Episode Summary:

This confession begins with a “harmless” teenage love affair with soda and ends with decades of kidney stones, repeated emergency room visits, and a major surgery that no one ever thought to connect to caffeine. As a teen, she and her friends felt superior to the “juicers, potheads, and dopers” because they only drank Coke and Pepsi — never realizing their giggly, wired nights were chemically driven. Over time, her secret soda stash became a full-blown caffeine dependence that fueled insomnia, migraines, weight gain, and ultimately massive kidney stones. Only on the eve of surgery does one nurse casually ask the question none of her doctors ever did: “Didn’t anybody ever tell you soda could cause this?”

What You'll Hear in This Episode

• How strict household rules around soda in childhood created secrecy, sneaking, and an early pattern of hiding empty bottles and overconsumption.
• The teenage years in the 1970s when she and her friends chose soda over drugs and alcohol, convinced their all-night cola binges were the “safe” way to get high.
• The infamous sugar shortage and the frantic stockpiling of Coke — including six cases hidden in a car trunk and cans stored in a bedroom window, glowing on the ceiling after one exploded.
• The slow creep from ordinary headaches and insomnia into full-on migraines, weight gain, and the first kidney stone attack at age 21.
• Nineteen years of recurrent kidney stones, hospitalizations, and “drink water and cranberry juice” instructions — with zero discussion of soda, caffeine, or diet.
• The turning point: a nurse casually linking her kidney stones to heavy soda drinking right before surgery to remove a stone too large to pass.
• The brutal withdrawal from soda and caffeine: trembling hands, breaking voice, crushing headaches, dry mouth, and profound fatigue even after sleep.
• The long-term payoff: ten years without a kidney stone, migraines disappearing, and the sobering reality of friends and loved ones who weren’t so lucky — including diabetes, obesity, and a 24-year-old colleague whose energy drink habit ended in a fatal heart attack.

Key Takeaways

• Soda and caffeinated soft drinks can be as habit-forming and physically damaging as coffee or energy drinks, especially when consumed daily over many years.
• Medical care often focuses on treating symptoms (like kidney stones) with fluids and procedures, while failing to investigate obvious dietary contributors like chronic soda intake.
• Caffeine and sugar together create a powerful reinforcement loop, making withdrawal both physically painful and emotionally difficult.
• Marketing messages like “Do the Dew” and “Coke and a smile” deeply shape our sense of what’s normal, making it harder to accept that a favorite drink may be harming us.
• Quitting doesn’t just remove pain; it can literally reset a trajectory from recurring medical crises to a life with dramatically fewer symptoms and hospital visits.

Who Should Listen

• Lifelong soda drinkers who see colas, citrus sodas, or “diet” options as harmless everyday beverages.
• Anyone with a history of kidney stones, migraines, or unexplained abdominal pain who hasn’t considered soda as a possible contributor.
• Parents and teens who assume that “at least it’s not alcohol or drugs” means unlimited soda is safe.
• People who feel stuck between awful caffeine withdrawal headaches and equally awful caffeine-fueled migraines.
• Health professionals who want a deeper, human view of how diet, caffeine, and overlooked questions can shape a patient’s entire life story.

Resources & Links

🌐 Visit us at https://linktr.ee/UnwiredLife

📖 Confessions of a Caffeine Addict by Marina Kushner

📩 Share your own caffeine confession: https://linktr.ee/UnwiredLife

🛒 Live Unwired Merch: LiveUnwired.org

Mentioned in this episode:

chap 3 before postroll

chap 3 before postroll

Trailer 3

Trailer 3

The Real Cost of Soda when my dietitian used the word addict to describe me, I was shocked. Weren't addicts those pathetic people who huddled in alleys looking to score heroin or cocaine?

Looking back, the ability to abuse was certainly in my DNA.

After my grandfather left for work in the morning, my grandmother washed his dishes, straightened the kitchen and then sat down with her first cup of coffee of the day. It was black. For a mid morning snack she'd have a couple of cookies and another cup of black coffee. Lunch was a sandwich and a cup of black coffee.

