Tommorow Comes Today

So back to last Wednesday when I had my first coffee in a month. It did not feel too strong, neither did it feel tasty. It was my office coffee machine after all. I later went to Starbucks, but that did not taste too good either.

I did not seem to get much "high". Except later that day I could not hold it any longer, went ahead and bought self this scooter I was going to buy for a while now. Then in the evening I was so overwhelmed I went bicycling downtown and found this trail, going under the highways that cut off poor folks up north, all the way south to the lakes that I could smell but not see 'cuz it got so darn dark. Quite freaky experience. I managed to get out into some strange neighborhood. Ten in the evening, similarly looking raws of houses, and not a single sole in the streets. Barely any cars, too. I am still to dig out the map and find out how I got there.

So I guess that was a bit too big a coffee jolt for one time there. I used to just down these with no visible consequences. Anyways, my lovely new scooter is exactly the reason I was not posting recently. I was taking it everywhere around town, and I am really enjoying it.

A Month Without Coffee

It has been about a month that I did not drink coffee, or any caffeine per se. The withdrawal was pretty tough, but given that I was dumping this stuff down my body for years without a break, it was much milder then expected. Everything was over in less then four days of sluggishness and a couple bad headaches. I don't even remember it now as something hard.

There were no special effects waiting for on the other side. It simply felt OK, nothing special. I am prone to headaches and the first couple weeks I often had a mild headache with a feeling that a 'bad one' is about to start, but a Tylenol was always enough to quench this, to quite a surprise. Even these headaches went away after about two weeks.

By the end of the month I started to get a sense on my caffeine-free self. The biggest surprise was to find that I can breathe, actually. Breathing through your nose is a wonderful feeling, but it was something becoming ever more impossible for quite a few years now. This was April, the top allergy time, and I went around with perfectly unclogged pathways, feeling great and quite happy about it. I have no clue why this has happened and never heard of any connection between coffee and allergies. Add to this that I usually have my coffee completely bare, so no link to say creamer.

I also noticed a better "pump" at the gym, something that is reported in medical studies and something that I was looking for. Not big of a deal, then. What is a bid deal is that I am going to the gym again, after quite a long break.

I did not lose energy, in fact I think I was more steady, motivated and also more strategic about what I am doing, choosing my priorities, avoiding getting stuck with some stupid little perfectionism. You get a good view on the things, instead of digging yourself all the way in. That, and the absence of coffee "crushes" certainly makes the days much more enjoyable!

I have decided that I will come back to drinking coffee, perhaps as a social or rare activity, and today was the first time. I will write about the nuclear consequences of that decision tomorrow.

Coffee Experiment

It is the second consequent day of the coffee experiment, and it's starting to feel real. A sense of missing something really important in life, a very personal and irreversible loss - and I am only doing this for a month! I am sluggish and feel really inefficient, and a puny voice in my head says I really should get on top of things. Just have a cup. I'm keeping far from coffee shops and coffee machines of any kind.

A dull pain in my knees and the lower back, but just the right side. I think its my kidney. I fell asleep during quite an interesting talk today, and with my head bending backwards over my back launched a headache. Must have looked really funny. That's two tylenols down, no caffeine.

I am starting to eat more, and that may be a problem. Still it looks like I am making it. The withdrawal peaks somewhere between days 3 to 5, and I am somewhere at 2½, with Monday hiatus. Once you get to this point, you gain momentum and feel really determined to make it.

I had a coffee-free Sunday past weekend. I like coffee and have been drinking it in various forms for a long time now. The problem is, I've got to the point of drinking it instead of water. Evenings have long been a taboo - that's the best thing I've ever done to my day rhythm, but other then that I would use any opportunity to down a dose. Limiting did not work. I had to stop drinking my office nearly-free nearly-coffee, and that meant taking from home - cold, vented and often forgotten, or buying from Startbucks - but I have a much better use for the buck.

So this Sunday I just did not start my dripper, and went without coffee for the whole day. Sounds easy enough, but now that I think about it, I probably did not have a coffee-free day in at least five years. That's right, not a single day!

It felt OK, slow and even a little lethargic, perhaps a little disoriented. I was still enthusiastic enough to go out and later watch a movie, and make plenty of calls. Nothing like a withdrawal, really. It hit me in the night, right in base of my skull, strong enough a headache to wake me up. So Monday morning was Excedrin (that has plenty of caffeine by itself, so that broke the abstinence) and a whole lot of coffee. Today, I did it again, and I'll keep the pills ready and my fingers crossed.