Throughout my story, and by the way, if you haven’t had a chance to read it, stop for a second and visit my other pages on the left side navigation and read about my addiction to Diet Coke and the health and side effects that I struggled with for so long. Then come back and I will share with you, what I believe, was the cause of my Diet Coke addiction.
In my last post, Tired of Being Tired, I shared several reasons why people tell me they always feel tired. I have found, after talking to many people, that addiction to things in life usually stem back to some type of stress in their lives. Stress not only causes people to form addictions but can magnify a current habit to full blow addiction without a person even knowing it. I will give you an example. I have a really good friend who recently lost his job through downsizing. Great individual, has a family, house, all the normal things that most of us have. A loss of a job, next to a death of a family member, is probably the second leading cause of stress in a person’s life. How are they going to survive, can they find another job at the same level, so many things go through the mind of someone experiencing this crisis, it’s a wonder people survive. He called me one day to seek some advice and I decided to pay him a visit. My friend was a smoker, but a light one. He probably smoked a pack or so every week if that. He didn’t drink, was pretty active, just your normal average human.
When I got to his house that day, he was the only one there, and he let me in and we sat at the kitchen table and he began to tell me what was going on. The first thing I noticed after we got to talking was that he lit up a smoke. I remember telling myself, that was odd. Not long into the story, he got up from the table and pulled a bottle out of his cupboard and proceeded to pour a glass of whiskey for himself. He sat down at the table and lit up another smoke as he sipped on his whiskey. I am sure you are getting the picture. My friend had never drank in front of me, let along whiskey, and I had never seen him light up to cigarettes within about 10 minutes of each other. During my hour or so visit, he had his one glass of whiskey and 7 cigarettes. I knew right then that the stress and worry of loosing his job and not knowing what he was going to do, was causing him to increase his normal comfort habit to a full blown addiction. I won’t bore you with the rest of my friends story, but he did seek counseling and today has a great job, and actually doesn’t smoke anymore.
The point to my story and this post is that I realized my Diet Coke addiction was due in large part by stress. I mentioned early in my story that I did not intend to drink 7-8 cans a day for all those years, it just happened. When looking back today, the stress I had at work was the main culprit is feeding my need for Diet Coke. Of course, I don’t have that job today, but back then, Diet Coke seemed to get me through the day. Gradually my addiction became stronger, I drank more and more each day, trying to maintain it’s effect, until it finally became the addiction I share in my story. Stress can cause people to do many things that later in life they might regret.
Maybe your addiction is not Diet Coke, maybe regular pop, coffee, tea, unhealthy energy drinks, and so forth. Think back to when you started consuming your addicting beverage, can you place an event that might have caused you to start drinking it, or maybe you can remember the time when the amount you drink started to increase, was there something in your life that might have caused that. I think you will find that something caused you stress in your life and the side effect of that was the addiction you face today.
If you are ready to break that diet drink addiction, email me, wittmc@msn.com if you have any questions, I’d be glad to help out or provide some support.
Thanks for all the great comments,
Mike W.
Iowa