drink less coffee

I’m still stuck on the ritual of grinding up the coffee beans each morning and filling the kitchen with the aroma of fresh coffee. I guess the Maxwell House commercials do something to my subconscious. Anyway, I’ve cut back my caffiene throughout the day, but I still have about 1.5 cups in the morning. Its so good.

Well, I guess admitting that you have a problem is the first step. I’m still trying to slowly break the addiction. I’m actually a little scared/nervous about doing it cold turkey. I’ve done it before, but don’t really want to go through that.

I’ve cut down to ONE cup of coffee in the morning…and then only 1 or 2 glasses of ice tea in the afternoon. Thats really not too bad. But, I feel like I still have to have atleast one cup of coffee in the morning.

One thing to note…..Starbucks coffee is stronger than your average cup of coffee from Denny’s or the local diner. That One cup of coffee that I’ve been having is usually from Starbucks or a home brew batch that I make from Pete’s Coffee.

I’ll break this.

Today, I didn’t drink any caffiene until 12:45pm. I woke up this morning and just didn’t have time to make coffee. I usually buy Pete’s Coffee Whole Beans, thinking that the extra work of grinding the beans would cut down my consumption; instead, it made me love coffee more! The fresh aroma and taste of the freshly ground beans made the entire coffee-drinking-experience that much better.

So, this morning, I skipped the coffee (and the other caffiene). Around 9:30am I was feeling anxious and nervous…I knew it was the lack of coffee. Time passed and it just got worse and I started getting an annoying headache. I knew that if I didn’t get any caffiene in me soon, that I wouldn’t be able to ‘catch-up’ and the headache would ensue all afternoon. Sure enough, around 12:45pm I had two glasses of iced tea with my Panda Express lunch. It wasn’t enough. I’m chasing the headache now….trying to down the caffiene fast enough to ‘get the fix.’ I walked back to my office…..bought a coke from the vending machine ($1.25!!!) and downed it.

15 minutes later, I still have the headache. I make a few calls….its still there….the iced tea and coke havn’t helped. I knew it! I’m chasing this headache! I pop three ibuprophens…...and it takes almost two hours before the headache subsides.

I’m weakened. I don’t like this dependency. Its ridiculous that I have to have coffee in the mornings. Successful people have their vices, but you should still be able to function without caffiene!!

I’ve stopped before and it was liberating. In fact, once I broke the addiction, when I did go back to the occassional cup of coffee it tasted even better. I need that feeling again.

It starts today.