Mountain Dew (MD) is not your friend! Sure it gives you that quick pick-me-up when a three-hour lecture has morphed your brain into a waste-drain sludge ball, or kept you focused at 2 a.m. trying to finish a paper on "Economic Stratification of Mechanized Totalitarian Regimes." But at what cost?

As a recovering MD junkie, I've walked that dark alley of Dew addiction, narrowly escaping the temptation of higher-powered drugs like Jolt and Red Bull. Being on the wagon for 15 days now is tough, and except for my shaky hands, headaches, and loose stools, I'm feeling better each day.

Besides great taste, less filling, and fantastic with pizza, what do you really know about MD? Startling, but it's a product of the deceptive, super-hype, don't believe what you read, marketing world we live in. A place where ruefully convoluted and misleading ads create an imagery of unfulfilled wants and desires. How do you think George W. got elected twice?

The MD packaging alone is a marketing conspiracy, seducing unsuspecting consumer's rod and cone receptors to trigger an L-dopa reaction to the occipital cortex, inducing a state of euphoria, leading to extensive brain damage and, in advanced stages, drooling. Sure, that's what happens! You think Pepsi would admit it?!

So why the search for MD anytime you feel tired, nauseous, achy, itchy, constipated, or just finish a fight with your girlfriend where she's called you an insensitive pathetic egotistical loser? Possibly, it's the cool looking can, plus a well-devised additive formula, comprised of enough synthetic chemical compounds to gag a goldfish. Here's a rundown of what you're drinking.

Caffeine is a legal stimulant and diuretic (Where's the bathroom?) found in over 60 garden-variety plants. It acts as a natural pesticide, paralyzing and killing pesky insects. Think of it as DDT, but without the foul aftertaste and mutant life forms. About 90% of U.S. adults daily consume caffeine, the other 10% are sleeping in homeless shelters.

Ever suffer from nervousness, irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, muscle twitching, insomnia, headaches, backaches, teeth aches, hemorrhoids, boils, warts, thong chaffing, kidney failure, gallstones, respiratory alkalosis, or heart palpitations? Boy, you're one sick hosehead. You may be afflicted with caffeinism.

I've stared caffeinism square in the face. When working as a software technical writer my cubicle mate would be downing his 5th Pepsi before 10a.m. His leg would bounce like a pogo stick while his body gyrated with the finesse of a marionette on bungee cords. His favorite morning drink was a double chocolate whammy, consisting of two instant hot chocolate packets mixed with a cup of coffee. He wrestled to understand why his heart palpitated and he couldn't sleep at night. Well, HELLO!

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is genetically engineered corn syrup, undergoing artificial insemination processes in large vats to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose into fructose. What can be easier than turning white cornstarch into crystal clear syrup? If we can put a man on the moon, we can do this.

Fructose is the same sugar appearing in fruits like those fuzzy ball things, oh yeah, kiwifruit. So it has to be good for you, right? But a Dr. Meira Field discovered that this just ain't so.

The deranged Dr. Field stuffed massive quantities of sugar down rats' throats, causing them to get sick and die. Swaying to the local pub's music, she'd maniacally slur, "I fed the sleazy little rodents Captain Crunch today. Make the next a double." She got more rats at a yard sale, feeding one group glucose and another other fructose (buckets of it). The glucose group did great. Having maze parties into the wee morning hours. But the fructose group filed civil charges. The male rats' little rat things never got big and the cohort suffered anemia, high cholesterol and their itsy-bitsy hearts exploded. The females couldn't produce live young -- but I guess that figures, what with the males' problem.

Besides killing rats, fructose doesn't (glucose does) release or stimulate insulin or leptin, naturally occurring hormones, helping metabolize our foods and regulate body fat storage. They lso tell our brain, for all intent and purposes, "You've pigged out enough - stop eating!" Turning into a human fat magnet? Check your daily HFCS intake.

Tartrazine or Yellow 5 is pretty cool dye, enabling you to pull that fun party trick (also known as the Waterworld joke) where you drink MD in front of inebriated partygoers fooling them into believing your drinking own urine. Ha, ha!

Orange Juice concentrate really surprises folks, but there it is, third on the list. I always knew MD was a great breakfast drink, insisting on it with my fried apple fritter. One can never be overly health conscious.

Carbonated water is the least innocuous ingredient, but greatest by volume. Water and carbon dioxide - heck, even cavemen knew how to make the stuff.

The rest of the formula includes insignificant chemical compounds like sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, and eye of noot, which have been around for years. Who cares?! Just' cause sodium benzoate gives fireworks their whistling noise doesn't mean it's going to make you fart.

It's amazing scientists can change a random group of synthetic, chemically derived compounds into a drink the ancient Greeks would surely label "the nectar of the gods." Every day, in every way, I'm feeling better and better, ditching the Dew. Maybe that old Amish saying is correct; "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear." And who'd want to, anyway?