KICKING THE HABIT

[Pravin Kumar]

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I haven't wanted to talk to anyone about this, but last week my husband came downstairs for breakfast and caught me yelling at the toaster. Much to his credit, he didn't take sides. Instead, he just patted my shoulder and said, "Honey, I think you need to cut down on your caffeine."

"What do you mean?" I said. "I can handle my coffee. It's not my fault the toaster your mother gave us for Christmas has a temperamental attitude. I pushed down the handle, and it's just sitting there, refusing to heat up. And for your information, buddy, I have better things to do than hang around here all morning waiting for it to feel like making toast. So I ask you, then, what am I supposed to do? What? What? WHAT?" I grabbed him by the lapels.

"Now, maybe it's me," he continued, "but lately, you seem a little, well, edgy."

Believe me, I am as shocked as you are. Like nearly everyone else on the planet, I have about one, maybe two cups of coffee a day—especially if you don't count the cup or two of pre-coffee that I drink in the morning until I can get to my real cup at the coffee bar down the street. And I've always considered my after-dinner cups of instant as more of a nightcap. So I did what any devoted wife would do: I called my friend Barb for a second opinion.

"Say, have I been a little, you know, testy lately?" I asked. There was silence for a moment.

"Well," she said finally, "the other day you did yell at the cart corral at the grocery store for taking up a good parking space."

Okay, so maybe, just maybe, my husband was right. But I've been on this Earth long enough to know I can function just fine without coffee. I'm not some kind of weak addict who is dependent upon a stimulant to get through my day. No-sir-ee. So the next day, just to show him what I was made of, I stopped drinking coffee cold turkey. Now, I know what you're thinking. Doing anything "cold turkey" is a very, very bad idea.

And you're right. After all, there's a reason they call it that, and I suspect it's because turkeys, as far as animals go, aren't a very smart bunch. But I wasn't thinking about all this back then. I only knew that it was just as easy to drink decaffeinated herbal tea for breakfast as coffee. Why, after only one cup, I could feel all of the caffeine rushing out of my body and being replaced with healthy, disease-fighting antioxidants.

Now, all of this healthiness and good nutrition would've been great, but there was one particular drawback: by mid-morning, my eyeballs felt as if they were hanging somewhere down around my knees and were being kicked every time I took a step.

"Stop yelling, for gosh sakes!" I snapped at my five-year-old son.

"I didn't say anything, Mom. That was the cat."

But what did I expect? Any fool knows that you can't just go around cutting out prominent substances from your diet without going through some signs of withdrawal. That's probably why, when I called my friend Julie to tell her about my new caffeine-free way of life, all that came out was "jummgfhuppmm."

After that, I drank another cup of tea to try to wake myself up. And another. "Mommy, you don't look so good," my son said as I finished off my seventh cup. In the afternoon, I had a hunch, although I could be wrong, that there was a little man inside my head pounding on an anvil. So I tried reading the newspaper to get my mind off the pain, but I couldn’t concentrate on a sentence long enough to make it to the end. Somewhere in the middle, I would start staring into space and think about things like high-speed Internet access or the wondrous miracle of life or where, exactly, do all of the lids to Tupperware go.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps smelling coffee wouldn't hurt. I mean, just one or two little sniffs. But, as I opened the lid on the can, something else occurred to me: if I drank a cup of coffee, I'd still be irritable, overly sensitive, and listless. In fact, I'd feel the VERY SAME way I'm feeling now. But my headache would be gone and, with a little luck, I’d get my mental edge back. So I made a cup. Just a little one. But don't worry, if my husband finds out, I'll tell him that the toaster drove me to it. =18][/size]

[tourbi]

I'm so lucky I never drank coffee, oh soooo lucky.I did discover chai.  Yum Yum

[Minakochan]

Wow
That's totally new for me.
I mean, I've always heard how coffee can affect people and such.
But I don't know why, it seems that whenever I drink lots of coffee, no matter how much or how little, it doesn't seem to wake me up at all.
At times it would seem to actually make me even more sleepier õ.O
That is so weird reading how it affects someone the other way around.

I study college at night, and I usually would work during the day and would get about a 5-hour night's sleep (working from 7am-5pm and studying from 7pm-10pm - getting home at 11pm, eating, doing whatever until midnight and waking up at 5am). And when I work it's usually very boring jobs (although right now I'm intentionally unemployed. I have been working as a translator, but the work is on the low side these days :()
I really feel like you described when you didn't drink coffee but actually having drinking MANY cups of coffee (I still feel drowsy, sleepy, slow).
And I feel as though I'm immune to caffeine...

Oh well, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...hehe

[bybybybyon]

Mine is staying night doing monotonous events, like surfing the net and talking with frds on MSN.

I have always been trying my best to kick away this, but unfortunately... !!

[Rev_Vesta]

ohhhhhh I can't function without a soya latte......but then i discovered Soya Chai latte... with a shot of expresso......mmmmmm...... ooooh    i have maybe up to 4-5 per day on average...........so i ended up trying to everynow and then have a different type of coffee, exchanging a coffee for a herbal tea........and then every now and then i do a detox day.....lemon in hot water, fruit juices.........fruit and veg juice, a bit plate of salad or vegetables, herbal teas and meditation or healing through crystals....... i think these just help me stay balanced on all levels within my life............

Coffee is an addiction and can cause you to feel the only way you can function is to have coffee.....caffine......... remember normal black tea can have caffine also...........be aware...........

If anyone wishes to stop their coffee, do it slowly and saftely,,,,, as with all addictions cold turkey can be extremly dangerous......detox slowly......... i don;t do a detox day until i have have a few days where i have reduced my caffine intake to one cup.....then i can detox saftley without the headaches.........and the irritabilitry.......

Blessings...

[Master Gnoth]

A lot of people would argue that anything that ends in 'ine' is probably bad for you and can be addictive. There is a saying that most things are not bad for you unless you use them to the extreme. In homeopathy caffeine is actually used as a way to help people sleep.
I can really relate to your story. I was a caffeine fiend for many years. And one day I 'decided' that I would make my usual two cups for the morning and no more after that. And that works just fine for me. If I skip a day I don't freak out either. Yes I completely agree that when you open a new can/bag/package of coffee the smell is great. I use about 500 grams of coffee a month and I am now totally happy when it's time to open a new one.
A word of warning though. If you do drink coffee then at least drink it black. Adding milk, cream or soy products will change the alkaline balance of the drink.

[Charlesman]

Well... I am definitely addicted to Dopamine - but it's good for me - I just know it! =)

Seriously though (I'm assuming you made the 'INE' statement because of numerology) - what about words that end with ISM?