Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Darren: “My head is swimming slightly as I type this, because of the caffeine high off my first Coke in a month. I've cheated a bit, with a few iced teas and rootbeers, but I managed the entire month without that super-sweet acid touching my lips (or my stomach).”

Today was my first day without a Coke, first of 31 days as I try to one-up Darren by going a longer month—by three days—than him without drinking one. In the past week I've had a lot of orange and apple juice, so anybody that says I'm going to save a lot of money by having healthier drinks doesn't know that Coke is relatively cheap.

Sacha, citing my plan to give up Coke for all of next month: “the caffeine intake of a litre of Coca-Cola is about equal to a cup of well-brewed coffee. Since the drug is second on earth to alcohol in terms of how many people it has been clinically tested on, there doesn't appear to be any adverse effects when taken in moderation over long periods of time. Even Coca-Cola, as a whole, has endured about 80 years without any significant horror stories. The worst of their public relations disasters was of course when they switched to the new Coke formula.”

Self-described Coke addict and described-by-others Vancouver's blogfather is quitting drinking the nectar of the gods, a.k.a. Coca-Cola Classic, for the month of February. Though I mocked him in the comments for choosing the shortest month of the year, I salute his effort. If he would have done it for charity, and if the cause was a good one, I would have pledged.

Which brings me to myself (since the best conversations are the ones where we only talk about ourselves). Same as Darren, and evidently same as Sue, ever since high school, I've had at least one Coke to drink per day. Let's just say these days it's less than two litres a day, but more than one. This has to stop. In Darren's comments, I wrote that if he makes it through February without a Coke, I'll go March without a Coke.

Thinking about it a little further, I want to take a social hit if I don't measure up to the standard. Robert Scoble proposed to donate to charity each time he used a variant of the word "blog", which was backwards of the way he should have done it. As someone mentions in his comments, he should have pledged $5 to a cause he finds morally disgusting if he said the b-word, that way by doing something he did not want to do, he would help the enemy. I don't propose such a thing. Instead, right now I am pledging $100 each to the Creative Commons and the Vancouver Community Network. That's about the amount of business Coca-Cola and its retailers would forego. For each soft-drink that I drink during the month of March (yes, a month from now), I take 5% off the principal of each. Both are causes I support, and support enough right now to give $100 each to. That means costs of small pangs of guilt that come from not supporting something to the full extent I'm willing and able to.

(Anybody who wishes to pledge now can do so. Same deal: 5% off the principal for each soft-drink I drink, if any at all.)

That's a little convoluted, I know. Probably a little backwards, too, so I'm open to suggestions. There are health benefits to not drinking Coke for a month, and the prospect of health benefits are a nice carrot, but with no stick to back it up. I'm only open to suggestions that make me feel guilty without embarrassment and without helping causes I do not support.