Who else can associate with Ev's post from last week?

I just noticed it's 2pm, I haven't had any coffee all day, and I feel fine. In fact, I just noticed. Is this what taking a couple days off gets you?

About a month ago I went to see a certain type of doctor about obtaining a certain type of prescription for a certain type of medication that would allow me to “relax” (shall we say) while Hope and I jetted across the country for our honeymoon. You see, I don't like to fly. At all. I hate airplanes — well not really the airplanes themselves so much as hurtling along inside them at absurd-thousand feet in the air — and I just didn't want to be all “panicky” on the trip. So I decided to see someone about it.

While visiting the above doctor, she asked how much coffee I usually drank to which I replied “about a pot.” A true statement, but way too much she explained — especially when I was trying to obtain a chemical solution to a nervousness problem. So she told me about the dangers of drinking coffee, how I should really think about cutting coffee out of my morning routine, and the benefits of drinking perhaps a nice decaffeinated tea instead. At this point in our conversation she took a heavy drag out of her own mug, filled to the brim with — mmm — piping hot coffee.

Caught mid-hypocracy, her professional advice quickly became “reduce” as opposed to “eliminate.”

So I did. I first reduced my volume of coffee consumed from one pot to a mere half-pot. Not bad, the migranes ended two days later — though the morning lethargy seemed to linger a bit longer. Empowered by that minor victory, I decided to mix decaf beans in with my regular beans at a 50% mixture. Decaf coffee is bland. Terrible even. But when it's masked by a good caffinated roast the degredation in the quality of the pot is hardly noticable. The half-caf blend switch I pulled landed me no further headaches, and only a slight craving for more coffee later in the afternoon — which previously I never had. Even so I consider the switch successful.

Now I'm down to 25% of my pre-consultation caffeine intake, and that's as far as I plan on going. The coffee headaches are gone, the “too much coffee jitters” are gone, and I'm not tired during the day either. I still love good coffee, but I think I enjoy my new found AM mellowness much more than the old eleven o'clock twitches.