I want to get off the Coke permanently - help me with my addiction.
Yup, longtime serious Coke problem. And Pepsi. Worst of all, Mountain Dew. I have done regular, I have done diet. When I got serious about health, I gave it up entirely for about 3-4 months, then I slipped - one morning, early, in the winter, I had to drive on bad roads and was very tired, and I succumbed to a McDonald's drive through Diet Coke. Which soon became a daily habit.
Help me break this. I should really just drink water and possibly iced tea, no sugar - that would be my goal.
= new reply since forum marked as read
make lots of fresh ice tea (white tea is good or fresh mint)
Think... do you really want to put this stuff in your body??
Diet Coke:
Coke:
and do you really want to support a mega corporation that makes money from selling non-nutritive over priced drinks???
What Coke Contains:
https://medium.com/the-ingredients-2/221d449929ef
Each can originated in a small town of 4,000 people on the Murray River in Western Australia called Pinjarra. Pinjarra is the site of the world’s largest bauxite mine. Bauxite is surface mined — basically scraped and dug from the top of the ground. The bauxite is crushed and washed with hot sodium hydroxide, which separates it into aluminum hydroxide and waste material called red mud. The aluminum hydroxide is cooled, then heated to over a thousand degrees celsius in a kiln, where it becomes aluminum oxide, or alumina...transported to Downey, California, where it is rolled flat in a rolling mill, and turned into aluminum sheets. The sheets are punched into circles and shaped into a cup...
Coca-Cola is made from a syrup produced by the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta. The main ingredient in the formula used in the United States is a sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup 55... made by grinding wet corn until it becomes cornstarch. The cornstarch is mixed with an enzyme secreted by a rod-shaped bacterium called Bacillus and an enzyme secreted by a mold called Aspergillus. This process creates the glucose. A third enzyme, also derived from bacteria, is then used to turn some of the glucose into fructose...The second ingredient, caramel coloring, gives the drink its distinctive dark brown color...is made by heating sugars with sulfite and ammonia to create bitter brown liquid. The syrup’s other principal ingredient is phosphoric acid, which adds acidity and is made by diluting burnt phosphorus (created by heating phosphate rock in an arc-furnace) and processing it to remove arsenic.
A much smaller proportion of the syrup is flavors... vanilla, cinnamon, coca-leaf which comes from South America and is processed in a unique US government authorized factory in New Jersey to remove its addictive stimulant cocaine; and kola nut...The final ingredient is caffeine, a stimulating alkaloid that can be derived from the kola nut, coffee beans and other sources...The finished product is transported by road to a distribution center and then to my local Vons. This tool chain, which spans bauxite bulldozers, refrigerators, urethane, bacteria and cocaine, produces 70 million cans of Coca-Cola each day...
treat it like a drug, Because it is one..
very, very addictive.............
Just drink water. Or some herb tea, iced or hot, that you make yourself. My favorite for iced tea is chai rooibos.
Then, once a week or so, indulge yourself. But not with those soft drinks. Make your own:
A glass, some ice, some sparkling water, a little juice. Just a little juice, since juice comes with its own walloping natural sugar.
It gives the bubbles that I often crave when I think about soda, without all the rest of the crap. Once you get used to it, a commercial soda tastes way too sweet.
Or, if you don't like the sparkling water alternative, treat yourself with one of these, which isn't quite a coke, but comes without HFCS or artificial sweetener:
It wasn't easy, kicking the Coke habit, and it is a habit, in a way. I had to go cold turkey because I'd just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I had no choice than to cut it out completely. I looked for a substitute drink for awhile before I settled on iced tea. Gold Peak was the best... guess who makes it? Yep. It's a Coca-Cola product. But I got tired of that after awhile, then tried their iced tea lemonade. LOVED that, but it didn't solve the sugar problem. So I tried Crystal Lite, which is what I drink now. I mix one packet of iced tea, and one packet of lemonade to make a big pitcher, and it tastes awesome. And, as far as I can tell, it's much healthier. I rarely if ever drink any "pop" any more. In fact, there's a 16-oz bottle of Coke in the fridge right now. Unopened. Got it free with a slab of ribs from Giant Eagle on the 4th of July. It's still there in the fridge. I'm saving it for when I need to clean off my battery again.
You probably need to try healthier drinks until you find something else you like. Water, of course, is the best, but it rarely satisfies me. I hope you don't have the same problem. Good luck, I know it's not easy. But you can do it. 
I get the big 32 oz every morning - then I refill the cup with ice & water throughout the day at work.
I also have an Iced Tea maker (got it as a wedding gift in 1995). I'm too impatient for sun tea; the machine cranks out a big pitcher in about 20 minutes. Sometimes I add a few flavored herbal tea bags in with the regular tea bags, for variety.
I quit drinking soda cold turkey several years ago. Now it tastes entirely like chemicals. Good luck! 
I recently read that Pepsi has still not removed the cancer-causing element that's in their caramel coloring.
Also, I disagree with the poster upthread who says addicts don't care what's in their poison. Education does work in some cases, and I say this as someone who has worked with smoking cessation. In fact, education has a longer lasting effect than any of the other techniques that help people quit habits.
Since Denninimi says she wants to quit permanently, education might be the pillar of her strategy.
A highly recommended book is Moss's Fat Sugar Salt. It tells the story of how Coke and Pepsi increased the sales of their product dramatically over the past few decades. Once you read it, you don't want to feel like a sucker for their strategies and it makes it that much easier to quit.
Denninimi, if you do go for a strategy of having only one or two sodas a week, see if you can get Diet-Rite. I can't recall their sweetener, but it is one that has less or none of the cancer-causing chemicals in it. It's not easy to find--the big two have done a great job of pushing them off the shelves.
Cher
I drink unsweetened tea for the caffeine and I don't miss the soda at all. It doesn't mean I never have one because sometimes I find myself somewhere and that's all that's available. However, I feel much better drinking tea or water.
You can do it!
I have the same problem! So glad I found this thread!
I appreciate the OP opening the discussion and what a discussion! Lots of info and kind encouragement!
Thanks DUers! I begin my journey today of quitting the coke habit. Going to follow some of these splendid suggestions.
Good luck to all who are dealing with this insidious addiction!
Julie
