I Did It!

I want to begin tonight by thanking everyone who made this day possible for me.

(Cue the music!)

My wonderful wife. My adoring son. My golden retriever who daily struggles with co-dependency and submissive-wetting issues. All my friends, family and people who just now stumbled across this blog only because of completely random Google searches.

I didn’t think today would ever happen for me. And now that it’s here, none of you will know just how often I found myself willing to jump off the wagon once again. But you believed in me and now I can say . . .

I have gone 365 straight days without ever once partaking so much as a single sip of a carbonated beverage – including Dr. Pepper, the sweet nectar of the gods!

My personal struggle has been difficult to bear. In the beginning, the headaches and the temptation nearly overpowered me. But now I can bask in the glow of personal achievement!

I’ve been thinking lately of how I might celebrate such a momentous occasion. Pop open a can of fizzy sugar water for ol’ time’s sake? Pick another item to move from my daily menu to my “banned and forbidden” list?

Probably neither. Instead I’ll just remind myself that there’s no habit or behavior that I couldn’t quit cold turkey so long as it was something that I really wanted to do. At some point, I just have to get sick of doing whatever it is I’m doing and tell myself, “Never again.”

If I let them, those can be very powerful words.

(And no!  I will never ever give up Blue Bell and Magic Shell!  To even suggest such a thing is to blaspheme!)