I was thinking I couldn't write a post today, but then I realized I could write a post about how I couldn't write a post. Big brain moves.
Why can't I write a post?
Ah, well, muh brain isn't going to be working for a couple days. Especially not today. I woke up this morning feeling like trash, and for some reason instead of getting up and boiling water to make coffee I decided that I would simply quit drinking caffeine all over again. Couldn't tell you why but making this decision within a split second upon waking up made me feel instantly better than I did before. Go figure.
Then again I'm quite positive the feeling won't last long. Only an hour into my journey and I can already feel the drag kicking in........... Now it's noon and I almost seem to be in a semi-delusional state. Fun stuff. Funny how not doing drugs can feel like you're taking drugs. Once our bodies get used to a certain input of chemicals it will expect the same day after day.
I've seen quite a few reports and claims about caffeine being a miracle drug. People try to say it's the reason humans advanced so quickly in the sciences after its discovery. Others try to say it extends your lifespan and you can never drink too much of it. Of course I'm fairly certain that every single person that boasts such benefits are also themselves hopelessly addicted to the substance. As someone that has indeed drank too much coffee before (jitters), I take it all with a gain of salt.
This isn't the first time.
For years I thought I'd never develop a caffeine addiction, but then at one point it all seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks and I just kept compulsively drinking more. The crazy thing is that caffeine does not affect me the way it does a lot of other people. Maybe it's the ADHD and weird brain chemistry; not sure.
Other people say coffee helps them wake up or work better or stay more focused or whatever it is they say it does. For me it's just more of a compulsion; A ritual. It's just something that I do that I don't really have to do, so imagine my annoyance when I find myself addicted to the stuff and I keep drinking more and more and more and more.
I even started drinking PG tips tea as like a... what do they call it? Maintenance beer. So I use the PG tips as like maintenance caffeine so I can just continue drinking it like all day non-stop. Eventually I get fed up with having to piss 18 times a day (and like 2-4 times in the middle of the night) and decide I need to call it quits for my sanity. Said day has arrived. I shall prevail.
2 cups of PG tips is like the equivalent of 1 cup of coffee, making it one of the strongest teas on the market. Them brits don't mess around with their tea. The thought of putting milk and sugar in tea made absolutely no sense until I started drinking this crazy stuff. Of course I drink all caffeinated drinks black regardless. I feel like that's the signal that you've become hopelessly addicted to the stuff: when you stop cutting the harsh acidic delightfulness of these drinks with milk and/or sugar. That's when the game truly begins. Frappuccinos need not apply. This is the late-game.
And yes in case you're wondering I bought the above 480 bags for under $20. Amazon be damned: what a price. That was last summer and it looks like I only have like 50 of them left or so... so I guess that's 2 cups of tea on average for the last 200 days or whatnot. Of course this includes one or two attempts to quit drinking caffeine previously that I also may or may not have blogged about. During those times tea is the first thing to go as I aggressively taper my intake. This time I'm going full cold turkey so the result should be... volatile. Fun times.
I also have a weird habit of not drinking caffeine when I get sick, and I was sick three times in a row this winter starting at Halloween into Christmas and then into New Years with the mother of all ails: CORONA VIRUS. Actually now that I'm remembering it I was trying to quit first and then I got sick with COVID. I was extremely delusional for a day and thought it was caffeine withdrawals but it turned out to be... COVID. I hear there is a goopy-eyed conjunctivitis version now so that's fun; can't wait to get it!
Real addictions
Of course caffeine withdrawals are no big deal. Maybe you get a headache (I don't) or end up being tired or unfocused for a while. Meanwhile a full-blown alcoholic losing access to their drug of choice (willingly or otherwise) can result in literal death. I saw it depicted in an HBO special called Carnivàle once: called it "the shakes". The shakes did not look pleasant, fam.
Someone close to me is also experiencing very bad benzodiazepine withdrawal as well. What a nightmare! They were only taking it for a few weeks but the taper off the drug combined with the withdrawal symptoms have lasted longer than the initial prescription itself. Pretty crazy stuff. It's wild what doctors will prescribe to their patients even when it's not really fully known what could happen. Case in point this particular severity and result was wholly unexpected. But hey who doesn't love non-stop nausea and dizziness? Big Pharma rules!
Of course it's hard to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and medicine has made some pretty crazy advancements over the decades, but still those advancements are still painfully and hypocritically married to capitalism. There's a lot of "quack science" out there that isn't really quack science at all. Research simply doesn't fund things that aren't profit motivated. Case in point: many plants never get the funding or attention they deserve because you can't legally patent a plant. I've talked about this at length in other posts and believe that crypto will breakthrough that barrier. One can hope anyway.
Conclusion
Well technically I started this post around 8 AM and now it's 14:30 so it only took me six and a half hours to journal it up. Too be fair I've been bouncing around all over the place and had a fair amount of chores to complete with heavy downtime, so it's not like I was just staring at my computer screen that entire time getting nothing done. I even used my 'new' Linux laptop to write some if it, which was a journey in itself for various reasons (like image editing without Paint).
I feel weird. Not so much tired like I did a couple of hours ago but just that odd feeling that my body is telling me something is missing. Gee, I wonder what that something is. I seem to have this weird pressure in my forehead. Perhaps this is the thing that most people would call a headache but I never seem to get them. Small miracles.