My Dark Mistress

Good Lord! This is the Wyrmlog’s 1000th post!
Cecil! Get the champagne!

It came to my attention over the weekend that I appear to have addicted myself to Coke Zero.

Yes, laugh if you must. Make comments about how I’m completely exaggerating my situation and how what I actually mean is that I just like the stuff, and I’m being dramatic. But no. I’m dead serious. I think I’ve become an addict.

You see, the thing that you’re probably forgetting is that Coke Zero contains caffeine, and caffeine is a dependency forming stimulant. If I wanted to be more scientifically accurate I should probably say that I’ve become a caffeine addict, but the thing about caffeine addiction is that the addict develops a psychological association between the high from the caffeine and the delivery method. The addict doesn’t actually crave caffeine, they crave whatever it is that contains the caffeine.

In my case, Coke Zero.

I’ve never consumed that much caffeine. When I get to work in the morning I grab a caffeine containing drink to give me a boost and help me face the horrors of eight hours of PHP coding and fielding phone calls from idiots who wouldn’t know an SMTP server if it bit them in the rear. Historically I’ve consumed sugar-free Red Bull, but the supply of it at the eccentric supermarket over the road has been erratic for the last year or so, so I’ve been substituting Coke Zero instead. And I’ve developed quite a taste for it.

But there’s a difference between having a taste for something, and being addicted. So what was the moment I knew I had a problem? On Saturday afternoon I was sitting at my computer and feeling thirsty. “Hmmm” I thought, “A Coke Zero would be really nice about now” so I got up, went out, walked over to the shops and bought a two litre bottle, carried it home and had a drink. Then I felt like another drink… Half an hour later the bottle was empty, and I still felt like a Coke Zero. Derp.

Following on from this revelation I’ve been looking back over the last few months and realised that I’ve been preferentially selecting Coke Zero when other, healthier drinks are available. I’ve also been drinking it in the evenings when I know I should avoid caffeine in order to have a decent night’s sleep. Whoops.

So, what am I going to do about this? Not a great deal. Caffeine is a pretty harmless drug, I mean it’s not like I’m hooked on heroin or something. I’m going to source a decent supply of sugar-free Red Bull to break the cycle, not drink caffeine on the weekends unless I’m doing something really active, and not drink it at all after 4:00pm. That should see me straight.

Probably 🙂