Day 8 No Caffeine Hallelujah Jordan
Some part of me knew this was going to be really good. Or, really—some part of me hoped. If I had really known that the other side of withdrawal would feel better than being high on caffeine, I would have quit long ago. I guess I was afraid that actually quitting wouldn’t be all that different. I guess I was afraid that life wasn’t going to get any better. It was always going to feel like a rollercoaster.
Our brains are so good at keeping us from trying something new or stepping into the unknown. No no no, the left brain screams. Don’t change. Remain in the shitter. You’ve always stayed alive in there! Life is supposed to be this hard!
The reason I quit this time was twofold: I heard myself say I wanted to quit. I have talked about wanting to quit caffeine since I was about twenty-eight. But this time, what I heard was that I wanted to quit, and I had the thought, If you want to quit, who’s the one who keeps drinking the caffeine? You can’t both earnestly say you want to quit and then go to Starbucks. You have to choose who you are. Suddenly things were a lot clearer. If I was the one driving to Starbucks, and I was also the one who wanted to quit caffeine, both of those things couldn’t exist in the core of me. One had to be truer than the other, and my job was to decide which one. I mean, if my truest self wanted to keep drinking caffeine, then You go, Anne. You can hit that drive thru ten times a day if that is who you want to be.
But I knew I was being dragged around all day long by this addiction, and I wanted a chance to be in the world as myself. That day, I called it quits. Last Saturday I woke up and had lemon juice in hot water in the morning, and I went to the acupuncturist to set me off on the right foot. That afternoon, it wasn’t headaches or bodyaches that set in, much to my surprise, it was dark, depressing thoughts. It was like I had fallen into the sewer of my brain and could only hear how bad life and I were.
So that was not fun. Friends texted and checked in. I was not in it alone. I posted about quitting on Instagram and Facebook, and people’s encouragement was so supportive and helpful. I’m not in this alone, I felt, and it made a difference.
I didn’t know what was going to be on the other side aside from the knowing that I could trust that when I said I was going to do this, I was 100% was accountable. That is not nothing. I hoped for a brighter mood, a lighter mind, a less anxious system. I was happy to be saving some money. I hoped for a sense of greater freedom, but I wasn’t counting on it.
The other reason I was able to give up caffeine this time was because Pit Stop, a group for adopted people I created with Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, was starting this coming Monday, and I wanted to be the best Anne I could now that I was so thoroughly out of the adoption fog and looking to see what came next. When I became a Reiki master, when I became a massage therapist, when I became a life coach, it was (highly) recommended that the practitioner not drink caffeine in order to be fully present. But I didn’t see at the time how I could be both present and NOT be on caffeine. I needed it to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I needed it to keep me going when I wanted to take a nap. I needed it to care about life. I needed it to be friendly. So I did all those things caffeinated. I think I did a good job overall, but I’ve also always been aware that I could have been more embodied. I also wasn’t sure. What if that was as good as it got? What if I needed to stay wired in order to manage my rocky nervous system?
I want to make it clear that I’m in no way saying you, dear reader, should give up caffeine. For some people caffeine acts more like a tool, and there are plenty of studies that show the positive effects coffee can have on your brain health. I’m just not that person.
Day 6 and 7 in some ways were the hardest days. I meditated and it felt like my head was completely full of metal. It was heavy and uncompromising and there was no room for me in there. I was angry and scared and frustrated. My ears hurt and rang, and I heard noises deep in my head that were different species from my usual tinitus. At one point, I actually felt behind my head to see if there was somehow an empty metal tray rattling behind me.
Today, though. Today. I woke up still kind of ear-full, but I took Bird to Dillon Beach, one of my favorite places in the world, and we walk-ran in the early morning as the high tide receded. You don’t have to pay the $15 entrance fee if you get there by 8, and so we were not the only people on the beach. Dogs are allowed at Dillon, and people are generally friendly and happy to be there at a such a beautiful place where their dogs can meet other dogs, freely, unleashed.
On the drive home, I listened to the therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis talk about processing grief on a recent Human School podcast. I had read and loved her memoir End of the Hour, and so I was especially tickled when in the interview she said her dream was to live in an Airstream so that she could have the small space she felt she needed to support her nervous system. I’m living your dream! I wanted to shout. Come visit! It’s as good as you imagined.
When I got home, I lay down to do an hour of meditation with the binural beats I’d purchased recently on Tom Campbell’s website, https://www.my-big-toe.com.
Well, well, well. That was something. As I lay there and focused on being a point of consciousness, I felt the whole universe open up to me, in me. I don’t want to go on and on right now because the experience feels precious and tender. I’d like to hold it inside and let it bloom before trying to put it into language, but the point I want to make is that I got to feel in my body there is something bigger than the high caffeine gives me. There is unbounded spaciousness that comes with a relaxed body and mind. There is the natural, undrugged state I was born to embody each day.
There is one part I guess I do want to share because it was so beyond any expectation I might have had for what would happen when I gave up caffeine. At the end of the meditation, I was feeling like strings of energy out in the universe, and my mind pictured my energy bumping into my first mother’s. It was like we were both naked, only we were energy. It took me a minute to get over the guilt of, should I feel so happy running into her here, should I be calling my mom over, shouldn’t she be here, too, but then I just let myself have the experience. My first mother started coming out my energy, like it was hair and she was combing out knots, only what she was combing out was any guilt or shame or negative feelings I carried. She combed me until my energy ran smooth, and then I combed her energy, freed her knots. I felt the roundness of her body even though she was strings of energy. I had to keep telling myself it was okay to love this, it was okay to stay. I loved her body. She loved mine.
There we were, meeting for the first time since my birth, out in the universe, formless, loving.
Iced Americano Who?
It’s not like, oh, sunshine and roses and now everything’s a piece of cake. It takes a lot of energy and work to be a point of consciousness rather than a monkey mind going nuts for the next thought. Do you know what I mean? Meditation, at least in my experience, isn’t like eating a hot fudge sundae. It’s work, or at least it is for me. But weren’t we put here on earth to work, or play, or do whatever it is you want to call challenging your abilities? Even slugs have to move in order to get somewhere. Even sloths climb. We’re meant to be and do something.
But what caffeine was telling me was that something was MORE. JUST DO MORE. AND DO MORE OF IT. AND DO IT FASTER. Well, that’s tiring and often I would just chase my tail because my nervous system was wired to run.
What plays in my head now is LESS! LESS! DO LESS! OWN LESS! THINK LESS! WORK LESS! SPEND LESS! and also HAVE MORE FUN! WORK MORE AT WHAT YOU LOVE! MAKE MORE ART! SPEND MORE TIME WITH FRIENDS! LOVE YOURSELF MORE! LOVE MORE AND MORE AND MORE!
That’s all for now.
Thank you for your support.
May we be safe. May we be happy. May we be healthy. May we be whole.
