Getty Image / Justin Sullivan
The story of a 42-year-old British man has gone viral after he revealed that he was drinking 5 liters of soda every day at one point and he estimates that he spent around $39,000 (£30,000) over the past 10 years on soda. Things got so bad that he had stopped drinking water and was only drinking soda.
Tom Bowey has been dubbed ‘Dr. Pepper Man‘ by his friends and colleagues and prior to getting his soda addiction under control, he was told by a dentist that his teeth were at “the level of acid erosion was similar to what he’d expect in a 70 year-old.” He also said “I was also feeling really bloated all the time as well, you gain a lot of weight when you’re just drinking sugar.”
Mr. Bowey recently shared his story with the DailyMail and his tale has since gone viral as people worldwide cannot fathom how this man was *only drinking soda* every day.
He had cut out water, according to his recent interview, saying “It started with one [drink] with lunch and then me and my work colleagues started buying each other drinks throughout the day. They’d bring them over from the cafe near work. There was also a vending machine so I could just pop in and get them whenever I wanted. Before I knew it, that’s all I was drinking and then I stopped drinking water completely.”
Here is the DailyMail video that has been seen far and wide after his story was shared:
Parsed out, his dependency on soda doesn’t seem that crazy. He said “I used to buy the 24-can multipacks so I always had them and had at least five cans in the fridge all the time.” I too will buy a 24-can pack of soda to keep my fridge stocked. The main difference between me and him, I suppose, is I do that every 5 years and the only people drinking the sodas are my relatives when they come over for the holidays.
Eventually, in order to break his daily addiction to drinking soda, he sought out the help of a hypnotherapist. He said that it only took one 2-hour Zoom session to break him of his soda addiction. Since giving up soda and reaching for water, he has lost 14 pounds.
Hopefully, this tale of the Dr. Pepper Man turning it all around and dropping soda to get healthy before his body reached a point of no return can help other realize the dangers of daily soda intake.
For me, the biggest red flag to the dangers of soda came back in high school when I was on the rowing team. We practiced and raced in saltwater here in Florida and the saltwater wreaked havoc on our boats. To clean the metal hardware, we would soak the nuts and bolts and other metal parts in Coke… That’s what the best way to strip build-up on metal parts was. After seeing that I gave up soda except for once in a blue moon.