The Great Water Experiment

by Steven C. Brown
9-28-2003 





Much of my life I have avoided drinking straight water. Water is boring, enough said.
Many times I would go days if not weeks drinking nothing but soft drinks. Now the
common sayings have been to drink 8 glasses of water and that my much loved
caffeinated drinks dehydrate the body and are bad. I never really cared about either
and was doing just fine drinking my sodas everyday. But, in early August I thought I
would try something different. I decided to drink two bottles (not eight but better
than zero) of water every day for as long as I kept this experiment going. If water
is supposed to be so good for the body, I should feel some sort of improvements,
right?

For the first couple weeks it was hard to stick to it, but I managed to. I forced
myself to drink this dull substance, sometimes forgetting and quickly chugging the
rest shortly before going to bed (obvious bad move). Needless to say, I wasn’t
feeling any of the ‘good’ effects water supposedly brings. Must take a while to have
a noticeable effect. I’ll give it more time.

Chug chug chug chug chug. I got into a better rhythm. I was drinking my two bottles
every day and at better times. I even started cutting back more on my caffeine drinks.
Nothing like a nice cool glass of water on a hot summer day…for about 15 minutes until
the nice cool effects went away. This whole water thing didn’t seem to be doing me
much good. If anything, I was more thirsty and more often than before! What is this, a
joke? Fine, I’ll give it more time!

Now the last couple weeks, I’ve even started bumping it up to three or four bottles
per day. And now I actually have sodas left over at the end of the week instead of
drinking them all by Thursday. It’s been hot and dry lately, but no more so than in
July when I drank no water. Now with my four bottles of water in me, I wake up one
morning very dehydrated. My thought, “This is stupid!” What kind of crap is this,
being all dehydrated now? I was doing better before when I drank no water!

To recap, my experiment has left me dehydrated, more thirsty, and on the irritated
side. At 4:30am PDT September 28, 2003, I am declaring The Great Water Experiment to
be a failure. My findings, straight water is completely useless and unneeded and that
drinking nothing but sodas will get me by just fine. But wait, the story doesn’t end
here!

I do a web search about this water deal and come across an interesting article:
http://www.flp-aloevera.co.uk/water_benefits.htm.What does it say? Eight glasses of
water is overkill. In fact, many people are getting over 15 glasses a day in water
with various drinks. And many people get enough water consumption from just the foods
they eat. Drinking anything isn’t technically even needed, although still advised.
Also, caffeine hardly, if at all, dehydrates the body. This article matches exactly
with the findings that I ended up with. So everyone, drink any drink you want and
almost any quantity you want, it doesn’t really matter!