep has drinking Coke kept me from getting the full benefit of? I don't know, but I've been making up for it the past few days. I've been turning in by 11 o'clock and struggling to get up at 8 or 9. Taking a meal in the early evening today nearly flattened me, as my systemic nervous system diverts energy to my digestive system.

 

I've already lost one molar to my addiction, and I'm determined to stay stopped now, before any other teeth join it. The high levels of sugar in Coke make a tremendous meal for the bacteria behind tooth decay, and as their digestive juices get flowing, the tooth enamel starts flying apart. My wife, in her typically picturesque vocabulary, describes it as "teeth rotting in your head."

 

And I admit, I'm concerned about the effect all this Coke has had on my pancreas. More than twenty years ago, the Coca-Cola Co. made its signature drink with real sugar. It was high in calories, and it was still bad for your teeth, but it was a natural sugar and it was something the body could process naturally, with no ill effects beyond hyperactivity and the potential for tooth decay.

 

As lobbyists worked their weal upon the federal government, though, corn prices dropped low, and stayed there: low enough that corn syrup became cheaper to feed cattle than cattle feed, and a cheaper sweetener than sugar. The result has been cattle that are unable to digest their food properly, and people who are unable to process the non-natural sweeteners in more and more of their foods and beverages.

 

As people consume greater quantities of high fructose corn syrup -- and we consume it in record amounts, in the United States -- it plays cruel games with our blood sugar levels. Keep it up long enough, and the pancreas -- the organ designed to regulate levels of blood sugar -- burns out and becomes incapable of regulating blood sugar at all. If you want to find a reason for the epidemic of diabetes and obesity in the United States, you don't need to look much further than corn syrup and those subsidies for agribusiness.

 

I don't have any of the common symptoms of diabetes -- I'm not incessantly thirsty, my blood pressure is fine, I heal at a normal rate, and my vision hasn't begun to blur -- but I know better than to push my luck. I've sworn off Coke, and I hope to stay clean.

 

Trouble is, this isn't my first time quitting. I've realized before that I was drinking too much of the stuff, and I kicked the habit cold-turkey, for a week, two weeks, or even more than a month at one point. But the stuff is so ubiquitous, especially in the summer. Go to a barbecue, attend a party, or visit a relative, and chances are good there's going to be a Coke handy, ready to drink, just waiting.

 

After all, there's nothing wrong with just one, right? Moderation is everything.

 

Maybe for others, but not for me. My name is David Learn, and I am an addict.

Addicted to the kind of Coke that you can't snort

My name is David Learn, and I'm addicted to Coke.

This addiction is now entering its 10th year, and it shows no signs of getting weaker. It's taken a toll on my bank account, my health and my relationship with my wife. I thought I could quit any time I wanted, but I can't. I want my life back.

As with other people, I first started cultivating my addiction in earnest during the young and heady days of college. Between discussions regarding whether free will is a meaningful construct or purely illusory, and whether Isabella was right to refuse Lord Angelo's lewd proposition to save her brother Claudio's life in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," college was an invitation to a lifestyle of addiction, excess and wanton self-indulgence.

I was no better than my friends. While they were discovering the joys of alcohol poisoning and waking up in the hospital with no memory of how they had broken a hip, I was experimenting with Coke.

It started innocently. Other students noticed I was having a hard time maintaining the energy I needed for the college lifestyle. I could have gone to sleep earlier, but that would have required changing my lifestyle. It was easier to start using Coke.

I started small, with a little bit at lunch, to give me the energy I would need to get through my afternoon classes. Then I started getting a little more, at dinner, to get me through the evening.

By the middle of my sophomore year, I was a full-fledged addict. I would go to parties and — unwilling to drink beer because of my experiences with a grandfather who was an alcoholic — I turned to Coke. Soon I was consuming as much as 32 ounces of it at one sitting, and wondering why I couldn't sleep.

I would find it hard to focus in class, and get crushing headaches. A housemate noticed that my addiction was affecting my weight, and not in a good way. He tried to say something, and I nearly bit his head off. I regretted it, and apologized, but there was no denying it. Coke had a hold on my life.
There were days Coke was the only thing I had for a meal, aside from the occasional glass of milk to calm my upset stomach.

Twice now I've managed to go cold turkey, despite the tremendous migraines and exhaustion that come on me as my body clears itself of the toxins I've polluted it with.

The first time I was clean for two glorious years — although "clean" probably is pushing things. I was living in Haiti at the time as a missionary. I could still find Coke if I wanted it, but it cost 80 cents for 16 ounces, compared to the 20 ounces of Pepsi I could get for the same amount of money. I simply changed the subject of my addiction for a couple years, although I did drink a lot of water to avoid dehydration.

