It Gives You Wings!!!

So, if you read my previous post about not getting dunk anymore, I have been true to my word and have not overdone it since that promise. However, I have gone back on another promise I had made to myself months and months ago - to give up caffeine. It started out at the behest of a previous employer: he didn't like the fact that I shot down two Red Bulls before my shift and he swore that I looked jittery. I am just naturally hyper, but I digress. So I swore off caffeine not really because of my boss, but to see if I could really do it. In fact, I knew I COULD do it, but how long was more the question. So I remained caffeine free for months. I must note that when I quit the caffeine cold turkey, I got headaches and pretty moody for a little while. But I noticed that I fell asleep faster and stayed asleep with better deep sleep. I was psyched. I hadn't realised just how addicted to caffeine I was and what kind of physical and psychological effects it had on me. But lo, my boyfriend had these little packets of Dunkin' Donuts coffee sitting on the microwave. They were staring at me. I told them to stop, but you know how they don't listen. So I had to do what I could to get them to leave me alone. I made them. Yesterday morning and this morning. Now, as I polished off a large pizza with my beau yesterday, I felt no effects of the caffeine. But this morning, having only a bagel and egg, I had a large cup. And the horses left the gate. My head has been buzzing, I feel like shit and I have this strange compulsion to DO something, but exactly what it is, I don't know. I love how Red Bull has coined the phrase 'It gives you wings!!' and the little animation shows people floating off into the sky with angel wings on their backs, having a jolt of caffeine. Hardly. It's more like wings of a turbine diesel jet engine rocketing you into hyperspace, only to hit the proverbial wall in a couple of hours, and your head feels like you literally have hit a wall. Remember that scene in Total Recall when Arnold and the heroine fall out into the area outside the building where the air was regulated by machines and they couldn't breathe in the vaccuum and their eyes were popping out of their heads? That's a walk in the park compared to how I feel right now. This is like coming full circle for me, in my foray into the dark underworld of caffeine. In fact, my boyfriend has developed an allergy to caffeine because he took large quantities of it in college and he's hyper sensitive to it now. He has a ridiculous high off of it and a severe crash. Believe me, it ain't pretty. Now this leads me to ask how this stuff can be easily consumed in such large quantities? My GOD think of children getting high off of it - and in fact when they do, we just pump them full of more drugs to slow them down, namely Ritalin. Nobody seems to identify the fact that increased hyperactivity in children today just MIGHT be linked to the massive amounts of sugar and caffeine in the foods they eat. Gee, I guess the obesity has nothing to do with the sugar either. And rather than pull the spoonfuls of sugar out of their mouths, we listen to (gasp) medical "authorities" that tell us they have ADD so they sell us a pill to make it all better. But I'm going off on a tangent. My point is that caffeine in large doses (namely the doses companies put in foods and drinks) is deadly, but the people selling it don't want you to know that. Kinda like the tobacco industry. Except with caffeine, you rot in a more subtle way, so it's easy to sell the lie.

Now I have to work on my salt intake.....