It's an allergy, not a choice

[NorthernZel]

Not directly allergy-related, but it reminds me of a Sighting from another forum in which I participate:

Pregnant woman attends a big family dinner event at a restaurant, welcome drinks are included.

Pregnant woman notifies waitress that she'd like a non-alcoholic drink, since, well, she's pregnant.

Waitress ends up serving alcoholic drink anyway, and when confronted, explain with the words: "Duh, I just thought you were being fuzzy about it, and actually I didn't think you could taste the difference anyway".

Cue the rage that only hormone-filled bodies can produce... (don't worry, full scale SC'ism wasn't performed, but the manager was surely summoned)

[Cookie]

To the elves, caffeinated foods & drinks sent them into a drug-like sleep (only worse).

Maybe you're an elf!

Seriously?? I'm allergic to caffeine and that's TOTALLY what happens to me! I get super drowsy and can easily sleep all day like you gave me a bottle of Nyquil.

Now why don't I have cool pointed ears??

[PepperElf]

Seriously?? I'm allergic to caffeine and that's TOTALLY what happens to me! I get super drowsy and can easily sleep all day like you gave me a bottle of Nyquil.

Now why don't I have cool pointed ears??

IIRC the elves could disguise themselves. Maybe you slept for too long and forgot ? Or maybe you're around too much iron - it tends to negate the magic
Here's the story tho.

[EricKei]

PE -- While caff doesn't knock me out, I have found that I can down a six pack of Coke (can't drink like that anymore) and fall right asleep not ten minutes later. I don't get the jitters at all.

[ArcticChicken]

PE -- While caff doesn't knock me out, I have found that I can down a six pack of Coke (can't drink like that anymore) and fall right asleep not ten minutes later. I don't get the jitters at all.

I've found that sometimes I can go through caffeinated and come out the other side. By which I mean that sometimes if I drink enough caffeine it puts me to sleep. The first cup wakes me up, the second one keeps me going, but if I drink a third or fourth, I have to take a nap,

[PepperElf]

When I was younger caffeine helped calm me down supposedly since I was (still am) ADD - only back then the words "ADD" & "ADHD" hadn't been created yet. It operates similarly to Ritalin IIRC. Back then I was probably more ADHD than ADD.

So yes, Mom gave me coffee when I was in grade school - doctor's orders! ... Unfortunately she tried to dress it up for me with a couple of spoons of nestle quick, and it always turned into a weak chocolate milk drink that I could barely get down. I often wonder if I went back in time and gave my younger self a cup of coffee the way I like drinking it now... if it would have gone down more easily. I mean I loved the smell of coffee... but I associated the taste with those drinks from grade school.


These days I'm more ADD vs ADHD. So caffeine affects me more like it does others. Kinda. Sometimes if I go without it for a long time and then have say, a power drink or espresso, I'll spike and then crash soon afterwards and be very sleepy.

And as i drink more, my tolerance goes up of course. Had some diet cokes keep me up all night long cos I had given up on soda for over a month. but these days i drink more soda and coffee so they don't affect me much.

[TexasT]

I knew about the barqs, and I know there's a cream soda with caffeine (also barqs brand, IIRC), but I had no idea there was an orange soda w/ caffeine.

A&W cream soda has caffeine. That was actually an almost humorous discovery for me. My friend had some cream sodas in his fridge. I said something about liking them as a kid and I wondered if I still liked it. He told me to try it. I took a bottle, opened it, took a couple sips, and then realized it didn't say caffeine free on it. Uh oh. I looked at the ingredient list. Caffeine was close to the top. So, I joked that he was trying to poison me. He ended up drinking the rest (didn't want the rest of it to go to waste after all) and had trouble falling asleep. To this day, I refer to that night as the night he tried to kill me and he comes back with that I ruined his sleep.

[Merriweather]

I'm an avid Diet Coke drinker and I avoid Pepsi products as often as I can because I think they have a faint aftertaste of Pine-Sol. The kind of hint that mopping the floor with a just-slightly-too-high ratio of Pine-Sol to water leaves in my sinuses.

