Back in December, I went through a small health issue that, among other things, resulted in my giving up caffeine. Prior to December, and for the previous ten years or so, I’d been a relatively hardcore coffee drinker. For most of that decade, I worked from home, so every morning, I’d brew a full pot of coffee and proceed to drink the majority of it by noon, which means about 12 cups of coffee a day. When I began a new job this past October that got me out of my house, I just replaced my (inexpensive) coffee pot with refills at the coffee shop across the street. The source (and cost) of my coffee had changed, but the volume remained the same.
But then my little health issue came along, and I decided to cut out caffeine.
The first day was the worst. The headache came on around 10am and didn’t leave me until I went to bed (and not even then). I popped some ibuprofen to dull the pain, but that only dampened the sharpest parts of it. I still had an all-around “ache” in my head. The second day was better. I took the ibuprofen first thing in the morning, re-upped in the afternoon, and pretty much got through the day without having to verbally complain to my wife about my pounding head. The third day, I forewent the ibuprofen, and the headache, while still present, was less of an ache and more of a nuisance.
And on the fourth day, it was gone.
As a hardcore coffee drinker, I’d always scoffed at people who drank decaf, but for the past three months, that’s basically the only coffee I’ve had (my wife decided to kick caffeine a little after I did, but after seeing me deal with the headache, she decided to ween herself instead of going cold turkey, so for a couple of weeks there, my first cup of coffee in the morning would be a home-brew of half-caf and half-decaf, with all the following cups being full decaf from the coffee shop). Some have asked why I’m drinking coffee at all if I’m drinking decaf, and the answer is: because I love the taste of coffee in the morning.
The problem with the decaf lifestyle is that…well…I’m tired in the afternoons. You know that friggin’ 5-hour Energy commercial, the one that talks about that 2:30 feeling? Well, that shit is true. At 2:30 in the afternoon, virtually every day, I get smacked in the face by a big ol’ bat of tiredness, and it pretty much doesn’t go away until after dinner. In fact, for the past two months or so, dinner has usually been followed by a cat nap…and it’s only after the nap that I feel anything resembling energy flow back into my body.
The solution to my mid-afternoon crash is simple, of course. Instead of requiring caffeine to fuel my day, I should exercise and use the body’s natural endorphins. Exercise fights fatigue and boosts energy. We know that. Now I just have to act on that knowledge.
Or…you know…I could just take another nap.