Baraka_Guru

I just posted this in Pointless Announcments in the wake of a sleeping binge:
I admit it: I've been on and off the wagon over the past couple of months. But it wasn't entirely bad. However, last week I had a good binge. I was attempting to drink the coffee we had lying around the house from Christmas gifts. I figured I would drink it up over a short period so that I didn't draw it out into a habit. Um....why?

I was up to 3 cups a day, but decided to stop last week and bought some good-quality teas and switched to that immediately. That signified a spike and then a withdrawal of caffeine over a short period.

These are my observations:

• The initial punch of caffeine from coffee in the mornings weren't necessarily more rewarding than having a cup of tea. I would say that the tea is actually more rewarding in terms of mood, energy, and overall satisfaction, especially green.
  
• The afternoon brought crashes. I would get moody, lethargic, and regretful for having drank 2 to 3 cups of coffee instead of having just tea.
  
• I couldn't tell if my sleep was affected, but getting up in the morning really sucked before having a beverage of either kind.
  
• I only tend to remember my dreams when not consuming high levels of caffeine during the day.
  
• The sleep binge above is unusual. I blame the spike in caffeine and the subsequent withdrawal from it. I seldom feel so tired by 10:00 p.m. Other factors are likely. It was the end of the week, I am weight training still, and I had a nice big pizza meal followed by some chocolate-covered almonds. But still, it was unusual. It was as though my body said, "Dude, we're going to pay off our sleep debt. Now."

Although paying off a sleep debt of a fair size is impossible to do in one night, it feels as though my body wanted to make the attempt anyway. I just hope I can sleep tonight.

I also hope something else isn't going on. I don't feel sick or anything. The only real change in my life was the caffeine, so I'm looking at that as the leading cause of this.

I prefer to keep my daily caffeine level below 100 mg (less than a regular cup of coffee). I want to stay away from its adverse effects. This was an interesting occurrence, and I want to take something valuable away from it. I want to stay off caffeine long enough to see how energy levels are naturally attained through other means, and that the "energy" from caffeine is a false positive. Caffeine doesn't give you energy. It puts you into an adrenaline rush....usually when you don't need it...and it goes unused...to an adverse effect. That I want to stop.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot