Newark Mayor Cory Booker, known for single-handedly protecting constituents from burning flames, blizzard obstructions and crime, is currently attempting to live on a limited budget to better understand how food stamp recipients live their day-to-day lives. It may be the so-called “super mayor’s” most difficult feat yet. Why? “Caffeine withdrawal.”
“You make tough choices,” Mr. Booker explained after his first day under the self-imposed budgetary restrictions. “The tough choice I have to live with this week is that I used my money to buy a lot of different things, but not caffeine. So I’m going to go this week without coffee, without Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, which is going to be the first week of my life I can ever actually remember doing that.”
Mr. Booker actually made a prior attempt to go a few days without diet cola last year.
“Yes, but doesn’t ‘coke zero’ rhyme with ‘my hero’?” he tweeted at one point, for example.
This time, his caffeine-free diet began to affect him on day two.
“And today it hit me – the first stages of caffeine withdrawal,” Mr. Booker wrote on LinkedIn today. “Not being able to stop and drop a few dollars for a Venti coffee or Diet Mountain Dew is really raising my consciousness about the food choices I often take for granted.”
In an interview about the experience Mr. Booker cradled his limited Mountain Dew supply and described his fear of suffering withdrawal.
“I may have to be hospitalized with caffeine withdrawal. I can look at buying coffee and making coffee at home, but I just don’t know how much it costs,” he said. He then cradled a bottle of Mountain Dew. “I was told to hide this because I shouldn’t be endorsing products but I mean, these are my friends.”
Watch Mr. Booker discuss his caffeine craving below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfH6AKICasE]
