I decided to stop drinking coffee again. This is probably the third or fourth time I have done such a thing in my lifetime.I have been drinking coffee since I was four. When hunting with my grandfather, we would be left at the pick-up while the rest went to get deer. Grandpa would pour me a cup from his Stanley steel thermos fill it half with milk and add sugar. I loved it. I'd run around the truck and he'd have a good time keeping an eye on me.
The most coffee I drank was when I was a musician. I'd practice and drink coffee, sometimes four or five pots a day.
The times I quit drinking coffee I would do so cold turkey. I would get bad headaches for about a week. One time I worked at a Things Remembered kiosk in Beaverton Mall. I leaned over to pull something out of a drawer when it felt like someone swung a hammer into my skull from behind. The hammer missed the back of my skull, traveled through my brain, and smashed into my skull from the inside of my face. It hurt so terrible I had a helluva time regaining my composure enough to be able to stand up.
I discussed the other day the possibility of stopping drinking coffee again with Shusli. She said that drinking coffee for so many years as the both of us have has no doubt drained our adrenals.
I thought yesterday that I would cut down to one cup a day, from probably about 5 or so. About noon, the headache started. Nothing so severe as when I went cold turkey, but bad enough. Shoulders tensing, neck tensing, head hurting, mind thinking, "MY GOD, MAN! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOURSELF?!" I had another cup at home to bout the headache and odd delirium. Today I'll try two and see how that goes, though, noticing my bodies reaction made me want to quit cold turkey, suffer for the week of headaches and such, just to get this stuff out of my body. My body also felt a strange elation at having so little caffeine in it. I've decided to be kind to myself and take it slow.
It has been 14 our 15 years since I last quit drinking coffee.
"Hi. My name is Eugene, and I'm a coffeeholic."
You are a brave man my brother! I have tried to give up the java too many times.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I drank more coffee in PDX than I do here in South Africa ... something about that incessant rain ;)
So we will be doing tea when we meet next ...???
Be well Eugene!
Peace,
Ridwan
Shusli does not plan on joining me on this, thus, there will be coffee. Even if we both quit drinking coffee, we'd always have some to offer friends.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna try to quit cold turkey this weekend. I just want to remember what it feels like not to have this stuff in my body.
Shusli doesn't get the headaches and stuff like I do when she quits. She often goes a whole day without coffee. I'd like to be like that, but I'm not.
We'll have tea, too, if you wish to share that as well, though.
When I've had to cut back, it helped to wean off of it by starting to make it 1/4 caffeinated. Then half caf. And so on.
ReplyDeleteThat's how I'm starting, I think it will alleviate the headaches when I cut it off. I get impatient with this, though (probably the years of caffeine). I just couldn't believe how my mind started thinking with having only one cup and then getting the headaches. I started making excuses to drink more. It was almost like there was another personality within me. Something I had ignored or not noticed. That kind of pissed me off. Thus, I will probably follow through with "cold turkey" on Saturday or Sunday. We'll see if I can take it.
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm drinking half and half, caffeine and decaffeinated, 2-3 cups a day. Seems to be working OK thus far.