I'm so done with Diet Coke.

Coke, you’re on notice.  I’m swearing you off again.  Maybe for good.

No, I mean it.  For real this time.

I have an ardent, passionate love-hate relationship with Diet Coke.  I am very clearly addicted to it and I have at least three signed-off medical reasons not to drink it.  Number one: the caffeine messes with my circulatory system and the vessels in my fingers constrict erratically and they go all white and numb like cadaver fingers (actually, I don’t know if cadaver fingers go numb.  If a finger goes numb on a cadaver, is there anyone around to feel it?).  Number two: I get massive days-long splitting headaches every time I go on or off it – my poor cerebrovascular system just can’t keep up.  Number three and most importantly: it brings on panic attacks.

It’s like a one-to-one correlation, and I’ve done this enough times in controlled and uncontrolled settings to have drawn a really big conclusion about late-night intake of caffeinated diet soda and panic episodes.  I don’t know what it is.  I drink Diet Coke and suddenly I’m thinking about my mortality and how I’m going to die and I’m wasting these precious few moments of consciousness sitting on my couch watching TV and drinking Diet Coke and all of a sudden there it goes and I’m spending the rest of the night trying to escape my head.  This doesn’t happen if I am sitting on that same couch without my Diet Coke.  And it doesn’t happen if I’m drinking Diet Coke for lunch somewhere else.

Oh my God.  Diet Coke and my couch are having an affair.  They’re trying to push me out of the picture.  That’s the only possible explanation that fits the data. How did I not see this?

Well fine.  Coke, I’m done.  I’m done, you hear me?  If that’s what you want, I will not drink you anymore.  Your aspartame kills rats and your carbonation leeches calcium from my already atrophied bones and your caffeine hurts me all over.  Last night was the last bad night you’re going to give me.  You suck, and I will have none of you.

(I should probably note somewhere that this is my own personal battle with all diet colas and that I fully endorse anyone else drinking them.  Or not.  I don’t care and I am very keen on not advertising or anti-advertising this product.)

Tea, we’re still good, right?