Cold turkey has got me on the run...

Really, I'm quite boring in many many ways. As many of you who know me personally, I never drink, never smoke, never do anything recreational with "chemicals", never even had a single cup of coffee! (and yes, I mean I don't mean it's rare - I just don't do it at all) That said, there are still some addictions and other habits of mine I haven't been happy with for a long time.
According to my parents, my first word as an infant was a baby-word for Pepsi. I've been drinking both the diet and regular varieties of sodas for pretty much my whole life. Indeed, in recent years, caffeine free diet Pepsi has basically been my nearly sole source of liquid in my "diet". To give an idea, I think it was 3 weeks ago when I estimated I took in nearly 300 ounces of diet soda over the course of the day. (between diet sodas ordered at fast food drive thrus, the cans of diet Pepsi, and bottles of diet soda at the gym and such)
2 years ago I decided to stop drinking regular soda, and I surprisingly found that easy to do (and today, regular soda tastes too syrupy to me). More recently, nearly a year ago I suddenly lost my appetite and found myself losing weight pretty rapidly. Since I was about 5 or 6 years old I had been at least somewhat overweight, moreso in recent years. However, thanks to the sudden loss of appetite which is still mostly the case, coupled with going to the gym (I still do!), I find myself not overweight for the first time in my "adult" life. I'm not exactly skinny, but according to medical definitions, I'm actually pretty much in the middle of "normal" weight, and amazingly I'm a good deal beneath the median weight for my age and height. (which really is more a comment on the median than myself)
Anyway, in many ways, both of those changes were easier than trying to give up soda. The regular soda wasn't a big deal since I didn't drink regular soda all that often. And the loss
of weight, as dramatic as it is (I've lost nearly 1/3rd of my body weight in the last year), was in large part a passive change that somewhat happened to me.
This last Saturday night, I decided to quit drinking soda cold turkey. Since then I've been training myself to drink water (scarily, I really wasn't at all used to drinking it, and I had to force myself on the 1st 2 days to take in enough liquid to make sure I wasn't dehydrating myself.
Well, it's Thursday night, and I'm holding up, and haven't had a single drop of Soda since Saturday night. The horrible headaches I had been suffering through seem to be subsiding. I'm not sure if those are some forms of withdrawal symptoms, or if they are stress related. I'm fairly sure they aren't from caffeine withdrawal since I often went days without it before (only drinking decaf soda) without any ill effects. Still, it was pretty miserable with the headaches coupled with a good deal of fatigue. Whatever the situation, it seems to be getting better.
I'm not saying I never will drink soda again - I imagine I will, but I want it to be something I drink on occasion, not on every occasion. I don't know if the stuff in diet soda is as harmful as some claim it is, but I do know that it can't be that good, and if nothing else, it's more expensive than water. (plus people look weird at me when I drink bottles of diet soda while working out... though that could be due to a plethora of other reasons)
Anyway, if this is what I go through trying to give up soda, I'm REALLY glad I decided long ago I would never experiment with drugs, smoking, booze or anything else. I have an addictive personality, and it's usually best for me not to get involved with that which brings no real positives.
What's the point of this post? Well, for those out there who are like I was: there is hope. If you keep forcing yourself to drink water, eventually you get used to it! Also, I'm getting a really inflated sense of self-confidence in so many changes in the last year that I seem to be keeping. Yes, I'm really lucky that this is the great obstacle that I am facing - I know many deal with far greater trials in their lives. My older cousins struggle with addictions to really heinous chemicals, and that's a good deal of the reason why I decided years ago to be "boring".