That one pot of coffee was heated repeatedly until she finished it and brewed another pot, which she, my grandfather and my parents drank after dinner. Grandma was always on edge. The slightest noise had her jumping, gasping and clutching her chest. She suffered from headaches and had a nasty temper.

Come to think of it, everybody in the house was jumpy and suffered from headaches. Grandma's mother, my great grandmother, was an alcoholic. So was Grandma's brother. Dad's relatives are all overweight salt and sugar junkies.

For years. Dinner for two of my aunts was a hunk of fudge, a handful of pretzels and several glasses of soda.

One of them suffers from type 2 diabetes now but can't understand how it happened. While growing up, I remember there was always alcohol in my house. We had a refrigerator just for beer and a full bar in the basement.

It was all in the open. Nothing was locked up yet. No one in the house drank. It was all kept for entertaining, which my parents did plenty of.

I think it being so freely available was what kept me from noticing it. Soda on the other hand was taboo. It was in the house but mom kept an eagle eye on it. Soda was restricted to special occasions. The reason?

Soda was full of sugar, said my mother and sugar rotted teeth. Funny, but we always had homemade cakes, pies and cookies in the house, plus plenty of store bought donuts and pastries.

Apparently for my mother only soda contained sugar. I craved soda and often would sneak a whole bottle into my room along with a bowl of ice and drink glass after glass.

Late at night I would creep like a burglar down to the garage and return the empty glass bottle to the wooden case, making sure it was placed in the back ro so a quick glance would only show the full ones in front. I often wonder if the original reason I fell so hard for soda was because it was banned in our house.

Forbidden fruit, as we all know, tastes the sweetest. I found that I have an addictive personality. As a baby the same story had to be read to me every night at bedtime.

When I got older, I would request the same thing for lunch every day. I pretty much ate a cheese sandwich every day for lunch during my entire 12 years of school.

To this day, I can go for weeks eating the same thing for lunch or dinner. In the situation of my getting hooked on soda, it was a case of an obsession turning into an addiction.

My obsession with soda made me a caffeine addict. When I turned 16 and began driving, I was able to go out with my friends. We did not want anything but soda.

It was the 70s and all around us kids were smoking, drinking and experimenting with drugs while we guzzled gallons of Coke and Pepsi. True, we were nerdy old fashioned kids, but two of my friends had parents who smoked and we all hated the smell.

Another had a father who became unpredictable and often violent after a night of beer drinking on the family couch. Drinking soda was safe and we loved the giggly, all wound up feeling we got.

We could sit and laugh and talk all night long, smug in the knowledge that we were having as much fun as the juicers, potheads and dopers in our school. Maybe more. Since we weren't doing anything bad, drinking soda wasn't dangerous.

In the mid-70s there was a sugar shortage, so soda prices were very high. Two liter bottles cost around $1.69. So like penny pinching coupon cutting housewives, we were all on the lookout for the best prices.

Sales were rare, so were coupons. One day a friend called screaming as if she had just won the lottery.

She and her mom had been shopping at the local Woolworth and discovered a sale on Coke cases. Four six packs were selling for $5. I ran to the store and bought six cases.

I kept them hidden in the trunk of my car, only smuggling in one six pack at a time. My mother would have nagged me and confiscated them had she known.

It was winter and I kept the cans in my bedroom window between the screen and the glass. I drank a six pack a night.

Once a can had frozen and was all bent out of shape, I opened it and soda exploded upward, spraying my face, hair, the wall behind me, the ceiling, my bed and desk. Before I wiped up the mess, I reached for another can, gulped it down and then went into the bathroom for some wet towels.

I couldn't reach the spots on the ceiling or upper part of the wall and these spots glowed slightly in the dark. My friends and I laughed and pondered what kind of chemicals were in the soda to make it glow. Of course that didn't stop any of us from drinking it.

My whole family had always been night owls, and I was an insomniac. I also suffered from headaches. As I got older, I began getting migraines, and I was noticing weight gain.

Still, I didn't attribute it to my soda addiction. I was young, managing on four to six hours of sleep, and I was active, riding my bike and going for long hikes in the woods behind our house.

