Giving up...diet sodas, that is.

March 16, 2014



Don't you just love these ecards?

I have had this very conversation with more than one waitress over the years.  Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi are not interchangeable.  Why would any sane person think that they are?

But I no longer need to carry my Monopoly money with me because I don't have to deal with this particular issue any more. I gave up diet cokes.  Not for Lent, as I am not catholic.  I gave them up for good. 

Whether or not we should give up diet coke is a question that we, my family and I, have wrestled with for many years.  It is really crazy this hold that diet coke has over us.  When we first began drinking diet coke, we had to force ourselves to drink the diet version of coke rather than regular coke.  That was many years ago. In the years since we made the switch from regular coke to diet, I can honestly say that there were days that I guzzled diet coke like it was the elixir of life. 

However, two years ago, on July 13th, Donna woke up to realize that she couldn't see out of her left eye.  Visits to doctors were followed by test to make sure she didn't have diabetes or some other medical condition that would cause her to lose her vision.  During this time, she made the decision to stop drinking diet coke.

 It was a very stressful and scary time for all of us and letting go of diet drinks seemed like something I could grab onto that would let me get back a little bit of control. So I stopped drinking diet cokes as well. (My hubby is a little bit tougher nut to crack.  He brings home diet cokes, or Dr. Pepper now, when every he stops for drinks and Donna or I am not there to remind him we don't drink diet sodas anymore.) 

Back to the point, this is not the first time we have quit drinking diet soda. We have on more than one occasion declared that we wouldn't drink diet soda.  Sometimes this would last for up to six months before we caved and went back to our nasty little 64 ounce or more a day habit.  That is one or more Route 44s from Sonic, in case your wondering. In the past, we lived in a day by day world.  We had to make the decision to not get diet soda every time we stopped to get something to drink. The question was always do you want a diet coke or...?  Not surprisingly we ended up drinking diet coke nearly every time and eventually quit pretending we were not drinking it.

Goodbye to diet sodas.

On this occasion, with Donna's health giving us a wake up call, we made an important attitude change. If we weren't going to drink diet coke, if that was our decision, then what in the world would we drink?

Well...water, okay, we should have been drinking that anyway.  And...juice, this was before we were worried about calories, and juice is healthy if you don't overdo it.  And...oh yeah, tea.  Wow, before I became a diet coke junkie, tea is what I drank.  Unsweetened tea as a matter of fact, with the occasional coke thrown in.  

Now, the question was no longer, do you want a diet coke or...?"  It became what do you want to drink, water, juice, or tea?  We made the decision to not drink diet coke one time, not each and every time we stopped to get a drink. 

Despite the fact that Doyle brings home the occasionally diet Dr. Pepper, we have stuck with it, and I am really hoping that Diet Coke is not the elixir of life after all.  But if it is we do still have a Sonic nearby.