Warning: caffeine deprived whine ahoy.

About two weeks ago, I decided that I was drinking far too much coffee and needed to stop. It was at the point of needed to brew 4 cups of coffee (2 mugs full - coffee makers lie) just to get out the door, then another cup of coffee around 10 or 11, and more in the afternoon. And it was the strong stuff - Peet’s Major Dickison’s Blend usually. On the days that I skipped coffee, I was completely useless. Couldn’t think straight, wanted to sleep all the time, headaches, etc etc. I usually had to make an emergency Starbucks run midday and get a coffee just to think straight if I didn’t get any coffee in the morning.

So one Saturday in my full hung over glory due to free beer and too much rum the night before, I decided to quit cold turkey. I figured I already felt miserable, might as well just get it all over with at the same time.

Oh wait, it takes more than a day to get over a caffeine addiction like that. The first day I was just tired, and the headache from the hangover masked anything else.

Sunday sucked. I woke up relatively early and just sorta walked around in a permanent daze. The headache was so bad that I popped two Vicodin. I was in bed by 6 PM.

Monday at work I was useless. Barely made it through the day, and was in bed by 6:30PM. Still had a bad headache the next day, but I was at least able to make it to a normal time before I went to bed. The rest of the week was a little easier, but I was really cranky and yawned uncontrollably very often. All the same, I made it until thursday until I had anything caffeinated - a glassof iced tea at lunch.

I decided I needed some sort of kick in the morning, so I started running in the mornings again. This was something I hadn’t been able to do because I was so tired in the mornings before I got my coffee, and by the time it brewed it was time to go to work. So now I’m getting excercise again, and maybe I’ll stand a chance of losing the ship gut I’ve been carrying around.

After a week and a half of no coffee, and no caffeine other than a soda here and there (Coke never did anything for me before and it still doesn’t seem to), I finally fell off the wagon today. I blame it on my meeting allergy. It seems that the mineral oils in the conference tables, or maybe it’s the stale sweat from a million and one grand plans that never came to any fruition, just tire me out to no end, and I can’t keep my eyes open. Slapping my self, biting my tongue, public ridicule - none of those do anything once that PowerPoint-induced narcolepsy hits.

So I decided that today would be a good day to make some coffee. That got me through the morning’s meetings, but I still ended up nodding off in the afternoon. So much for that idea. Of course I walked outside and was bouncing around as soon as the meeting was over, so obviously the caffeine was still there.

Tomorrow, it’s no more coffee. I have another full day of meeings, so maybe one cup in the afternoon, if the electric shock device I’ve rigged up doesn’t do the trick.

Thank god I never started smoking.