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Caffeine: the opiate of the masses?
September 28, 2003 - 04:05 AM
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Fri, Sep. 26, 2003
Addicted to Coke
ELIZABETH LELAND
Diet Coke is the No. 1 diet soft drink in the United States. Lisa Shuster drinks more than most people, but says, ''I bet you could probably find hundreds like me. We’re a cult.''
Lisa Shuster is craving her first Diet Coke of the day.
She is slender, 5-foot-6 with blond good looks, and the only hint that something is wrong is the way she gnaws at her thumbnail, fighting off that jittery feeling.
It's 9:30 in the morning. She's been up for three hours and is drinking her third cup of coffee. But she hasn't had a Diet Coke. Three hours and no Diet Coke. Most days, she has already driven to McDonald's by now and indulged. Super Size. 42 ounces. A cup the size of a child's bucket.
This morning, her 16-year-old daughter slept in late with a headache and Lisa has been stuck at home.
Finally, at 10:30, Kathleen is ready for school.
Finally, Lisa can get her fix.
As she cruises toward Myers Park High School in her blue Lincoln Navigator, she's thinking about how good it will taste. Cool. Fizzy. With that sweet tang of aspartame mixed with saccharin found only in a fountain drink.
Without intending to, she turns left off Colony Road onto Fairview Road, away from her destination.
"I'm headed to McDonald's!" Lisa blurts out, laughing at her mistake.
"Tough luck," she calls over her shoulder to Kathleen. "You're second. My car is trained to go to McDonald's."
For Lisa, who's 42, Diet Coke is more than a drink. It's a way of life.
"I don't drink alcohol," she says. "I don't smoke. I don't cuss. This is my addiction."
In the United States last year, we drank nearly 3 billion gallons of Coke. "It's the real thing." Two billion gallons of Pepsi. "You got the right one baby." One billion gallons of Diet Coke. "Do what feels good." Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew and Sprite, 7 UP, Mello Yello and Sun-drop, Pepsi Vanilla, Pepsi Twist and Pepsi Blue.
We drink more soda than water.
It costs us $63 billion a year and, some researchers say, our health.
Super Size it!
Lisa pulls into the drive-through lane at the McDonald's on the corner of Sharon and Fairview roads."Oh my God. I hope I have money." She fumbles through her purse and fishes out two dollar bills.
Relief.
"Super Size Diet Coke," she calls into the intercom.
From the back seat, Kathleen interrupts: "You never get Super Size. You get large."
"I've moved on. Large doesn't last long enough."
Kathleen, who prefers milk and juice, stares at her mother with an I-don't-believe-you're-saying-this look. Lisa tells her, "I just never realized they have a bigger one."
She hands over the $2 through the window.
"With the money she spends on Diet Coke," Kathleen says, "she could buy a car."
Lisa reaches for her drink and 21 cents in change.
She sips.
Zing.
She sighs.
"Ah. That's so good."
She drives around the building to the stop sign and sips again before pulling out into traffic.
"You have no idea."
She grins.
"My day can begin."
Down, down, down
You take that first sip, and your tongue tingles. The carbon dioxide added to sodas to make them fizzy is reacting with acid in your mouth. A ripple of bubbles tickles your gums, the hollows of your cheeks, the back of your throat.
You swallow. The soda streams into your esophagus, a hollow tube an inch wide and 12 inches long. Down, down, down it flows, tickling your muscles along the way, until it reaches your stomach. There, the CO2 mixes with more acid. More bubbles. When you burp after drinking a carbonated drink, that's why.
Most of the water in a soda goes into the small intestine, where it is absorbed into your blood. The caffeine and phosphorus also enter the bloodstream from the small intestine. They go into your liver and from there into tissues, including your brain and your heart.
If you haven't eaten, you'll feel a sensation from the caffeine within about five minutes: Your heart pumps faster. Your brain activity speeds up. You feel peppier. That's what caffeine does. On a full stomach, it will hit you later.
The feeling lasts about an hour, the time it takes Lisa to finish one Super Size Diet Coke and reach for another.
