I remem­ber as a kid help­ing dad with his com­puter work for clients. We were the Geek Squad before Best Buy launched them as their tech sup­port squad. I did all sorts of stuff, from build­ing com­put­ers, to updat­ing soft­ware, to even help­ing him pull net­work­ing cable. One of my favorite places for us to go do work was for a PR agency in Orlando which kept a fully stocked fridge of sodas. We had per­mis­sion to raid their fridge when we were there work­ing after hours.

Soda was just a drink to me for much of my life, almost the same as water, milk and juice. It was omnipresent at home, at school, and at work. Col­lege was when it reached a new level for me. I kept a 24 pack of Dr. Pep­per next to my desk for easy access and end­less drink­ing. I didn’t even refrig­er­ate them, I’d just drink them warm because, well, caf­feine. And also because Dr. Pep­per is deli­cious warm (it was orig­i­nally a hot drink.)

Caf­feine is a pow­er­ful drug, and a crutch for many com­puter peo­ple. When plugged into a world which is always awake and there’s always a new door to go through, it’s very hard to find the strength to walk away and crawl into bed. So we end up click­ing just one more link, or play­ing one more level, or chat­ting with one more per­son. And then in the morn­ing we turn to our friendly copi­ously avail­able friend: caffeine.

Well I had had enough of that, so for all of Jan­u­ary I com­mit­ted to a 30-day chal­lenge that I called ‘No Jolt Jan­u­ary’ devoted to purg­ing my caf­feine and soda addic­tion. Now, as I explained in my ini­tial Face­book post: the goal wasn’t to avoid all caf­feine — it was to avoid all soda which, since I don’t drink cof­fee, would dra­mat­i­cally cut my caf­feine intake.

Now, last year I was not a ‘bad’ caf­feine addict when com­pared to where I used to be. I had kept it to just a few diet sodas a day, but even as a lim­ited intake it is very bad for you. Con­sider replac­ing that diet soda with just a glass of water, nei­ther has calo­ries, but water is just bet­ter for you: it hydrates bet­ter and doesn’t have any of the extra crap the soda does.

Dur­ing my first pro­gram­ming gig we fol­lowed the sim­ple method­ol­ogy: “Caf­feine is good. More caf­feine is bet­ter.” We went out to lunch every­day and on the way back from lunch we always stopped by a con­ve­nience store. Every­day. And every­day I got a Red Bull or some other energy drink. Some­times two. Because that was what was done.

This caf­feine con­sump­tion con­tin­ued, espe­cially while I was hus­tling on Man­a­Na­tion / Gath­er­ing­Magic. I’d be up until 2 or 3 in the morn­ing fin­ish­ing an episode or edit­ing arti­cles before crash­ing for a few hours and get­ting up for my day job. When I went to work for Cool­Stuffinc, the office was right next to a 7/11 and I was quick to get an energy drink and dough­nut in the morn­ing, thus con­tin­u­ing the trend and addiction.

Caf­feine is an addic­tion. You come to rely on it even when you get a good night’s sleep. And because there aren’t deaths tied to the caf­feine addic­tion, it con­tin­ues ram­pant and unchecked.

So, even though I had weaned back in the past year, I still had an addic­tion and I wanted to break those shack­les. So… No Jolt Jan­u­ary was born.

31 days with­out a drop of soda. The only caf­feine I had was on three occa­sions where I had a cup of caf­feinated tea. My caf­feine headaches faded in just five days and after that it was sim­ply a mat­ter of deter­mi­na­tion. Even though I had passed through the worst of it, the years of adver­tis­ing still embed­ded them­selves in my head and I con­tin­u­ally had urges to get a soda. I’d walk by a soda machine and think how good a Dr. Pep­per would taste. At restau­rants I would open my mouth to order a soda and then have to stop myself to ask for water. It was a con­stant battle.

I also added to this month that I would cut out juice. Why? Juice is healthy right? Well, sort of. It’s bet­ter than soda but worse than water. The major­ity of what you get from fruit is in the fiber and the chewy bits you get from eat­ing the actual fruit. Also, most mass pro­duced juice has extra addi­tives, vit­a­mins and some­times sugar. So you have to make sure the juice is just juice. So, I largely cut juice out to ensure that I would drink just that much more water.

Well, over the course of Jan­u­ary I lost a net result of 10 lbs, going from 285 down to 275. Part of that was obvi­ously my work­ing out and run­ning, but its also the biggest amount of weight lost over 30 days dur­ing my march towards becom­ing a healthy Patrick. I attribute some of that suc­cess to No Jolt January.

So what now?

I don’t plan to drink soda again, I might have one on spe­cial occa­sions but I don’t need soda to func­tion. So it is a treat for spe­cial occa­sions. For Feb­ru­ary I begin a new 30 day chal­lenge: “Flex­i­bil­ity Feb­ru­ary,” which will be largely focused around yoga and just gen­er­ally work­ing to be more… bendy.

This post’s cover photo comes from Flickr pho­tog­ra­pher: Road­side­pic­tures.