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CVTVNEWS-TORONTO -- A Tennessee lawmaker has raised eyebrows after he was snapped swigging from a Hershey chocolate syrup bottle during a House session.

Rep. Kent Calfee went viral on Twitter when journalist Natalie Allison with the Tennessean tweeted a pic of him on Monday with the bottle to his lips and some crackers in hand while he waited for the State of the State address to begin.

The Twittersphere came up with multiple theories as to what was in the bottle, with some speculating the 71-year-old was smuggling alcohol in the flask.

“It's Tennessee ‘sippin' whisky’ or may God strike me down,” one wrote.

Others seemed to think he was gulping down syrup, prompting tweets of disgust and warnings about diabetes.

The actual answer was less exciting. On Tuesday Calfee confirmed to his local newspaper that the Hershey flask is in fact his water bottle.

"It's a repurposed syrup bottle that I drink my water out of," Calfee told the Tennessean on Tuesday.

"I'm not going to buy a [US]$25 or $35 or $45 water bottle that’s not worth what it costs, because I'll probably put it down and leave it somewhere."

Calfee told the Tennessean he and his wife Marilyn, "recycle everything."

"I was fixing to put it in the plastic recycling one day at home and I thought, shoot, I can put water in that," Calfee said.

He said he keeps the bottle in his desk in the House chamber and confirmed that he never refills it with booze as he hasn’t had a drink since December 1978.

Calfee doesn’t appear to have ever been a fan of drinking syrup straight.

"I don’t know that I've ever drank chocolate syrup," he said.