A few years ago they came out with the lemon coke & Pepsi. Can't remember now which was which, but one wasn't bad, the other tasted to me like the lemon was lemon dishwashing liquid

[wolfie]

Pregnant woman attends a big family dinner event at a restaurant, welcome drinks are included.

Pregnant woman notifies waitress that she'd like a non-alcoholic drink, since, well, she's pregnant.

Waitress ends up serving alcoholic drink anyway, and when confronted, explain with the words: "Duh, I just thought you were being fuzzy about it, and actually I didn't think you could taste the difference anyway".

Cue the rage that only hormone-filled bodies can produce... (don't worry, full scale SC'ism wasn't performed, but the manager was surely summoned)

Would have been better if this had been in the U.S., AND the pregnant woman was young (i.e. under 21). Quick call to the cops about serving alcohol to a minor, and the waitress would be in deep shit. Even where you were, it could be a police issue ("spiking" someone's drink with booze when they ordered it alcohol-free). Also, since the pregnant woman wouldn't be drinking anyway due to her condition, it would be understandable for her to volunteer to be the designated driver for the group she arrived with - you don't serve booze to the designated driver.

A few years ago they came out with the lemon coke & Pepsi. Can't remember now which was which, but one wasn't bad, the other tasted to me like the lemon was lemon dishwashing liquid

And how do you know what lemon dishwashing liquid tastes like?

[Merriweather]

.



And how do you know what lemon dishwashing liquid tastes like?

I have a good imagination

[Titi]

A few years ago they came out with the lemon coke & Pepsi. Can't remember now which was which, but one wasn't bad, the other tasted to me like the lemon was lemon dishwashing liquid

It was the Diet coke with lemon. I loved the vanilla and loved putting lemons into my Diet Coke so I thought this would be great. It tasted like lemon Pledge (the furniture duster) to me. I didn't try any other lemon flavor cola after that.

[XCashier]

Due to Reasons, I try to always have diet sodas, and due to More Reasons I've recently taken to avoiding as much caffeine as possible. You have no idea how hard this is in the UK, as the only diet soda the majority of bars & restaurants carry is Diet (whichever brand they happen to carry) Cola! I really get fed up having to drink water...

It's pretty much the same way in the US. Every restaurant has four to seven different high-fructose corn syrup-sweetened sodas and Diet Cola. If you need to avoid HFCS soda, you're pretty much SOL.

I don't have a problem with caffeine, but aspartame (NutraSweet) gives me stomach problems. I should avoid HFCS sodas due to my weight, but I can't drink aspartame sodas, and finding an alternately-sweetened soda is the proverbial needle in the haystack. So I can understand the OP's situation. Hopefully eventually they will come out with more alternatives.

[mhkohne]

Sunkist Orange has caffeine. A friend of mine avoids cafeine due to his faith

If he's Mormon, he could look into that again. They had som clarifications the other day, and caffine isn't explicitly banned, just not encouraged. Apparently it used to be conflated with some other ban (hot drinks?) and the clarification was that caffine wasn't the reason for the ban.

[mhkohne]

It's pretty much the same way in the US. Every restaurant has four to seven different high-fructose corn syrup-sweetened sodas and Diet Cola. If you need to avoid HFCS soda, you're pretty much SOL.

I don't have a problem with caffeine, but aspartame (NutraSweet) gives me stomach problems. I should avoid HFCS sodas due to my weight, but I can't drink aspartame sodas, and finding an alternately-sweetened soda is the proverbial needle in the haystack. So I can understand the OP's situation. Hopefully eventually they will come out with more alternatives.

Do you like ice tea? Most restaurants have it made unsweeetened (which I like) and if you prefer you can add your own table sugar to taste.

[XCashier]

Do you like ice tea? Most restaurants have it made unsweeetened (which I like) and if you prefer you can add your own table sugar to taste.

I wish I did. I like hot tea in cold weather, but iced tea tastes like dirty water to me. Maybe I just need to find a good brand.