...it is feared that the water used to produce Coke may contain unhealthy levels of pesticides and other harmful chemicals. It has also been alleged that due to the amount of water required to produce Coca-Cola, aquifers are drying up and forcing farmers to relocate.and
Packaging used in Coca-Cola's products has a significant environmental impact but the company strongly opposes attempts to introduce mechanisms such as container deposit legislation.and
To date, there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's workers, including 9 murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so.posted by davidjmcgee at 7:23 PM on November 29, 2011
So, I was in this spot. I drank somewhere between 1 and 3 liters of Coke a day for something like.. 12+ years? Got started at the high school vending machine in the morning, and through the various travails o' life and my accompanying depression, worked my way up and stayed there. Have the weight to prove it. I have a clear memory of some point in my early twenties, thinking, "I really need to stop drinking Coke. I mean it this time. Well.. not cold turkey, that's probably too hard. I'll just have some any time we go out to eat. [pause] How can I get us to go out to eat tonight?"posted by taz at 9:55 PM on November 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
If that's not addict behavior, I don't know what is.
Various psych-therapists have suggested it was also a kind of self-medicating, but I never got much of a caffeine or sugar buzz off of it so I can't comment on the physical angle. I'm pretty sure it was a psychological self-medicating, though; any time I'd get stressed, or anxious, I'd drink a Coke and start to feel.. "better" is the wrong word, but less-bad, in any case. Whether that was a chemical reaction taking place in response to something in the Coke, or simply in response to the act of drinking it, I can't say.
I cheated a bit when I quit. I had a gods-awful sinus infection-flu-plague-thing, and switched to Sprite (couldn't keep water down, needed something with a bit of carbonation). Kept on that when I got better, but was still drinking the same volume, and the calories of the two are the same. Slowly got myself switched over to (real, not Minute Maid-type or from-concentrate) fruit juice, which.. also wasn't better. Then, I just started drinking ice water.
Ice water was the ticket. Mind you, I was still drinking the exact same volume of liquid, but now it was pretty benign. As the months have gone by (as I'm about 5 or 6 months into my "no pop" streak, which is better than my previous "sometimes I'd go a whole day" for the previous decade-plus, and am down 25 pounds with pretty much no other lifestyle changes) my craving to drink in general has gone down as well.
I'm pretty sure at some point, the drinking-Coke thing had not only become a kind of psychological crutch, but also a damned hobby. Any time I was actively engaged I had zero thought about it, but as soon as I was sitting in front of a computer or television or just reading a book, I wanted to reach for more. I'd suggest looking at the times and places you're most likely to reach for a Coke and figure out what's going on there, in case it's a similar thing with you.
If you want a practical non-health reason to quit: think about how much money you spend on it. Count it up in a day, then tabulate that out over a year. Plus, you know, mega-corporations are typically pretty evil. (of course, that one doesn't work so well for your purposes since making your own soda pops at home is not difficult; your only problem would be keeping up with your intake volume).
On to quitting!
If you get headaches, that's the caffeine, and I'd suggest tea. Tea bags would be fine, but loose-leaf would be even better; the ritual of boiling the tea, letting the leaves steep in a pot, pouring the tea into a small cup can be pretty relaxing, and makes it more of an event than "well, time to drink some more (whatever)".
Mood swings I'm not as sure about. General advice: exercise. Go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, play DDR or something on Kinect even. If you find that after a month it's not going away, maybe talk to a doctor about some kind of super-low-dose medication.
I'd just recommend cold turkey + ice water (I'm talking a cup that can handle something close to a liter, filled with cold tasty/filtered water and enough ice to worry the Titanic) + making tea once a day (for headaches). Every time - every time - you think, "Man, I want a Coke right now," drink some water. Not even kidding about that. You're reading this right now, maybe we're into next week, you're a couple of days into the thing and you are jonesing so bad. Drink some of your water. It's cold! It's refreshing! It's right there and won't make you hate yourself.
If you slip up.. don't worry about it, just go back to the water and continue on. Coca-Cola is not an inherently evil substance. Nothing is. It's the excess that is and will continue to cause you problems. Good luck!
