A Cokehead No More

With my drug of choice

My Coca-Cola epiphany was different from Don Draper’s. You may recall that the final scene of Mad Men showed the New York adman meditating and in a state of hard-won Zen at a retreat in Big Sur, where he envisioned the famous '70s "hilltop" ad campaign for “The Real Thing.” 

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That's the real thing

In my case, instead of feeling any bliss, there I was, on the cusp of a new millennium, clutching my beverage of choice in a suburban Cleveland Burger King parking lot at 1:00 am. Jonesing for a Coke, I pulled into the fast food joint and acquired my syrupy fix in a time of worries about Y2K and a comparatively quaint presidential impeachment trial.

I was finally ready to admit to myself and to others that my Coke habit had become unmanageable.

I gave up drinking regular Coke in 1999. Cold turkey. It was the same year I walked away from cigarettes. Quitting Coca-Cola was more difficult. 

At the time, there was information circulating that asserted I would passively gain 10 lbs. a year just by consuming the sugary beverage at my current rate. 

That rate was excessive. In college, I drank a six-pack a day. Later, instead of a manageable habit of, say, one Coke a week, I drank two or three a day. So if the 10-lbs.-a-year logic was true, I would have gained 2,400 lbs. by today.

I am an all-or-nothing kind of guy. "Everything in moderation" never worked for me. So except for once or twice when I’ve been accidentally served regular instead of Diet Coke in restaurants, that most magical of elixirs has not touched my lips.

But I remember what it was like. You can have your beers, vintage cocktails, mocktails, and specialty drinks. Take your rosés, Moscow Mules, Cosmos, and dry martinis. There is nothing better than a Coke, on ice. I liked lots of ice. The fizzy sound the cold caramel-colored beverage made just as it hit the ice cubes made me weak with anticipation. The very memory of it sends me into fits of pleasure.

Recovering addicts call this kind of thinking “euphoric recall.” I call it wishful.

Some people are passionate about Diet Coke. Not me. I can easily have one a week without craving more. You might as well eat diet doughnuts.

I am envious of people like my sister, who can manage to drink a Coke a week and leave it at that. For me, that would be a slippery slope.

Then there was my mother, who drank Coca-Cola with every meal and for frequent pick-me-ups until she succumbed to other causes. God bless her. She pretended she had never heard of Diet Coke. If you suggested it to her, she acted like she couldn’t hear you. She insisted on “the real thing.”

I sometimes wonder if I will ever permit myself to drink another Coke before I meet my maker. Clearly, had I stayed with Coke, that encounter would have already occurred. But indulging again is a tantalizing proposition. I know people who have given up alcohol and successfully returned to it -- able to apply moderation -- late in life. 

Then again, you never hear about the ones who unsuccessfully return to drinking. 

I was in the dentist’s office recently, and the receptionist was unapologetically drinking a regular Coke. The audacity! I looked at the familiar red-and-white can as if it were radioactive.

But that’s the thing about Coke. Despite all we know about its negative effects on teeth and waistlines and blood sugar levels, Coke’s marketing has been so successful that it seems wholesome: innocent and American. Coca-Cola advertising even helped create Santa Claus. 

Real Americans are not about to give up their Cokes any more than the French are willing to give up baguettes and wine. 

As for me, I will live with the remote possibility that sometime between now and oblivion, I will permit myself one last Coke. I’m putting that off for at least another five years. 

Time will tell if it’s as delightful as I remember.