Special Guest Blogger: John Pemberton

Most important discoveries were made by dedicated people tirelessly exhausting themselves and their resources to achieve a clearly defined goal. Then there are others made by people with vague agendas who, by luck or circumstance, trip over major finds like a fat man at a free buffet and my discovery came about due to some huge slices of fortuitous timing, luck and a total disregard of safety standards.
America in the 1860's was an era of Cowboys, Indians, pioneers, outlaws and guns but most importantly the Civil war and i was a Chemist from Atlanta who ended up fighting on the Confederates side and as luck would have it i was slashed with a sword during a cavalry battle with the Union Calvary.  
Being slashed with a sword may not sound all that lucky but as a Chemist i had access to the pain killer morphine and quickly became addicted so i went looking for a cure for this addiction and began to experiment with safer painkillers that would serve as a morphine alternative and came up with mixing booze and coca leaves and kola nuts, aka cocaine, and came up with Pemberton's French Wine Coca.
I marketed it as 'medicine' and advertised it as particularly beneficial for sufferers of extreme mental exertion although 'Booze now with added Cocaine' would have got the message across just as well.
If you're thinking to yourself that combining a stimulant and a depressant into one concoction isn't the greatest of ideas, you obviously didn't grow up in the 19th century because in those golden days, you could have a shot of whiskey at lunch, come home and have a couple of belts then go out and down a couple of highballs with a bourbon chaser before stumbling home to your negligee-clad wife and the country actively encouraged your alcoholism at every turn and my wine was a hit, and then a local prohibition law was enacted and alcohol was banned.
For most people whose living was alcohol related, this would have spelt disaster and if one door opens for them when another closes, their house is probably haunted but for me it was a second massive stroke of luck because i replaced the alcohol with carbonated water, kept the cocaine ingredients and sweetened it with obscene amounts of sugar and advertised it as a drink which could cure headaches, relieve exhaustion, impotence and calm nerves, calling it Coca-Kola as reference to the two main ingredients.
Due to the prohibition, and with alcohol quality and quantity dwindling, my new drink filled the gap and people drank it to replace the missing alcohol with the cocaine and tooth rotting amount of sugar and it should have made me rich, and it would have done if i didn't retain my expensive morphine addiction which forced me to sell off almost all rights to the company a few years later.
I did keep some back for my son, hoping that after my death he would benefit from it which he did, it allowed him to sell the shares for $2,300 just after i died from stomach cancer and buy the large amounts of opium that he died overdosing on.
I heard that the cocaine component has now been removed from the drink and they have made lots of new flavours but why mess with my winning formula, they should either put the cocaine and booze back in it or leave it the hell alone.