Caffeine wean FAIL

I got sick of the caffeine wean. At about 2 cups a day (down from say, 6 or 7), I was feeling half-dead all the time with no end in sight.

So I quit. Coffee, I mean. I quit coffee. Yes.

My Facebook status a few days later:

Once upon a time everyone woke up and all the coffee in the world had vanished. In the next week all companies went bankrupt except panadol and ibuprofen. Everybody got divorced or killed someone. Nobody blogged or did any study. Children took over the world and the remaining parents didn't care about that or anything else. The end.

Shall I summarise my mood in a single picture?

Awesome pic by The Programmer. Let's call it APOCALYPSE

In my sports nutrition textbook, they refer to caffeine as a 'mildly addictive substance'. They lie. I've done cold turkey caffeine withdrawal before and it always shocks me how hard it is! I went Googling to confirm that the vicious sciatica kicking my arse day and night is really a known symptom. It is.

In the process I found that I am not alone. Here and here are sites with hundreds of commenters telling their horror stories, and also reinforcing that life is better on the other side. I read a scientific article which stated that most of the 'ahhhh, woohooo!' factor of a strong coffee is just relief from withdrawal symptoms. That is, habitual coffee drinkers are pretty much always in withdrawal between coffees. Great.

I haven't had a really good break from caffeine since I was about 15 years old, so I'm going to give it a try! I'm aiming for eight weeks and am now on day 6. In two months I should be able to judge if life really is better, or if I really do need coffee to fix my naturally moody and cranky self. To summarise my path so far:

Day 1: Ok, headache in the evening, killed it with panadol.

Day 2: Couldn't wake  up, slept in, couldn't function, realised I had an assignment due in three days and resorted to mate tea to make my brain work. Raging hunger all day. Sciatica kicked in around 9pm.

Day 3: Barely any sleep due to sciatica. Woke up, took panadol went back to bed. Got up just before lunch and somehow finished my assignment (no work of genius, that's for sure). Again with the raging, persistent hunger. Crazy dreams and nightmares ( family dying, getting kidnapped and my cellphone wouldn't work, getting separated from The Programmer in a very dodgy place where, again, my cellphone wouldn't work.. what's with the cellphone nightmares? I love it as much as I love my family, The Programmer and coffee?)

Day 4: Intense sciatica, all freaking day. Resorted to panadol twice. Bitched at someone that didn't deserve it. Got on the scales and found I've gained a kg due to feeling starving all the time. Ultra moody. More weird dreams, lots of them.

Day 5: Sciatica receding to a dull ache but still there. Moments of clarity, but slipped into a jetlag-like state in the afternoon and fell asleep.

Day 6: TODAY.

I still had a little trouble prising my eyes open, and can faintly feel the sciatica, but instead of moaning and going back to sleep I decided to get up and shake it out with some Zumba. As our lounge is currently a construction zone (more about that in a future post), I did this workout in the office and it was just right.

Then I breakfasted on banana fritters with sheep's milk yogurt:

Ok, so it's more of a fritter mess than 'fritters' but the taste effect was worthy.

Then checked on the kids that I'm babysitting while their dad is moving house..

Yes, I am currently foster mum to about twenty gazillion cacti babies and a few grown ups. I will feel a whole lot better when the kitties get over their fascination with the new arrivals. I fear Mog may spike an eye.

Then, I did a bit of work, tried to send a few Sana orders without putting an address label on them (luckily, the courier noticed before they left the building), then the coffee jetlag hit again and I snoozed. I have never appreciated my flexi-schedule more.

Tonight I've got Mamasana coming for dinner. She's a winner. An actual winner, of an Up and Running course that Kek was giving away on her blog (and which I forgot to pimp on my blog, my bad). Tonight we are going to figure out the details of that and eat something substantial that will hopefully silence my caffeine deprived hungry stomach for more than 20 minutes. 

And now, I have to mention the elephant in the room. I know I've given up coffee before, and blogged about it with hope sparkling in my eyes, and those attempts did not stick. I am fully aware that this makes me look kind of hypocritical and like a pathetic, drug addicted weakling, but.. waddya gonna do?  You only fail if you stop trying, right?