I've been clean now for 49 days.

The sound is the worst of it. "Open the damn thing in the kitchen!"  I yell at my husband, who rolls his eyes and takes a deep pull.

Yeah, he's terrified of me. He could stand to get off the stuff too. Some mornings he drinks one before he even takes a shower. And some mornings he almost passes out from reactive hypoglycemia after he takes a shower. This is bad shit. But he hasn't hit bottom yet, and I doubt he ever will. Some day, when he's in his wheelchair with his legs amputated because of diabetes, then maybe he'll quit. Or maybe not.

Diet Coke, they make Diet Coke, you know. Only problem is Diet Coke tastes like skid marks smell. Shit is nasty. And Diet Coke comes with its own set of problems. Research shows that rats fed Diet Coke consume more calories total than rats fed real Coke. The body gets confused;  Where's my sugar?  So you eat more. Plus, it causes bloating.  But the main thing is that they haven't come up with a sweetener that doesn't taste like something they put in a pill to try to get kids to take it but the kids are onto you.  If it doesn't even taste good, what's the point?

The first week was the hardest. I kept a diary.

Day 1:  Not too bad, except for the headache.

Day 2:  So tired all day. I didn't exercise the way I was supposed to.

Day 3:  Sick headache.

Day 4:  Suffering terrible cravings for Coke, caffeine, sugar. Bad dreams about someone coming into my house and taking my childhood toys. Spent a long time cooking healthy food but don't feel like eating it.

Day 5:  This is awful. Please give me a break.

Day 6:  Losing the will to write about it.

Day 7:  If my husband opens another Coke in front of me I am going to chew off my own arm and beat him to death with it.

But then there's Day 8, beginning of week 2:  

No longer suffering cravings. The fresh whole fruits ploy is working, plus whole grains for carb cravings.

The cravings don't stay gone, though. Every time he opens one in front of me (and although he does make an effort to do it in the other room, he's kind of a jackass about remembering) they come right back. It's a Pavlovian thing;  I am trained to crave Coke at the sound of that pop, hiss, fizz. 

Sometime around week  3, I break down and ask my husband for a sip of his Coke. And, you know what?  Now that I'm off it, it doesn't taste good to me. It tastes sort of vile, in fact, like sweetened ditch water might taste. But the smell, the smell is still amazing. I don't drink it, just put my nose to my cup and inhale for fifteen minutes.

A couple of weeks later, I tried it again.  By now it didn't even smell nice.

But the sound, the sound still gets me every time. Even though I know it won't smell nice or taste nice, I still want it when I hear the sound. 

I've done this once before, the last time I went on a diet. It worked, too. I lost almost fifty pounds and I kept it off for five years. But it's tough being the one to do without, and gradually I let myself slip. "Give me just a little," I would say to my husband. Then it was half a Coke. Then it was a whole one. Until I was up to three and four a day again. 

Four Cokes a day is five hundred and sixty calories. And that's not counting my real, hardcore addiction, the Coke to end all Cokes - the Coke Icee. The only pleasure found in Memphis in the summer, with its hundred degree days and eighty percent humidity, sticky car seats and smelly air conditioners, is the Coke Icee. 32 ounces is about perfect. Suck the sweet syrup from the bottom and the top forms a pale, golden crust. Plunge your scoop spoon into the crust - it's almost bitter, the perfect foil. Savor the brain freeze. Roll the cup against your pulse points and feel yourself become human again, no longer a sweaty slab of flesh but a civilized being. The Coke Icee is the pinnacle of our culture.

I looked up the calories in a Coke Icee. 7-11 assures me that there are only 65. What the fuck?  Oh. I see. There are 65 calories in ONE SERVING of a Coke Icee - which is 8 ounces. You're supposed to buy one and then split it with your three friends. Or throw 3/4 of it in the trash. Or put it in the fridge and drink it later after it's melted into a puddle of slime. Fuck you, 7/11.

 So, 260 calories in a Coke Icee. And summer days are long. Two Icees per day. 520 calories.

But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that Coke Icees absolutely require that you eat Wendy's French Fries to properly appreciate them. The salt and the crispy golden goodness goes perfectly with the sweetness and the bitterness. Conveniently, you can get some without setting foot outside your air conditioned car. You need a large serving of fries or you will run out before you finish your Icee. There are 550 calories in a large Wendy's fries.

 Uh, that's... yeah. Over a thousand calories. Of, well, pretty much nothing your body needs. Potatoes have some potassium, I hear.

And having eaten all that, you might as well swing by Baskin Robbins and get some dairy.

It's possible that there are people in the world who can drink  Coke moderately. I can't. Drinking Coke, any Coke, is opening a Pandora's box of cascading cravings. You want to know what comes next on the list?  You really want to know?  Sweet tarts, those little colored candies that are mostly sugar and artificial flavoring. Or Spree. Something tart and tangy. That's what I crave if I drink two Coke slurpees, eat a large order of fries, then follow up with chocolate ice cream. At this  point, my nervous system has been completely hijacked. It doesn't know what's good for me.

I know the cure.

Don't eat the Sweet Tarts. No one needs to eat Sweet Tarts. If I'm craving Sweet Tarts, it's because my body is begging, "Please!  For the love of Mike!  Eat some fresh fruit, lady, you haven't touched Vitamin C since the last time you had sauce on pizza!" 

Then go back up the list. Eat some carbs, good carbs, some whole grains. And, what was it, dairy?  Drink some friggen milk for a change. 

But most importantly, go cold turkey on the Coke. The Coke is the devil and it wants to kill me.  No matter how good it sounds when that can opens, the Coke is not my friend. The Coke is the reason I need two root canals and my husband's teeth are worse. The Coke is six hundred calories of nothing which could be a full, healthy, delicious, body-building meal. The Coke gives me quick energy but then it drops me like a rock. I could write a book about why this is, how lobbyists were responsible for sugar being replaced by high fructose corn syrup, all about glycemic indices and such, but this isn't about that. This is about me and my addiction, and whatever the reason, the shit was killing me so I stopped using it.

49 days so far.