coke really IS addictive!

i swear to god they still put trace amounts of cocaine in coca-cola classic. this shit is addicting! i remember christmas break from college, i bought a 12 pack of coke. mind you, all while i was at school i was only drinking water and the occasional strawberry soda (i have an affection for red or pink drinks, the brighter and more man-made the color, the better - pink lemonade, Hi-C fruit punch, strawberry milkshakes). so for nearly 3 weeks straight, i drank nothing but coke. and not just any coke - genuine cherry cokes like they used to have at 50s diners. on a side note, this was my favorite beverage anytime my parents would take us to a nightclub...not a nightclub akin to a night at the roxbury, but the kind that plays lounge music where everyone just sits and chills. my parents loved to go out and didn't see any reason to leave me and my brother at home so we got to go too. i loved it and always had a blast. the point being that my favorite virgin bar beverage was a roy rogers (coca-cola with cherry syrup and extra maraschino cherries). this may be why i have a soft spot in my heart for this particular drink...good memories. anyway, for the full 3 weeks i had nothing but cokes with Tarani syrup and maraschino cherries. side point number two: my friend andrea and i are absolutely convinced that maraschino cherries are synthetic. why do we think this? a) how are they pitted with absolutely no hole? even an olive has a perfectly carved out hole at the point of extraction. b) how the fuck is the damn thing so uniform in color? cherries are usually darker, never uniform in hue, and not ever THAT pretty. c) the stem is the EXACT same color as the fruit. a cherry stem is neither the color of a fire engine nor a candy apple. but i digress. when i went back to school i made a vow to myself that i'd go back to drinking water and would not buy any cokes whatsoever, least of all a full 12 pack. but something strange happened - i noticed myself going through a weird form of withdrawal. i'd have these intense cravings wherein once i started thinking i wanted a coke, i could not stop thinking about it all day. a few days after i got back, my roommate had a single bottle of coke in the refrigerator. she also wasn't home. you can guess what happened (and yes, i replaced it). i felt the biggest sense of relief, having been given such a glorious opportunity to appease my 'fix'. from that moment on, i refused to drink a coke for the remainder of the school year. and slowly but surely, the cravings subsided. what, did you think i was going to write about a bank-breaking, family-splitting cocaine addiction? never touched the stuff.