A week with no Coke

Day 1: The resolution is set. I will give up drinking dark sodas. Those who know me well from earlier days may be surprised, as if Willie Nelson gave up pot or Jesus gave up wine. It’s not just the carcinogens, the calories building around my middle, the acids sucking the calcium from my bones, the sugars eating away at the plaque of my teeth, or the caffeine robbing my sleep, it’s the monetary cost of it. For the second month in a row I’ve had to exchange dollars at the end of the month to live my intended lifestyle of coming into the city on weekends for internet and American company. News flash, being a volunteer is not a very well-paid gig.

Day 2: So why is it that in return for English-speaking society I must give up the main non-transportation-related expense digging into my salary? A liter bottle of true Coca Cola is a little over a dollar (Turkmen Cola, which tastes like corn-syrup ass, is about fifty cents a bottle), but even drinking half a liter a day adds up quickly when your entire monthly salary is about $75 (not counting rent). Just one day without it has ignited the withdrawal symptoms: a pounding headache haunted me starting late afternoon and I was irritable and restless starting from about noon. It was about then I walked past the one store in town that sells Pepsi cans so cold there are little ice crystals inside like a soda smoothie. Trying not to think about it.

Day 3: The first big test. If I’d attended an addiction steps program I’m sure there’s some word for it, the moment when you habitually always take the substance in question, and you don’t. It was touch and go there for a bit, though. The good store that always has the cold cans is open 50% of the time when I’m going to Altyn’s and I figured if God or fate really wanted me to give up dark soda then it would be closed. It was open. I could almost taste the rich acidly sweet goodness on my tongue as I stepped through the door. But then I saw it: a 7 UP. They never have 7-Up. And 7-Up may rot your teeth, but it isn’t a carcinogen and is half the cost of Pepsi (it’s less popular). And they had a cold one. By divine providence, my abstinence from dark soda holds for another day.

Day 4: Sleeping is getting easier. As in, I seem able to nap 5-6 hours a day and then still sleep at night. Giving up dark soda apparently means not only giving up the joyful taste, but also all those jittery all-nighter evenings that only large doses of Benedril can counter-act. On the other hand, why are caffeine withdrawal and depression symptoms the same?

Day 5: This is getting ridiculous. I once tried to give up soda for Lent and made it for all of a week before I had a coke on Sunday and descended completely into a life of soda sin forever more. So much for promises to God, I serve a higher power: the God of expensively-marketed sugary poison. When I went to Turkey last month my parents brought me half a suitcase full of Diet Coke. No joke. My request from the America: movies, cute clothes (which I wore on vacation and then sent back), and Diet Coke. I drank an average 2-5 cans a day and then felt virtuous for conserving. So far the switch to Sprite and 7-Up is holding steady. The trick is the weekend.

Day 6: Should there be some caveat to the prohibition that all-nighters can include Coke? How is one supposed to stay up all night talking with people without some kind of chemical stimulant? Just pure enthusiasm? Who has that, really? On the other hand, on the Wyoming trip I learned that park rangers keep a bottle of Coke in their van to wash blood spills off the road, that it will eat the paint off of a bike, and will dissolve teeth completely when soaking in the stuff overnight. How many of these are overplayed hyperboles I don’t know, but the inch of truth is there: if I don’t want to succumb to one side of the family’s cancer or become a slave to the other side’s pattern of addiction disorders, I’ve got to give up the dark soda. Entirely.

Day 7: Wish me luck. The prohibition holds. Strange side note: my highly educated and worldly Turkmen counterpart, Altyn, who has been to Germany and watches Russian TV regularly does not know what McDonalds is. When I referenced our favorite burger chain in conversation, she asked me if it was the name of an American state. I didn’t feel like explaining that it is more a state of mind. I’m off the map, folks, and resolute.