The Art of Losing

I can't sleep, work or concentrate. I'm depressed and anxious during this difficult detox. But I'm following doctor's orders, and I've gone six days without diet soda.

I blame my personality for my predicament. It's so addictive, I could get hooked on carrot sticks. I started out in life devouring everything I loved but abused the privilege. Now I'm being forced to delineate what's essential and make trade-offs. Six years ago, I quit my 27-year two-pack-a-day smoking habit, alcohol, marijuana, Blow Pop lollipops (a replacement for cigarettes), gum (too much sugar) and bread products (too many carbs). I'd spouted recovery-speak, analyzing my insatiable hungers, why I'd depended on substances more than people, how underlying every addiction was a deep depression that felt unbearable.

Back then, I quit bars, clubs and soirees where others puffed, imbibed or feasted on what I couldn't. I quit dinner parties cold turkey, scarring my social life. One friend starting saying, "Let's go out and get some water." I was such a self-righteous annoyance, invitations ceased anyway. I embraced abstinence, becoming the diva of deprivation.

I thought I'd graduated from the school of giving things up. I didn't expect to have to withdraw from a legal, cheap, ubiquitous liquid. When it came to oral-fixation satisfiers, this seemed like the end of the line. It reminded me of a line by Bob Dylan, written post-heart-disease. "Just when you think you lost everything, you find out that you can always lose a little more," he sang on "Time Out of Mind."

Diet soda was my last, and perhaps longest running vice. I had been the Queen of Diet Soda. At 12, in a bikini around my suburban Michigan backyard pool, I sipped hot-pink Tab cans through a straw, relishing the tin aftertaste, fizz, caffeine buzz, instant gratification and endless supply with zero calories. My mother was a dangerously delicious cook, so this appetite suppressant seemed a miracle.

In college, my dormitory's pop machines turned me into a Diet Pepsi girl. When I tried the Atkins diet, which banned aspartame and saccharin, I switched to the Splenda-filled Diet Rite. At grad school, I flirted with clear Diet 7UP before deciding on Diet Coke. By age 30, 12 daily glasses with ice helped me concentrate on work but affected my sleep. So by noon I'd switch to Diet Coke Caffeine Free, consuming so many cans during the classes I taught that students who wanted extra help left ribbon-tied six-packs with my doorman as bribes. Restaurants didn't serve the noncaffeinated version, so I'd sneak 12-ounce bottles in big purses, as if smuggling vodka.