22 February 2004

De Caffeine Nation

I've also been trying to cut down on drinking coffee, which is something I have to do every so often to prevent myself descending into a gibbering wreckage. This usually involves going several weeks without drinking any of the stuff, or the real stuff at least. I sometimes allow myself decaff.

I usually decide that I need to enter this phase of my life-cycle when I discover that I've been drinking coffee at the rate of two or three mugs a day for months, and that it's stopped having any discernible effect whatsoever. At this point, as far as effective work or conversation are concerned, it becomes impossible to distinguish between my waking personality and the one which I present when asleep, except that the former osciallates at a much higher frequency.

Cutting back on the caffeine reduces the latter effect, while doing nothing at all for the former. Provided I do it for long enough, however, my body loses its tolerance and, eventually, I become able by judicious application of the substance to operate as a functional human being for short periods of time.

It also means I can write again, which I can only really do when effectively caffeined up. It's a bit of a bitch, but it seems that my brain is only really able to make the connections and imaginative leaps which writing (at whichever stage of the process) really requires, under the influence of at least two (and up to eight or ten) mugs of the black stuff. I know that's not ideal from a health point of view, but it could be worse -- I might require whiskey, for example, or laudanum, or young Moroccan boys.

Incidentally, decaffeinated coffee seems to me to disprove the whole basis of homeopathy: it does absolutely bugger all to keep me awake. If homeopathic theory was correct, the trace amounts of caffeine in decaff ought to have me bouncing off the ceiling.

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