I am this stubborn.
I’ve always hated water and refused to drink it. Nearly anything is preferable to plain water.
When I was about 10 my actually evil stepmother decided I wasn’t permitted to drink anything but water any longer. So I just stopped drinking anything at all.
For three days, I drank nothing. Not a drop of liquid passed my lips. Not at home, not at school. I did not know it was possible to be so thirsty, but I gutted it out. In a rare bit of actual concern for my wellbeing at the beginning of the fourth day, one of my teachers referred me to the school nurse because I could barely stay conscious in class as I was so dehydrated.
After I explained to the nurse what was up, I asked her to call my dad, not my mom or stepmom, and she did. She advised my father it’d be better to let me drink what I wanted rather than just allow me to die because of something someone who was not even a legal guardian had mandated.
So that’s how I got to drink (mostly) sugar-free drinks and such again, and sometimes sweet tea. Either of those is infinitely superior to water, which I absolutely cannot tolerate.
After I won against her, my stepmother did many more terrible things in retaliation, which is why I was eventually kicked out of the house altogether and ended up living with my grandparents.
But that’s a tale for another day.
When I later told a nurse practitioner friend about what I’d done and why, she said I was lucky — apparently, a lot of people, especially kids, experience cardiac arrest after about three days without any hydration.
