I Have an Emotional Support Water Bottle (Addiction)

I can’t get the hydration monkey off my back, and it’s turning me into a real H2hoe.

*If you want to support my satirical silliness, I have options below starting at $1

Graphics by author

Ginormous water bottles have become all the rage. While our kidneys get practically water-boarded, our anxiety clings onto them like they’re our childhood safety blanket. These soft-touch thermoplastic elastomers are, in every way — grown-up sippy cups.

Sippy cups for child-like adults, like me, who forget that we need water and fluids to function.

Don’t fool yourself; your Gulpzilla9000 is a sippy cup. Its textures, ASMR clicking sounds, and built-in fidget-spinner tops are all the things we grown-ups need to pacify our ADHD- and OCD-esque comfort stimming behaviours.

We twiddle our Sir Sips-A-Lot between our hands, we stroke the soft-touch plastic, and we carry it around on a string like a 3-year-old carries their binky. It’s a sippy cup for adults who need a comfort-based reminder to get their daily intake of snowman’s blood.

If you’ve named it — you really have a problem.

Mine is named Ethel.

Technically, it’s Ethel the Third, because I had to throw out Ethel one after she became classified as a biohazard, and I lost Ethel the Second when I forgot it at my nephew’s lacrosse game. I was devastated that night. Thankfully, Ethel is for sale on Amazon and those summabitches overnighted me one.

I really upped my emotional-support water bottle game when I covered it with stickers, like I’m a fourth grader with a new pencil case. And yes, a couple of them were Pinterest-style inspirational quotes.

Ethel supports me, inspirationally, motivationally, and hydrationally. If the cozy comfort of her soft rubber isn’t enough to soothe me when life is particularl prickly — I can use it to clock someone upside the head (2 liters of faucet jizz packs a good wollop), which I was close to doing at the lacrosse game mentioned above.

If you’re shaking your head right now at my hydration-based emotional fragility, I call bullshit. Many of y’all reading this have your own emotional support Thirst Terminators. There are so many of us H2hoes out there that we’ve even started forming clicky little tribes.

For example, Stanley is the basic-bitch of support bottles. It’s the first step, and is a gateway cup for your first cloud-juice bottle. Stanley cuppers cluster together like some sort of hydration mafia.

Yeti is for those amongst us who want to look outdoorsy, so we pretend it’s our urban sherpa.

If you have the Lululemon Liquid Lunchbox you probably match it to your yoga pants, despite the only downward dog you do is over the toilet after an entirely liquids-based 5-hour mimosa brunch.

If you’re a HydroFlasker, you’re probably rocking your almond-mom era, and the skyjuice in it is infused with Himalayan salt and the ether of bergamot essential oil. You know, for a calming effect after your gentle-parented 9-year-old microwaves a Barbie.

But emotional support can only go so far. And when it goes too far — it becomes a crutch. An emotionally unsupported water crutch. That’s right, these big ole summabitches can cause anxiety.

There’s the fear of having the less-cool bottle amongst all your hydrohomies, anxiety from the horrible sound as they crash to the ground (causing everyone to look at you), and the embarrassment of going to the bathroom 37 times during bottomless brunch.

Then there’s the anxiety of when you misplace your Quencherator 5000, either on one of your 87 trips to the bathroom or simply because you’re experiencing delusions due to hyperhydration. Separation anxiety from being a part from your emotional support jug is real.

So is overhydration.

Hyperhydration, and the resulting low electrolytes and potassium levels, can cause muscle weakness, nausea, dizziness, and confusion. So if you see some Stanley-toting sucker wandering around in a psychogenic fugue state, take their unicorn-tears bottle and cut them off. They’re water drunk on virgin vodka.

And possibly under the spell of sipnosis.

If they try to fight you like a feral honey badger when you try to take their Gulp Guru, which is likely, then alternatively, you can sit them down and have them rest their head on the neck-height giant jug. This is the reason these jugs are so big, so that they can not only emotionally support us — but physically too.

Be forewarned though, this temporary respite will help them regain their strength after the epic battle, and they may return to fighting like a badger. And they’ll probably hurl hateful slurs at you, like calling you a hydrophobe.

Signs of Water Bottle Addiction

There are signs that you’ve become too attached to your sippy cup, like the example above. Another example is when you start bringing it on first dates, because they might as well get to know Ethel now, and learn earlyon that you’re a hydrosexual.

Another telltale sign that you’re an aquaphiliac is when you’ve had to continually upgrade your size, from 500ml to 1 litre, to 2 litres. Stop before you get to measuring things in cubics; that’s not a water bottle, that’s a Tupperware-type kiddie pool.

Yet one more example of when you’ve gone too far is when you have one for every mood and every drink. If you have a pink one for rosé, a brown one for coffee, and a red one for wine — you’ve tipped from emotional support water bottle to alcoholic-sized emotional support flask (or, depending on size, emotional support keg).

In that scenario, you might have to start going to Aquaholic Anonymous meetings.

If you’ve requested an extra seat on an airplane for your emotional support keg — you may need to go to ESWB detox.

Jokes Aside (Sort Of)

The truth is, about 20% of us only need the emotional support because our bo’oh’o’wa’er (that’s ‘bottle of water’, in British) obsession is making us run to the bathroom 97 times a day. Only part of that is from the hydration, the No 2. reason is that those big ole summabitches are germ factories.

According to Fortune, “20% of reusable water bottles sampled contained coliform bacteria, or fecal matter”.

These giant germ jugs might seem a little less adorbs now.

If you’re thinking, ‘But, but…all it holds is water, and water doesn’t ‘go bad’ or get bacteria?’.

This is true. The water and the bottle aren’t the dirty part; it’s us humans. We’re the dirty bitches in this scenario. Our mouths are teeming with bacteria, and our hands are just fleshy sponges for everything we touch.

So consider this your PSA — clean your Quench Master Flex, before it starts to look like a bong in a frat house.

Help This Writer Afford Hydrohab

Do you want to support me but those $5+ per month subscriptions add up? Fair. I’d absolutely love your support at any level that’s comfortable for you…

$1 per month (would picking the lowest option make you cheap? Nope, I’d love you)
$2 per month (equal love here)
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Don’t have any money? Don’t worry, me neither, and I still love you.