I've been truly addicted to Mountain Dew for over 20 years. (I'm 34 now.) Every pathetic attempt I've made to quit drinking it has quickly ended in total failure.
I do drink A LOT of water as well. In May of this year (2010), I was curious how much water I was drinking, so I kept track for 5 days. Over the 5 days that I kept track, I drank 756 ounces of water which was 5.9 gallons. It averages out to 151.2 ounces per day which is just shy of 1 1/4 gallons of water per day. And in addition to all that water, I averaged 3 1/2 cans of Mountain Dew a day.
However, due to the fact that I was consciously making a note of everything I was drinking, I'm pretty sure I drank less Mountain Dew than usual during those 5 days.
I seriously feel like a heroine addict or something. I want to stop drinking this crap ... I know it's bad for me and is going to kill me ... but I can't find anything to substitute the flavor/fizz.
Diet Mountain Dew is out of the question. I've tried it and it's disgusting. I do like Gatorade, but it has a lot of sugar in it also ... (which seems to defeat the purpose) ... but most of all, it doesn't have that burning/tingling FIZZ that a carbonated drink has. I've tried drinking cranberry juice ... I like that as well. And it has the advantage of being sugar free ... but I quickly get tired of the flavor and it has no fizz.
I seriously use to drink quite a bit of beer in the evening hours as a substitute for Mountain Dew. I love the various Ice brews because they SIZZLE in your mouth.
I mostly gave up beer in favor of red wine. But within the last year, I've cut out alcohol completely for health reasons. (I get frequent lung infections due to a genetic disorder. And alcohol weakens the immune system.)
But I will probably go to my deathbed sucking down the green heroine.
(And no, I'm not some 300+ lb American fatty. I'm 5'4" (162cm) tall and weigh just under 100 pounds (45kg).)