Artificially Awake

I used to drink Diet Coke at work like crazy, at least one per hour. Our office had an open fridge policy, all the free diet coke I could drink.

With soda, it doesn’t seem like I experienced caffeine crashes like you usually get with coffee. Also it keeps you active because diet coke makes you pee like a race horse every 15 minutes, so you’re always getting up and down.

The only downside is that I acquired a huge kidney stone, had to have surgery to get it out, all of which wasn’t a very great experience. At the time I was living in Los Angeles and due to the dry climate the doctor said that I should cut the diet coke and drink lots and lots of water.

I don’t really think the kidney stone was during to the caffeine, but to the soda itself. I found this study on a website…

“Studies suggest that certain beverages may be associated with an increased risk of developing kidney stones. In one study, kidney stone sufferers who customarily consumed a great deal of cola were much less likely to experience a recurrence when they cut their cola consumption in half.”

So I cut back to 1 or 2 diet cokes a day, and then eventually switched to coffee. Coffee gives you more of a boost anyway, so it didn’t break my heart to give up soda.

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