The Decaf Diaries, Day 1: Challenge accepted

Having accepted a co-worker's challenge, I am now off caffeine for one week. So for the next seven days, I intend to write about whatever subjective experiences I have as a result.

First off, some context:

• I put my current daily caffeine consumption at 600 to 800 milligrams: at least one 20-ounce coffee in the morning (which I take in its unadulterated black form), followed by a steady stream of Diet Coke that usually ends around 10 p.m. That's enough to qualify as "heavy use" by medical standards.
  
• I don't follow the same pattern on the weekend, but I tend to make up the coffee shortfall with extra soft drinks.
• I've been a serious coffee drinker for seven years, since I worked in a summer-job factory with a lunchroom that served up free coffee with the colour and consistency of bitumen.
• I do get some of the gastrointestinal side effects from caffeine, but not enough to make me quit for that reason.

All right then. So here's my report from Day 1:

06:00 - Wake up feeling lethargic. Not out of the ordinary, though, given that it's Monday and I was up late the previous night.

08:50 - Still feeling pretty wiped. This is already unusual, because by now I'd be well into my customary coffee and firing on most cylinders. So I head over to the grocery store across the street from work and grab some kind of berry "smoothie" drink. It's a little sludgy, not very satisfying, and 554 more calories than the coffee would have been. I make a mental note to drink water in the mornings.

09:30 - A co-worker stops by to see how I'm holding up with the whole caffeine thing. She notes that I seem less jittery, easier to deal with. From this and similar comments that will happen later in the day, I will come to realize that when I'm hopped up in the mornings, I occasionally talk too fast for people to understand.

12:40 - Have to forgo the Diet Coke with lunch. This makes the entire lunch seem rather pointless, but I eat it with the remainder of the berry smoothie, which now has a lukewarm temperature to go with its sludgy texture.

15:45 - I'm in the office of the co-worker who issued the challenge, asking whether she has a copy of a booklet I need to see. As we're talking, I start to think I'm being crusty with her. Is this the famed bitchiness that comes with kicking pretty much any stimulant drug, or am I just imagining things? I ask her about this later, and she says she didn't detect a tone. I'm relieved, but this is the second time today I feel like I've been snippy with someone.

18:15 - I stop at the store on the way home to grab some Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I soon learn that it is also taste-free. Nevertheless, I know that if I don't immediately begin subbing it in for the caffeine-enriched variety, I will simply not make it the week. But for now, sipping on this reasonable facsimile cooling in a glass with three ice cubes, I know I can lay off the caffeine for a measly seven days. I know it with the kind of certainty that the smoker has when she tells all her friends she's quitting for sure this time, only to steal a few furtive puffs mere hours later, her betrayal on her breath. I know it with the certainty of the pathological gambler who vows that this loss will be the last, then cashes in the kid's RESP that weekend for another kick at the can. I know it with the certainty of the drunk who empties every bottle—except the one in the desk drawer. I know it with the certainty of the crackhead who thinks he can stop whenever, then finds out that he likes himself better on the drug than off it. This sounds silly, to compare my attempt at kicking caffeine with the staggering uphill struggle of battling life-searing addictions like these. But you know what? It's a difference of degree, not of kind.

21:30 - I'm off to bed, at least three hours sooner than any night I can remember for months.

I had meant to write all this yesterday, the actual Day 1 of my little self-experiment. But I was just too tired.