A couple weeks ago I had a life changing event. I was home alone with the kids and completely out of Pepsi. I don't drink tea or coffee so I tried to go without the caffeine. I was doing alright until about 1 o'clock when I started getting the dreaded lack-of-caffeine-headache. At that point I should have packed the kids up, gone to the store, and gotten some caffeine. But no, I decided to stay the course and wait for my wife to come back with some Pepsi.
Bad plan.
The headache kept getting worse. By the time I finally decided to take some ibuprofen for it I realized we didn't have any of that either. Shortly after that my wife arrived with some Pepsi which I quickly opened up and gulped down. Then I went to lay down for a while and wait for the headache to go away.
Wrong.
It kept getting worse. And I had to go to the bank. I grabbed another Pepsi and went up to the store to buy some Ibuprofen. My headache was so bad at that point my vision was starting to deteriorate. Fortunately the grocery store is only a few block away. I got the pain killers, went back out to my car, took 3 or 4 and slammed down some more Pepsi. Then I proceeded to the bank -- painfully. When I got there I felt like throwing up but they didn't have a public restroom (small town bank). So I finished my business there and went back home. When I got home I lied down for a short time and the nausea went away.
After a while I was finally able to sleep. A couple hours later I awoke to a very minor headache and an incredibly valuable lesson learned.
There's really no punchline to go in here. It was the most miserable day in recent memory. I don't get migraines but I suspect what I got was much like one. I don't think I have ever felt pain that bad in my life. The lesson?
Caffeine wreaks havoc on your body.
On that day I vowed to myself that I would never have that kind of reaction again to the lack of caffeine and the only way to do that was to break my addiction. Was it a combination of factors? Possibly. But it certainly wasn't worth taking that risk.
So I quit. It took a long time to do it and it wasn't without moments of minor headaches. I had to slowly wean myself off of it. Every day I'd drink less caffeine and wait longer between feeding it to my body. Eventually my body adjusted, grudgingly.
It's Friday and I had a Coke this morning. Before that I had one Wednesday afternoon. Before that it was Tuesday morning. I didn't drink one this morning because I was getting a headache. or because I'd get one if I didn't . I drank it because I like the taste. But I realize that if I have another one today I could fall into bad habits. This isn't going to be easy. When this 12-pack is gone (only 2 left) I'm going to get decaffeinated cola drinks. That'll be good.
The caffeine is still pulling at me. I'm craving one right now. But I'm not going to risk getting that kind of headache again. Not ever.
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2 comments:
strange, I have quit caffeine several times in the past. I tend to do it every 4 years or so and stay off for a year or two. I go cold turkey and I tend to get a low level headache that lasts a day or so and then I am clean. I wonder if you have an addictive chemistry in general. Did you ever smoke?
(I would ask about other addictive substances but they tend to be illegal so getting an answer on a public forum would be problematic at best)
I've never smoked and I've never been addicted to anything else. It's quite possible there were other factors contributing to my headache other than caffeine. Regardless, eliminating the caffeine eliminates one more cause of headaches in my life. That's definitely not a bad thing.
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