coming down

I started to ween myself off caffeine this week because I was drinking way too much of it. I used to drink a cup of coffee in the morning before work, then a cup of Earl Grey tea in the afternoon to get me to the end of the day. That used to be more than enough caffeine to get me through a typical day at the office.

Then someone at work started a coffee club. They used plain old Folger’s coffee, but it smelled so good as it was brewing that one day I found I couldn’t resist any longer, dropped the requested donation into the tin can next to the pot and poured myself a cup. Couldn’t resist the next day, either. Or the next. Or any other day after that, to be completely honest. A cup of coffee when I got to work (after my cup of coffee at home but before my cup of tea in the afternoon) became the norm.

I should take a moment to note here that my “cup” is a mug so big that holds sixteen ounces when it’s filled to the brim. I don’t mess around when I make tea, although I usually fill it to within about an inch of the top, sip tea until its too cold to drink, then re-heat it in the microwave to finish it off. Cold Earl Grey is not a poison I would wish on anyone. Lovely tea when it’s hot; dank sewage when it’s cold.

There were a couple of high-pressure weeks last month when I skipped the tea in the afternoon so I could drink coffee all day long. I was so highly caffeinated most days that my tinnitus got loud enough to break glass. Fun fact: Most people say their tinnitus gets louder when they drink caffeine or alcohol, or when they’re stressed. I can confirm that all three of these cranks my tinnitus up to eleven. Sadly, it cannot break glass, though. If tinnitus could actually break glass, I would probably be okay with it. It would be like having a superpower.

Then I got the headaches if I wasn’t constantly caffeinated. A beer or two in the evening usually dulled the ache, but I didn’t want to have to depend on alcohol to kill my caffeine downer, so I bought some green tea, which is supposedly very lightly caffeinated, to get me through the evenings. To my grateful surprise, it worked.

This week, I started substituting green tea for coffee: a cup in the morning, another at work during my morning break, and a third after lunch. Whatever amount of caffeine there may be in green tea, I get no buzz from it at all, but I don’t get the headaches, either. Could be a placebo effect, although I don’t think so because my tinnitus is still ringing off the hook.