I grew up drinking Diet Dr. Pepper in the 80’s (I think when it was still saccharin). In the mid-nineties I was a college student. I started having memory problems. I’ve always had wonderful short-term memory and did some of my best studying right before a test. But suddenly I was forgetting everything I had just studied. I was actually in danger of flunking a difficult class. I was also getting very bad headaches. A friend of my parents told us about an actress he knew who stopped drinking diet sodas a month or two before her play would start. It was late in the semester but I stopped drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and stopped eating diet popsicles. The headaches went away. My memory improved a lot and I managed to make a high enough grade on the final exam to get a C in the class.
I tried to stop drinking Diet Dr. Peppers completely, but I seemed to be addicted. It wasn’t until after I was married that I kicked that habit. And my husband could always tell if I drank a Diet Dr. Pepper – he said I started noticeably forgetting things.
During my days of NutraSweet, I gained weight, got headaches, developed eye migraines, developed hypoglycemia and had memory problems. My memory has never recovered 100%. At this point, I am completely off of all artificial sweeteners. I tried Splenda when it came out, but I seemed to develop an addiction to that as well.