I won't lie- I still drink cofffee! This is from June 10, 2012.
Something happened this morning that has not happened in ten days- I woke up without a headache. The last time I felt good when I rolled out of bed was Wednesday, May 30. I'm no doctor but I can diagnose myself on this one- I drastically cut back on the amount of coffee I drink. I caught myself some days swallowing ten cups of java, most of them mug size. I'd have three or four strong cups when I get up and continue until an hour before bed. I even began drinking a cup after lunch at school and a cup right after school before I go to workout. There's be a cup when I got home and a cup when I started writing my blog and if the writing was slow, another cup. So, to show myself I could do it, I went cold turkey for thirty-six hours and in the ten days since, I just have one cup when I get up. One cup and the headache leaves and it has stayed gone until the next morning...... until this morning. My diagnosis is that my body has been going through some sort of withdrawal but I'm pretty sure I can stick with one cup a day.
You know, I've never liked the taste of coffee all that much; usually in the morning, I would just drink it black straight from the leftovers in the pot from the day before, without even heating it. The first time I started drinking coffee was at break times when I was working summer maintenance at York College right after high school. It was a gradual build up, fueled often by the long papers required for history majors. As time went on and I began teaching, coffee became a remedy for sleepiness and long hours, twin banes of coaches and before you know it, ten cups of day! It's always just been about the caffeine for me.
I did a little calculating. Although I don't drink Starbucks often without a gift card, assume those ten cups a day were Tall (small) regular coffees which is what I get. That computes to seventeen dollars per day or $6205 for a year or the equivalent of a $500+ per month car payment for a very nice car. That's a pretty expensive habit! I wasn't there on the cost- my Wal-Mart coffee probably ran me about eleven dollars a month but that's about one hundred dollars I'll be saving by drastically cutting back. Every month or so, some new study comes out touting the benefits of coffee or the dangers inherent in drinking it. Like many things, moderation is probably the key. That's a scriptural guideline to anything....... well, we probably should exclude adultery and theft, etc. It was easy for a little coffee to become a lot of coffee without my making the conscious decision to escalate. And before I know it, my body needed the caffeine. I've taken the first step to moderation which is the hardest one. I can live with a one cup a day addiction. It's really more like a vice. Well, maybe I can call it a crutch- that sounds less like a dependency. Only eight hours until my next cup!
*The picture is courtesy of www.discountteessweats.com*
Applicable quote of the day: “Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.” | |
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