`You don't want to get fat'
Lisa drank her first diet soda in high school.She grew up in Greenville, S.C., and says she had buck teeth, cat-eye glasses and stringy hair. A dork. She went to private school, Christ Episcopal, with many of the same kids from kindergarten through 10th grade. Even when she transformed her looks with braces and contact lenses, their image of her stuck. Still a dork.
She pleaded with her parents to let her transfer to public school. They refused.
Then one day her mother threatened Lisa and her sister and two brothers: If you make any Cs, you're going to public school. On her next report card, Lisa says, she brought home all Cs -- "I think I threw a `D' in there, too."
She transferred in 11th grade to J.L. Mann High School and surrounded herself with new friends.
"My life began."
She was named class flirt in 12th grade.
At parties, she was the skinny blond with the contagious laugh, sipping from a hot pink can of soda, the new diet drink: TaB. Two calories in every can. Sweetened with saccharin. Advertised in a shapely glass resembling a woman with a tiny waist. It was Coke's answer to women who didn't want the calories of Coca-Cola. Now they could keep tabs on their weight.
Lisa's best friends, Juli and Terri, drank TaB, too.
All the cool kids did.
"You're a teenager, and you're skinny, but you always think you're fat," Lisa says. "But you don't want to get fat so you always diet, even though your diet consists of a TaB, four Snickers bars and some hamburgers."
She resisted Diet Coke when it was introduced in 1982. She was a TaB girl. Actress Jayne Kennedy drank TaB. So did Elle McPherson, the model. And figure skater Dorothy Hamill.
But when scientists said saccharin, the sweetener in TaB, caused cancer in laboratory rats, Lisa looked for another diet drink. At Wendy's, where she worked the pick-up window after school and on weekends, it was Diet Coke or nothing. Nothing wasn't an option.
Soon, she craved the new taste.
Enhancing the flavor
It's no wonder, says a Johns Hopkins University study.
Caffeine is added to soft drinks, the study says, to addict consumers the way nicotine is added to cigarettes. Adults and children become physiologically and psychologically dependent on the caffeine. If they quit drinking, they get headaches, become lethargic or suffer other withdrawal symptoms.
The soft-drink industry says it adds caffeine to enhance flavor -- not to addict consumers. But the study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that only two of 25 adults tasted the difference between colas with caffeine and those without.
"If somebody doesn't want caffeine, they don't have to drink it," says Lauren Steele of Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated of Charlotte. "We sell what anybody wants."
Coca-Cola. Caffeine-free Coca-Cola Classic. Diet Coke. Caffeine-free Diet Coke. Cherry Coke. Diet Cherry Coke. Diet Coke with Lemon. Vanilla Coke. Diet Vanilla Coke ...
The first Coca-Cola was concocted in 1886 by a pharmacist in Atlanta looking for a cure for headaches. He sold a glass for a nickel. Those first Coca-Colas contained a chemical component of cocaine, Steele says, but not at narcotic levels. Extracts from the coca leaf are still used, but without the cocaine alkaloids.
The recipe is secret, protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Where to find the best Coke
When Lisa and her first husband, Robert Rockholt, were saving for a Jeep Cherokee in the late 1980s, they factored Diet Coke into the budget. She allowed herself one fountain drink a day. (They're more expensive than cans or bottles.)"I felt so guilty drinking that one fountain drink ... . I'd tell myself, `You really don't have to have this.' And then I'd think, `Yes, I do!' "
In Lisa's world, there's a hierarchy to Diet Coke.
Fountain drinks over ice taste best.
Then cans. At home at night, she drinks several.
As a last resort, or when they're on sale, plastic bottles.
There's a hierarchy, too, of places to find the perfect Diet Coke.
McDonald's, Lisa says, serves the best.
If she can't find a McDonald's and is desperate, she'll settle for Chick-fil-A or Jack in The Box.
Wendy's? "Disgusting."
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Chiran
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Wow, interesting article...
September 29, 2003 - 09:58 AM
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Good article. I was just thinking that how funny it is that people read about stuff like this and how much articles like this effect people. For example, I was reading this while drinking a coke slurpy, and put the slurpy down halfway through, and was contemplating whether I should finish it or not by the time I’d finish reading the article. It’s interesting to know how people are affected by reading things like this; I mean obviously it has immediate effects, such as mine, where I put the coke away after reading this.
