I'm at the end of the second day of my week-long journey into the experiential wilderness of caffeine deprivation. Here's how things went today:
06:00 - Ugh. To paraphrase the old song, "Waking up is hard to do." Thank the gods that my wife has to get up first today.
08:00 - I still have the one-litre bottle from yesterday's berry sludge, so I fill it with water. It tastes pleasantly of cherries, making the description on the bottle true in a way the sludge didn't.
09:30 - No way is it only 9:30. Time seems to have slowed. Christ, does caffeine speed up everything? That would sure explain why so many people around the world use it.
11:00 - I'm hungry. This is yet another anomaly; lunch is usually a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and I often leave it. Like most stimulants, caffeine can suppress appetite. And now the lack of suppression has my tummy yowling and growling like a pissed-off lion in a cage.
11:52 - My workout buddy, also named Sean, arrives with gym bag in hand. We've started our semi-regular lunch-hour sessions again. Today we cram six exercises of three sets each into a little over half an hour. Then we grab a quick desk lunch. Mine consists of a club sandwich, a Clif bar and half a litre of chocolate milk.
14:30 - I'm basking in an energy spike that I welcome like a long-lost rich uncle. The workout feels like the miracle cure to the dull fatigue I've been fighting since yesterday morning. My concentration is back, my motivation is back, and damned if I don't feel more optimistic too. I bang out a bunch of updates to a wiki I'm running in less than half the time I thought it would take. I feel an immense relief, because I was seriously beginning to wonder whether I was a dumber person without caffeine.
16:00 - The feeling of well-being is still with me, but so is the time-delay effect. It feels like I've been here for 15 hours, and I still have an hour to go. I can only hope that hour doesn't feel like four.
19:55 - Another energy rush, short but unmistakable. I consider going for a walk, but the computer is calling. I have to do two days' worth of documenting this ridiculous caffeine experiment while it's still fresh in my head.
23:25 - This is more like it! Past eleven, and only now is the recharge I got from the workout wearing off. About half an hour ago I had a brief headache that could be a withdrawal symptom, or maybe just eyestrain. In any case, I'm out for the night, still about an hour earlier than usual but a lot closer to usual than last night.
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There's a guy who works with me now who drinks 16 cups of coffee every day (his estimation, give or take a few cups) and is the ONE thing in the entire world that is not sped up by caffeine. He's not only physically slow, but mentally as well. Maybe at a certain point he figured he's so fast that time stood still. Only those on the outside can see that in reality he's moving in slow-mo.
But good for you, Sean, for sticking to it! I have to mention that I blame your place of work (and in particular Beata) for my own caffeine love affair.
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