Day 1: No Monster Energy

The can sat there like a reliquary. Mango Loco. Its colors were garish—blue and orange splashed together in a way that felt vulgar against the muted desert tones outside my window. The bright Day-Glo hues mocked the sepia stillness of California City, where even the wind seemed tired of itself, dragging grains of sand along like old regrets. I had stopped drinking Monster, or I was trying to, but that didn’t stop me from staring at the thing like it might crack open on its own, spilling its acrid nectar across the countertop.

I had to look away, the longing was too sharp. Instead, I stared out at the Joshua trees. They looked like they’d grown in protest against this unyielding landscape, their twisted forms an act of rebellion. I felt an affinity for them today, jittery and defiant.

Because the truth was, I’d felt like shit. Every morning, cracking open that first can of Mango Loco felt like opening a portal to some brighter version of myself. The tropical sweetness would hit my tongue, and for a few fleeting hours, I’d trick myself into believing I wasn’t disintegrating from the inside out.

But I was. And I knew it. My stomach—my poor, beleaguered stomach—had started screaming back. There was an ache now, dull and insistent, like a lover too hurt to leave but too angry to stay. My insides, I was convinced, were dissolving in that radioactive mix of caffeine, taurine, and whatever the hell else I’d been feeding them.

Coffee wouldn’t work. I’d tried it. Coffee was like a cheap knockoff of what I needed, too bitter, too thin. It didn’t thrum in my blood the way a Monster did. It didn’t come in those seductive cans with names that sounded like summer vacations I’d never take: Aussie Lemonade, Rio Punch, Ultra Fiesta.

I paced the room, restless. The air conditioning hummed weakly, stirring the stale air but not cooling it. I felt empty, fragile, as though without the scaffolding of artificial energy, I might collapse entirely. And maybe I’m the monster that’s been there all along.

It was a grotesque thought, but it had teeth. Maybe I wasn’t built for this life—this capitalist hamster wheel that demanded perpetual motion, unrelenting energy, and a smile while you ground yourself into dust. Without my Monster crutch, the machinery would stop, and I’d see myself for what I really was: a frail, fallible thing.

The afternoon light bled through the blinds, slanting golden and disorienting. California City sprawled out before me like a broken promise. It wasn’t a city so much as a theory of one, an endless grid of roads leading nowhere. It was a place designed for people who’d given up on other places, and I loved it for that.

There was hope here, though. There had to be. Beneath the relentless sun, beneath the cracked pavement and the long-abandoned dreams of real estate moguls, there was a strange kind of beauty. A beauty in trying, in failing, in trying again.

So I brewed tea—green, bitter, not at all what I wanted. It tasted like discipline. Like sacrifice. But as I sat with it, letting the heat burn away the residual craving, I thought, Maybe this is what healing feels like. Not dramatic, not heroic, just small choices made over and over until they stop feeling like choices and start feeling like living.

Day one without Monster. My heart beat slower, more evenly. I felt less like a broken engine. The can still sat on the counter, unopened, and that felt like a victory. Tomorrow, maybe I’d throw it away.