It's gross, but I almost get it. I lived in the midwest for a while and huge amount of people quite literally drank soda the way that anyone else would drink water. Not just how people drink tea, but actual every single meal or need for hydration moment would be soda. I can get how if you start from looking at hydration that way it'd be a weird experience to shift suddenly. But at the same time, it's insanely dumb to think you don't need to. How can anyone think that when every other create on earth lives on water that substituting an artificial substitute will be consequence free?