Have diet versions of fizzy drinks taken over your life? I might be able to help...

Grace Dent is on week 4 of trying to give up ice-cold, highly-carbonated, thirst-obliterating, taste bud-zinging cans of caramel-coloured caffeine

Grace Dent
Saturday 06 February 2016 01:41 GMT
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Illustration by Ping Zhu
Illustration by Ping Zhu

I am wrestling with an addiction. Not one of the more brag-worthy addictions like cocaine or faceless shagging. Folks' ears prick up if you mention those. You might even get a 60-minute special with Oprah in which she makes you cry, but it's a good, cathartic sort of cry and everyone afterwards says, yes, sure, you slept with the undertaker in a cupboard at your nan's funeral, but in a lot of ways you're inspirational. No one acts like that when you're on week 4 of trying to give up a soft drink.

Or, more accurately, no one acts like that when you're trying to give up ice-cold, highly carbonated, thirst-obliterating, taste bud-zinging cans of caramel-coloured caffeine, which contain no calories, and are thus a guilt-free high while tasting subliminally of childhood Christmases when the fridge was jam-packed and magical. Plus taste subliminally of weeks spent in Tenerife, aged 18, when I lived on this sort of stuff and Silk Cut Menthols and thought that mopeds were a wise way to do post-nightclub sightseeing. I want one of these drinks right now, in fact. Though I'd settle for any diet version. I'd be happy with something from a pound shop called Happy Caffeine that causes rapid-eye flicker and leaves an aftertaste not dissimilar to burnt marzipan.

Oh, these drinks! The constant dieter's sly, false friend, luring in berks like me. First, one or two cans per day, then five or six. As my other vices diminished with age – the boozing, the drugging, the bonking, the Chinese takeaway binges – well, diet fizzy drinks became my last act of raffish, two-fingers-to-The-Man debauchery. Yes, I know it's not as good for you as water, but hey, I'm having one. I'm Dee Dee Ramone. I'm Stacia from Hawkwind who used to dance with her knockers out. I'm still a bit edgy.

Yes I knew I was trapped in a high-low-high-low teeth-chattering caffeine spiral. Yes I knew that people said that the aspartame these drinks contained was responsible for confusing your body into diabetes, ruining your liver, and causing tumours, even if all these claims turned out to be untrue. Yes I'm aware that people say these drinks cause joint pain, and for the last year I've had a mysteriously sore right foot.

But let me have aspartame, I thought. Let me have this one slightly hokey thing. I don't go to warehouse parties any more. I know the calorific folly of a large Costa Coffee giant chocolate teacake. I have learnt to place an abstemious hand over my wine glass during re-fills. I no longer date footballers thinking, "Here, Grace, this is a good idea". Let me have tiny little doses of aspartame and caffeine about every two hours when I'm not sleeping. This led to six or more cans per day, bulk-bought, delivered and stored in a stockpile. Plus a small bottle with ice while waiting for friends in a restaurant, and one for the tube ride, one for the theatre interval, and one for the middle of the night, standing in a kitchen lit only by the light of the fridge. I was waking up wanting a diet-soda. For some mysterious reason I was sleeping quite badly. Can't think why.

It has began to occur to me that addiction, or plain old bad habits, are like one long lifetime game of whack-a-mole. Iron out one, and the compulsion just leads to finding a soft spot elsewhere. It is no coincidence that some of the biggest ex-caners of pharmaceuticals are now fearsomely addicted to running. "I'll be OK if I can just do 10 or 15 kilometres," they say, standing in their bay window looking at sideways sleet and rocking like a tethered Russian bear. "That'll sort my head out."

Even the most prolific shaggers usually end up swapping their whoreishness for holistic therapies. I am a grown woman addicted to suckling on a caffeinated nipple. But I'm breaking out of this cycle. I am taking possession of my destiny. Fizzy diet drinks don't own me.

I have spent the past 35 days walking around with a mouth as dry and acrid as a camel's perineum. I am fractious. I am listless. My daily grind lacks abbreviations. There is no full stop or pause after I've written a column. There's no little private Gracie me-time after I've finished a script. I've considered taking up Silk Cuts again in order to redirect my hands, but it seems counter-productive. I'm drinking a lot of boring soda water. It's no life. I'm all washed up.

But then 10 days ago I became aware of something rather powerful. The metatarsals in my right foot had stopped their tedious throbbing. Just as the pain mysteriously began, so it has mysteriously gone. It's hardly the makings of a new Lourdes pilgrimage zone – which is a shame as I know a lot of gay men who are a dab hand at styling a grotto – but it's enough to steel my will. And anyway, I'm currently all about eBay. I've got 10 bids on the go and I'm watching 37 others. I'm really very busy. Addiction won't be the boss of me. I am a free woman.

@gracedent

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