A Monster Off My Back

I have a confession to make.  Remember how I bragged repeatedly about giving up Diet Coke?  Well, that was true, and it's been four weeks since I've drank one.  Oh, actually, that's not true as I realized that I drank several rum and Diet Cokes when I went out to the burbs for my Wright Cousin Extravaganza Reunion 2010.  That can hardly count, though, as I'm sure the rum cuts out the unhealthiness of the Diet Coke, right?  Have you ever seen a fat pirate?  Have you ever seen a pirate of any kind in person?  The United States is disturbingly lacking in pirates as of late, and I think this is something President Obama should address.

(Pausing here to acknowledge that I remember that Somalia is riddled with pirates, but I've never been to Somalia and typically we don't see pirates in Chicago, so I'm sticking to my last statement.  Oh, and I'm talking about the eyeliner-wearing, hard-drinking, cleverly-cussing pirates who like to sing and dance and occasionally make someone walk the plank, not the pirates who have guns and kill people, FYI).

Well, I'm not stalling at all, am I?  Anyway, I did quit Diet Coke, but I've been harboring a dirty little secret:  Low-Carb Monster Energy Drinks.

It started off as a once-in-a-while thing around Halloween.  I work really early in the morning and one of these was definitely a great eye-opener.  I don't drink coffee so I figured this was no big deal.  I'd stop at 7-Eleven on my way to work to grab one.  No problem, right?

Well, I started buying it by the case.  It says on the can not to exceed three a day, so that was my limit.  I'd have one as soon as I woke up, whether I woke up at 5 AM for work or 11 AM on a Saturday.  When I would start to run low, I'd go into a low-grade panic.  Yeah, all the signs were there that I might have been developing an addiction.  For instance, I took this picture and texted it to my sister before going out on New Year's Eve:

I think any time you're photographing yourself with your favorite beverage, curlers be damned, it's a bad sign. Unless you're on vacation and drinking a strawberry daiquiri.  That's 100% necessary to document to make your friends at home jealous.

After I quit Diet Coke and bragged about how I didn't go through caffeine withdrawal, I did a little googling to find out exactly how much caffeine my little energy drink habit was bringing to the table.  My three Monsters a day was the equivalent of drinking almost ELEVEN Diet Cokes.  Whoops.

So this week I quit cold turkey.  Boy, has it been miserable.  I come home from work and want to take a four hour nap.  My head aches and I'm cranky and unpleasant.  (Sorry, family and friends).  I've been drinking iced tea to try to get a little caffeine in my system, but its 10 mg per 8 ounce serving make it seem like child's play.  Who would have thought that caffeine withdrawal is just not fun?

So I apologize for hiding this from you.  The last two days have been much better, as in I've only been sleeping twelve hours a day instead of sixteen.  My head only mildly feels like it's going to explode.  Progress is measured in teeny tiny steps, after all.

On the bright side, I discovered the reason they call it Monster.