Why Am I Torturing Myself? ~ P90X Blog 10

Look at these little sassy beauties. Oh yeah.

The first time I recognized my addiction to caffeine was in 2003. I went skiing with Dan The Man, whom some of you might remember, and I didn't wear goggles or sunglasses. It was a beautiful sunny day, it was warm, what could go wrong?

It turns out that I am an idiot. You've probably picked up on that already.

My eyes hurt so much from snow blindness the day after skiing that I wanted to gauge them out of my skull. I stayed inside all day except to get the mail. It hurt to walk to the mailbox. I was out of food, didn't have my usual Diet Pepsi, and a headache crept in around 5 p.m. A bad headache. A screwdriver driving into your skull kind of headache.

My roommates came home, diagnosed the problem as a lack of caffeine, and took me to get a can of Diet Coke and some pizza. Halfway through the Diet Coke, my headache was gone.

For the next five years, I tried to swear off caffeine. My Mom always asks this question: Why would you do that? Well, I like taking naps. It's one of my genetic gifts, along with modesty.

This week, for the first time in three years, I'm not addicted to caffeine. As usual with my life, there are a confluence of things going on that makes this possible.

When we moved to Boston, I didn't think I'd be going without Caribou Coffee. But Caribou isn't sold in any of my regular grocery stores. It's way too expensive when it's in a grocery store ($9.50 for 12 ounces) so please don't start telling me about how I can pay $10 to have some shipped. There is a limit to what I will do for good coffee.

Over a month ago, I bought a 14-ounce tub of Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice coffee to ween myself off caffeine. Why? I guess I want to take naps again and not have brown teeth. That might not be enough reason to keep me off the Brown Rocket of Caffeine.

I drank less and less coffee day by day (down from two cups to none) to get used to a slower pace of life. And it worked. My last cup of coffee was Monday.

The thing is, it's not necessarily better. Yes, I could really use a nap right now. But I have stuff to do. I need to go for a run with Daisy Duke. And I leave for work in a couple of hours; surely there's not enough time for both.

Daisy Duke and I were out and about town a half hour ago when I realized I was next to a Starbucks. Pike's Place Roast is my heroin. I went to the door, but there were at least eight women standing in line. They were presumably all ordering fraps and lattes. I turned around and left. It isn't worth it to stand in line. There should be a separate line for people just ordering black, hot coffee. I love/hate Starbucks.

And so I sit here, caffeine-less, trying to muster the energy to get off this chair and go outside on a 60-degree, sunny day. This is why I never completely stop using caffeine. At some point, you need a boost to get through a night at work. At some point, you can't take a nap because you have something else to do. And when you drink that coffee, even if it's just 12 ounces, you're wired for the rest of the day. At midnight, you'll lie there in bed, thoughts frenetically bouncing from topic to topic, unable to sleep.

This, of course, is absurd. When I drink coffee regularly, I can drink a pot of coffee at midnight and go straight to bed. I did that once or twice at The Valley News, my first newspaper. Now, I need to plan on having a drink of a more alcoholic nature when I come home if I'm ever going to fall asleep.

So, unless you have any solutions to this caffeine-less conundrum, I'm going to by some Crest Whitening Strips tomorrow and some coffee. Life's too short to not drink coffee.