Spring Break
Facing the truth: Dad's addicted to Diet Coke
One student speaks out about her troubling family secret
by Lydia Woolever
Issue date: 11/18/08 Section: Editorial
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The noises wake me in the night and I look at the clock. Its 2 a.m. I hear him - swinging open cabinets, slamming them shut, pushing the bottles around on the shelves. I know what he's doing - he's looking for it.
I glance to my cracked open door and see the reflection outside of my room on the wooden floor. The kitchen light is on. I cover my face with my hands, hoping this is just a dream. I know there is nothing I can do. I can't help him, or stop him. He must feed the urge, he needs that quick fix, and he will by all means find it.
I rise from my sheets and tiptoe down the hallway. As I round the corner into the kitchen, I find Dad rummaging through the cupboards like a homeless man looking through trash. I sigh and shake my head, as I have so many nights before.
I don't know this person before me. Those lost, tired eyes. The itch for that stuff. The incessant thirst. This junkie is not my Daddy. His addiction to coke, diet coke to be exact, has gotten out of hand.
My dad first got mixed up in that nasty stuff a few years back. Years ago, he was all hopped up on sweet tea, which was even worse, real sugar. My mom weened him off the junk back in the '90s, satisfying his caffeine addiction with the recently introduced diet pop. She didn't know what she was getting herself into. It was like demoting him from crack cocaine to heroin.
Dad always keeps a stash on hand in case he starts to feel that nail-biting urge. A little, thick plastic Coleman lunchbox sits next to his desk while he works, with an ice-pack inside to keep the cans cold. He even saves his old to-go cups from restaurants in the kitchen cupboard, because "they fit more" and remind him of drinking a fountain soda.
One of Dad's primary and most crucial hiding places is in his seat-back pocket - you know the mesh thing behind your seat in the car, often used to hold maps and magazines. Every time I ride in the backseat of our Volvo wagon, my knees awkwardly press up against a bulging net filled with Dad's weakness.
The measly four-hour car ride to upstate New York each Thanksgiving to visit my grandparents is an all-out binge. Sometimes in the past I've been proud of him - only two sodas! But that's when my feet stumble upon the empty cans hidden under his seat and I realize I must have fallen asleep on the Turnpike.
And then other times, when I was much younger and more naive, I thought this was Dad's way of curbing his fear of Grammie and her spine-tingling death stares as he reached for another pig-in-a-blanket. But that was before I knew directions. We had hit the Palisades -only twenty more minutes! And chickuh. Number six.
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