1. It all starts with your total denial of how severe your Diet Coke addiction really is.
2. And then, frightened over the prospect of life without Diet Coke, you make excuses. All the excuses.
3. Ashamed, you finally recognize you have a problem when you can't make it through an afternoon without drinking a Diet Coke or nine.
4. You feel useless the first time you try to give up your beloved Diet Coke and fail miserably.
5. But, determined, you try again.
6. You begin to miss Diet Coke so much that you write a love letter to Diet Coke, plus three sonnets and a rock opera.
7. You try to drink water and become enraged at whoever invented this watery excuse for Diet Coke.
8. Vibrating with anger, you pour artisanally crafted "natural" sodas into a toilet and launch that toilet into space.
9. You are overcome with hopelessless as you wonder if life without Diet Coke is even worth living.
10. You begin to lose your grip on reality, going through withdrawals and seeing Diet Coke everywhere.
11. Then you plummet, numb and broken, into the abyss.
MAKE IT STOP. MAKE IT END. ALL IS PAIN. I AM BEATING MY FISTS AGAINST THE WALLS OF HELL. ALL IS DARKNESS. GIVE ME A COKE.