My second time, I actually did go completely cold turkey when I realized how much money my habit was costing me. It didn't last.

After two weeks, I discovered that I couldn't stay up late on the job as easily as I had, and as I bottomed out, I remembered how much energy I once had had. It was too easy to fall back on old habits, even though I had told my wife I had stopped for good.

So now I'm back in the habit, drinking as many as three 20-ounce bottles of Coke a day, and paying as much as $1.36 for a fix at the Quick Chek down the street from my office.

My addiction has led to at least six cavities that I know of, it has brought me to the point that I am about 40 pounds overweight, with an attendant increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and kidney problems. If that's not enough, it also aggravates the insomnia and the migraines I've suffered since I was a teenager.

I know all this, but as I write this column, I'm doing it with a bottle of Coke at my side. Unlike that other form of coke addiction, this one keeps the people caught in its clutches on a brisk slide for years before it lets them bottom out, usually far too late to make a decent recovery.

My name is David Learn. I'm an addict, and I want my life back. 

New Coke as a Life Moment

About eight years ago, I was talking to my eighth-grade English students at Cradle of Life Christian School about advertising as an example of using language as a means of persuading people to adopt a course of action. Being the hip, young teacher that I was, I trotted out the example of how Pepsi had taken advantage of the chaos created by the New Coke.

Blank stares.

"You know, the new Coke."

No response.

"Oh, come on -- it wasn't that long ago. I was a sophomore in high school, which meant ..." (quick arithmetic as I realize my students all were in training pants or diapers at the time of the New Coke.) "Okay, have any of you ever wondered why it's called Coca-Cola Classic?"

Face to face with my Coke addiction

I realized earlier this week that I have missed out on the single largest gravy train to come through the country in recent years. I haven't made millions by suing anyone.

Forget the minor personal-injury lawsuits for a paltry million dollars or so. The biggest money-maker is the class action lawsuit against an entire industry. Guns- and tobacco-related lawsuits were the big winners in the past few years; with the support of a few thousand other consumers, I want to go straight to the top and hit the soft-drink manufacturers.

The big soda makers are just crying out to be sued. For starters, they have lots of money to pay huge out-of-court settlements. Actually, that's the only reason I need, but my favorite fizzy beverage also has caused me several health problems, including cavities, increased urination and a brown tongue.

And emotional suffering. No, really.

I'm addicted to The Real Thing. I've been known to have three 20-ounce bottles in a single day. By the time I finish, I have reached hypertension Nirvana with a caffeine-and-sugar buzz that has me pacing the floor at 90 mph, completely unable to sit down and concern myself with earthly affairs, like work.

I have all the classic signs of an addict. If I go without my dose, my face takes on a drawn, strung-out look. I can't sleep late at night, even when I'm suffering from extreme fatigue.

Plain old water and other, healthier drinks just don't cut it for me; I even poured the cold fizzy on my breakfast cereal this morning to give Snap, Crackle and Pop a little more zing.

My performance at work is impaired because I can't stop craving the flavored brown acid, and I continually make excuses to cover up my addiction and the unexplained expenses at the supermarket.

"Why are there 23 trips to the Hillsborough ShopRite on our VISA bill?" my wife asked me as she held up the bill. "We didn't need that many groceries."

"Oh, well, you know how it is," I said, relieved she doesn't know about the trips to the soda machine at Kmart. "I bought a few things to share with people at the office."

I'm a victim of marketing strategies. When I was a child growing up outside Pittsburgh, Coke ran commercials in 1980 at the height of the Super Bowl XIV hysteria, featuring "Mean Joe" Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I've been duped by celebrity endorsements from people like Max Headroom and Bill Cosby. I mean, come on! If Bill Cosby thought Coke was "The Real Thing" and talked about how it often won the Pepsi Challenge, who was I to argue?

If Remington or Colt had run commercials on prime-time TV of Joe Greene shooting people on the other football team, or if Bill Cosby smoked a pack of Marlboros in the Huxtable family residence, parents groups would have thrown a fit. Why should Coke or the other soft drink giants be any different?

Worse, the soda pop industry is taking full advantage of my addiction. It looks like the old 50-cent cans are going the way of the dodo. They now cost 80 cents most places, and even the vending machines sell 20-ounce bottles, usually for $1. Luckily the one by the office charges only 75 cents.

And now apparently even that might change. An article I saw last year on CNN Financial News said Coca-Cola was considering investing in a device that would let individual machines change the price to match the temperature.

That way, when a really crippling heat wave hits like we had this past summer, the machine will anticipate the increased demand and raise the price to match. The hotter the day, the more expensive the drink. (Somehow I doubt they'll give it away during cold snaps, though.)

It's only reasonable to file a lawsuit. At the very least, any money I collect can help support my habit.