Involuntary Detox

I’ve been addicted to caffeine for a couple of decades now. Every so often I purposely stop drinking caffeinated beverages to give my body a chance to detox. That might last a week. Maybe a couple of months. Sooner or later I get started again.

Usually the process is kind of painful. Aside for the lovely withdrawal headaches I also go through mood swings and experience random unpleasant body aches. I’m sure withdrawing from other, more powerful drugs is much more uncomfortable but that’s outside my experience.

This last week my body seems to have decided it wasn’t going to wait for me to decide on a time for detoxing. I just suddenly stopped enjoying my morning caffeine. I wasn’t that I felt jittery or anxious – that happens occasionally and I’m fine with that. No, my body felt sick. Like I had a flu but without the coughing and sneezing and sore throat. The first couple of days I figured that I did just have a cold. I took aspirin and cold medicine and didn’t think about it.

After those first two days I noticed that I felt worse after drinking caffeine. And I still didn’t have any other flu symptoms. So I’ve drastically reduced my caffeine intake. I got the expected withdrawal headaches but no mood swings and the aches and pains got less the less the caffeine I’d had.

I haven’t completely quit. But now, instead of a couple of cups of coffee in the first half hour of being awake I’ll have a couple of swallows after being awake for three hours. Odd.

Nice to know that my body is still smarter than I am.