Deadly Duo: Do Diet Sodas Help Keep People Addicted To Nicotine?

After searching the internet rigorously, I have found it absolutely astounding that no one seems to have identified a link between aspartame, a sweetener that is 200 times sweeter than sugar, and smoking. This blog is not about any health risk of aspartame intake as a drug on its own – that remains to be seen – but it is about the potential link between the use of sweeteners and nicotine addiction through smoking.

Aspartame is a powerful drug that tells your brain whatever is in your mouth tastes sweet and is used in many varieties of soft drinks and diluting squash. Nicotine is a bitter tasting, moderately addictive drug that is present in cigarette smoke. Neither of these facts are disputed.

The sweetener is presumably added to caffeinated soft drinks to hide the bitter caffeine taste (and that of the unsweetened drink no doubt). In my opinion, there doesn’t seem to be any real clinical evidence that aspartame is harmful other than when it is used in combination with other drugs to hide their taste.

Now for my own experience of being enslaved by a partnership of these freely available drugs for nearly ten years (since my early teens, helped by a Coke vending machine in the boarding school canteen and corner-shop availability of cigarettes). I have had a worryingly unhealthy and sophisticated habit of smoking more than 20-a-day and, to compliment this foul practice, drinking up to 10 cans of diet coke a day. After some experimentation and investigation I am beginning to understand the reasons behind my smoking/diet coke “dual” addiction..

At the moment, I am attempting to cut out diet coke and its constituent aspartame sweetener from my diet due to concern from friends and family about the sheer quantity of diet coke that I have been consuming (and the phenomenal cost of this habit – in my case, comparable to smoking). To avoid caffeine withdrawal headaches and disorientation I have experienced in previous attempts, I am substituting diet coke with plenty of strong coffee and tea. MOREHERE

However, the experience of smoking without a can of ice-cold diet coke in my hand, my particular preference for many years, is remarkably different. The stink of the tobacco smoke is almost intolerable and the bitter, acidic after-taste of nicotine is highly apparent in my mouth without bathing my tastebuds with diet coke. It is quite unpleasant and gives me very little satisfaction to smoke. A small glass of chilled diet coke is desperately needed to compliment the cigarette as it intensely sweetens the bad taste of smoking that other “normal” smokers are apparently used to. MOREHERE