Caffeine!!

Caf­feine is my friend. I truly feel a bit of eupho­ria in addi­tion to the burst of energy. My thoughts line up so much more clearly and I stay on focus and moti­vated when I’ve had a Coke or two first thing in the morn­ing. I always work out on days I’ve had a lit­tle some­thing.  Of course, with that morn­ing Coke comes a bit of heart­burn and my teeth feel all gross. I’ve tried Sucralose based diet drinks because aspar­tame gives me migraines, but they’re hard to come by. Every time I cut out the daily Coke (or three) I lose ten pounds in a month.  Whether it’s from work­ing out or from the calo­ries, they’re the most impor­tant ten pounds, so I don’t want them.  They’re my psy­cho­log­i­cal set point between New Hot­ness and Old and Busted.

I’m pretty much a light­weight, if you couldn’t tell by the fact that I referred to a caf­feine buzz as euphoric. Caf­feine and tequila are the hard­est sub­stances to pass my mouth… (Shhh.  I’m avoid­ing the obvi­ous sex joke, mmkay?)  My phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal inno­cence notwith­stand­ing, I real­ized one day I had an addic­tion. It was dri­ving me nuts that Mon­days were twice as hard because the Spousal Unit had been in the house over the week­end and usu­ally all of my pre­cious elixir was flat and gross or gone. The headaches and lethargy on days I skipped it were dri­ving me nuts.  I didn’t want to live my life need­ing any­thing to get by.  I have about a day of with­drawal that’s pretty severe if I go cold turkey, but that’s what I did.  I went sev­eral months with very lit­tle caf­feine, except for game nights.  Oth­er­wise, the small amounts in my not very sweet mint tea were all I got.

As always, when­ever I’m inter­ested in any­thing, I did research.  I wanted my buzz that much, so I actu­ally set out to prove to myself that it was ben­e­fi­cial to me.  And, of course, it turns out that many highly intel­li­gent peo­ple who would oth­er­wise be diag­nosed with ADHD self-medicate with caf­feine.  There’s plenty of doc­tors who actu­ally sug­gest that peo­ple who think like I do sim­ply start drink­ing cof­fee.  My addic­tion was based in Sci­ence!  Hooray!

For a while, I tried caf­feine pills.   They’re the best deliv­ery sys­tem so far, but, the caf­feine comes all at once, and I actu­ally get jit­tery.  I’ve tried green tea, too.  I actu­ally love green tea, for the taste.  It’s got some buzz there, but just not enough for my needs.   So now, I’m in the process of acquir­ing the taste for cof­fee.  It’s rather late in life to make this deci­sion, but there it is.  I’ve never set out to over­come a revul­sion before.  It’s been inter­est­ing.  I’ll write more on learn­ing to like cof­fee tomor­row.