Requiem for Caffeine

Last night I dreamt of coffee.

Gloriously strong, smooth, dark, and did I mention strong, coffee. The smell, the ritual, the stimulation, ahh what a wonderful reason to get out of bed.

Today was my third consecutive day coffee free. Why would I play such a masochistic game I hear you ask? Well at 3pm this afternoon, I was asking the same question. I was actually asking this while rocking in fetal position in the corner, while my chilren threw sultanas at me.

So like any good addict, I caved and let the sweet caffeine, or trimethylxanthine, flow all over my adenosine receptors. Just like magic I am a functioning, albeit slightly hyperactive,  member of society.

Every now and then I make the decision to quit coffee. I do this mainly for health reasons, however I also like to keep tabs on the underlying addiction. The pain of withdrawal is a great reminder of why caffeine addiction is so insidious.

Some folks head into the desert with no food or water to find the truth, I think it is much easier and involves less sun damage, to simply stop drinking coffee. I like to watch the layers peel back and discover the true state of my nervous system and adrenals.

The exhaustion, lethargy, gloominess and outright bitchiness is quite overwhelming, along with the inability to remember the end of my …. ah … what’s that word … you know …. Sentences!

My other main reason for having a little holiday from my best friend coffee, is that… brace yourself for this… Coffee is a drug!

Coffee has positive and negative effects on the body, with many, often contradictory studies coming out recently. Some of the positive effects from these studies range from reducing the risk of aquiring alzeimers disease, to helping with headaches.

Were these studies credible? I do not know. Maybe they were being conducted by coffee starved individuals with raging withdrawal headaches, so yes, it goes without saying that coffee is going to help with that.

So it doesn’t look like I’ll be quitting coffee anytime soon. Maybe next time I take a ride on the coffee rehab bus a good adrenal tonic and a ‘kids-free’ week on the beach in the Maldives would help to ease the withdrawal pains….

mmm beach…

mmm Maldives…

I wonder if they do a good espresso martini there?

Megan Georgoulas