I'm Addicted to Lovin' You

Oh, hi. You don’t know Sisqo’s song Addicted?

C’mon! It’s SISQO – the talented man behind the Thong Song, the theme song of the summer of 1999!

Uh, anyway, I digress.

I think I’ve alluded before to my love of coffee, and caffeination in general. Well, my friends – this weekend was a rude awakening.

I brewed myself a travel mug full of coffee Friday before work, but only managed to drink about half of it before it grew cold and I stopped drinking it.

Around 2pm, a splitting headache began throbbing. Oh no, I thought, caffeine headache. THE WORST.

Around 5pm, I went home from work, headache still searingly painful. Maybe I’m just dehydrated, I hoped, as I settled in for a nap to escape the headache.

Around 7pm, after not being able to sleep, we went grocery shopping and I scoured Whole Foods for a natural way to relieve splitting headache. Argh, I thought, this sucks! Give me coffee samples from Trader Joe’s!

Around 10pm, the headache had not gone, so I swallowed one Tylenol PM, [I can only use a half or one tablet – any more than that I’ll feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Which is quite an awful saying, now that I think of it.], and crawled into bed. My head felt awful, and I desperately hoped it was NOT the lack of caffeine – allergies or sinus pressure or something else that doesn’t mean I’m physically dependent.

We babysat my cousins Saturday and spent the night in Brecksville – 30 minutes south of here – and Sunday morning we enjoyed waffles and half-caf coffee.

A small headache started during church, and I grabbed Mike’s hand and hissed: “I’m addicted to coffee. I HAVE A HEADACHE because the coffee was half-decaf!”

At lunch back at my aunt and uncle’s house with other family, we were standing around talking and I mentioned casually my caffeine addiction (comparing it to their Diet Coke addiction. THEY BROUGHT THEIR OWN DIET COKE because they “weren’t sure they’re be any here.”)

Uh, oops.

My uncle is an anesthesiologist and told us about patients who can’t eat for 12 hours before their operation. Some of them get such bad headaches from caffeine withdrawal that they have to hook them up to a caffeine IV.

The image of me having to walk around with a caffeine IV (along with reading Skinny B*tch and how it portrays caffeine as totally awful) really made me want to try and stop being addicted.

Let’s just stop for a second to laugh at how seriously I’m taking myself.

Moving on.

[Wait, not yet: I feel like a freakin’ alcoholic or something: “I just want to be able to enjoy a drink with my friends without being addicted! *sob*”]

Okay.

So, I’ve decided to slowly wean myself off the daily cup and settle for a once-in-a-while cup instead. (I’m NOT anti-caffeine, just anti-me-being-addicted.)

I’m writing about it to see if anyone else is suffering from addiction and so I’m accountable. (You know, like saying you’re going running on Twitter so you actually do!)

Here’s to chai tea, decaf coffee, black tea, hot chocolate and herbal tea. And an occasional cup o’fair trade coffee!

(Did I seriously just write 600 words about my poor little caffeine addiction? Ay. Blogging at its finest, ladies and gentlemen!)