But, also how things like this, in which we hear or read about, affect us at that moment only. Most people, after reading this wouldn’t go to their fridge or store and get a can of coke, but how long does this stay with us? Maybe for a few hours or even a day we wouldn’t drink pop, remembering the article, but after that what we have just read or heard just gets stuffed in the back of our heads, till someone or something brings it to our attention again. This can be used in many examples from smoking to eating right.
But none-the-less the article does provoke your thinking and it was good how it uses a normal person’s life into getting the idea across. Personally I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like Lisa, who is that addicted to diet-coke…but I’m sure there are people worse than this.
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Jennifer Vallery
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Hits close to home
October 27, 2003 - 05:38 AM
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This is a very good topic! I, as I'm sure the majority of people are, am a caffiene consumer. I know the risks,yet I keep going back for more. Why? Its just something I've grown into the habit of doing.
I have asthema and I'm sure that I'm just one of millions with it. Did you know that any caffiene, in any form, is extremely bad for those with this? It can not only make it harder to breath, but also cause serious chest pains, or extreme asthema attacks. But not many people are disciplined enough to give it up. I'm sure not!
I think the one of the biggest reasons that we consume so much of this product is because its everywhere! You can't go to a drive-in a store, a gas station; you can't go anywhere! My biggest weaknesses are chocolate and dr. pepper....big caffiene boosts! I've tried again and again to give this stuff up, but each time I end up indulging in some kind of the big NO-NO.
I know that I personally do not have a big intake of caffiene, but there's still enough there to affect my life. I know people who indulge in much more....Its just hard to give it up!
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Toni
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Re: Caffeine: the opiate of the masses?
January 13, 2004 - 11:29 AM
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I gave up caffiene when I quit smoking cigarettes. Two years later I felt safe enough to go back to the coffee. Whoa! The hit was amazing. I went clubbing and stayed up all night feeling shaky and as though I had taken Class A drugs. Because my body had been so long without caffiene, it got a huge shock. I guess it kinda liked the healthier option because now even if I only have one coke or coffee, my stomach swells up, my intestines block and I am in agony for up to four days! Just when coffee got so good too. So I'm back on the herbal tea, my health is peaking again and I can feel the difference. Caffiene is super strong and it can take a week to come down from. Yes it effects you and anyone else around you. Yes, it is a serious drug. Even though so smooth and tasty... does anyone know if Decaf really has no caffiene? I'm don't trust it for some reason... x
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Terri Willard
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Re: Caffeine: the opiate of the masses?
January 13, 2004 - 12:33 PM
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Yeah, I finally managed to give up caffeine this year. I just couldn't do it last year with all of the work - and all of the trips to Geneva (mmmm.... good coffee). But, I'm really hoping to have kids some time in the next year, and everything I read says that caffeine is not a good idea(e.g. http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/681_1148.asp). It can extend how long it takes to get pregnant and messes with a child's development.
So, I'm now at 13 days and counting on being caffeine free. I'm finding it really hard now that I'm back at work, though. Caffeine is truly the drug of the knowledge worker... My conversations with my boss always used to involve walking down the hall together to get coffee, so it has a social aspect. It also is the only thing I've found that keeps me going while working on the computer for 8 hours. Without caffeine, I'm finding that I simply don't have the attention span to write documents and emails for 8 hours each day. And I find that my hand keeps reaching out to grab a mug that isn't there on my desk anymore.
But, on the positive side, I'm sleeping way better and I think I'm really over it. I had one cup of half caf/half decaf on the weekend at home and felt sick. Never again. I'll stick with decaf tea. And take a walk outside when I get bored.
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Ashley
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Re: Caffeine: the opiate of the masses?
January 14, 2004 - 09:41 AM
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That was a very good and interesting article... I can totally relate to Lisa. I've been drinking Diet Coke since I can remember. Usually I just drink one or two 12 ounce cans of Diet Coke in a day, but sometimes I can have serious cravings for more during the day, and maybe to where I HAVE to have some, even if it's just a sip. And I know the whole withdrawl thing. I used to be a lot worse, but I'm glad I'm not as addicted.
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