The first kidney stone attack happened when I was 21. I had just gotten home from work, had something to eat, and out of the blue, I was knocked sprawling by this ice pick like agony.

Tearing a hole in my side, I vomited in fear. After an hour, I called the doctor, who said that I had gas and not to worry. It was not gas, and I soon had my first ambulance ride.

I spent a week in the hospital being poked and prodded. After being diagnosed, I was told to drink more water, was introduced to the healing powers of cranberry juice, and sent home.

I spent the next 19 years being rushed to the hospital emergency room many times for kidney stones. Women say that the pain is worse than childbirth. Men just wince and turn white when talking about passing a stone.

I don't recall any rioting in the streets, but people were angry.

Roman Coke drinkers cried that the New Coke ruined the taste of their iconic drink, and many people rushed around buying up bottles and cans of Old Coke before it went off the market. My friend Barb found a tiny grocery store out in the middle of nowhere selling old Coke and bought out their entire stock of 50 cases.

She had to call her brother to come out with his pickup truck to help her carry them home. She generously sold me half of her haul. Through careful hoarding, I was able to ride out the disaster.

Eventually, Coca Cola realized the error of their ways and started offering both old and new recipes to consumers. Soon after, the new Coke died and was silently laid to rest, my once white teeth began taking on a brownish cast. Molars crumbled.

My uncle once told me that if someone placed a tooth in a glass of soda, the tooth would dissolve. I laughed at him, but I cut down on my cola consumption, switching instead to caffeinated, carbonated flavored waters.

My weight kept creeping upward since now in my 30s, I wasn't as active as I once was. The headaches got worse. There were more migraines and the trips to the emergency room for kidney stones were more frequent.

My best friend's mother, who had been drinking a 2 liter bottle of soda every day for years, was diagnosed with diabetes. I went on a health kick and cut out salt and soda and lost 10 pounds. Didn't last, of course.

By now I knew that caffeine was the culprit causing the headaches. But I was caught in a conundrum. By giving up caffeine, I suffered terrible headaches and felt groggy.

Staying on caffeine, I suffered headaches and was too wired to sleep.

After years of living with the misery, pain, expense, ambulance rides are not cheap and lost time due to a kidney stone attack, I swore it couldn't get any worse. Then one evening, I went to the bathroom and saw the bowl was full of blood.

This time, as the emergency room doctor was reading the X rays, he showed me the kidney stone. It was huge. It was half the size of a dime. And considering the tiny tube the stone had to push through, it was no wonder that I was bleeding.

The stone was too big and would never pass naturally, so I would have to have surgery to remove it. On the day I had surgery, the nurse was chatting with me. He said, I bet you're a big soda drinker. Surprised, I said, yes.

Then we compared our soda consumption histories and he dropped a bomb on me. Didn't anybody ever tell you that the carbonation in soda can cause kidney stones?

During many years of hospital visits and meetings with specialists, not even once was my diet discussed. Drinking lots of water and cranberry juice seemed to be the only cure for kidney stones.

Ten years later, people are surprised when I mention carbonation. Quitting soda was harder than I thought.

All those fun television ads of kids doing the do and magazine spreads of people enjoying a Coke and a smile were tough to see. Especially when I knew that I couldn't have it. Soda's a lot cheaper nowadays. Maybe because it has so much competition.

Buy a large pizza and get a 2 liter bottle of soda for free. Free soda refills in restaurants. Who drinks water with their lunchtime burger and fries?

Of course, Coke now came in cherry vanilla, lemon and black cherry vanilla. Didn't I owe it to myself to try these flavors? When I was weaning myself off caffeine, I shook, my hands trembled, and even my voice broke.

My head throbbed, I had dry mouth and I was tired. After eight hours of sleep, it was hard. It hurt quitting caffeine, but it was worth it. I hadn't had a kidney stone in 10 years.

I haven't had a migraine in 10 years, and I rarely even get ordinary headaches anymore. Some of my friends have not been as lucky as I was in escaping the allure of caffeine. A few have diabetes now. Others struggle with their weight.

A young man I worked with had a heart attack last year. He was 24. He drank two energy drinks a day and prophetically said, this stuff is going to blow out my heart one day. It did.