Usually I’m a really specific person when it comes to counts.  I’m always really up to date on things like the number of days left ’til christmas, number of years I’ve known Zack, how old I am, and stuff like that.

Somehow, though, I’ve managed to quit caffeine and I have no idea when I did it.  I decided to quit Cokes for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, it’s rotting my teeth.  Every time I go to the dentist, they tell me that the acid in Coca-Cola Classic is eating away the enamel on my teeth.  Not only was I drinking too many cokes, I was drinking it incorrectly by ingesting it slowly over the course of a whole day.  If you’re going to drink Coke, according to the dentist, you’re better off doing Coke shots.  Secondly, I needed to quit drinking Cokes because it’s not a good idea to drink your calories.  I’ve been hearing for years that “you can lose 10 lbs. a year by cutting Coke out of your diet.”  Well, I’m gaining at least 10 lbs. a year, so perhaps the elimination of sodas will allow me to at least stop the weight gain, right?

Now, you’ll notice that I started the last paragraph with the word “caffeine,” then soon swithched to “Cokes.”  That’s because Coke is where I receive about 95% of my caffeine intake.  The other 5% comes from iced tea and the occasional M&M.  The third reason that I stopped drinking Cokes also has forced me to stop drinking iced tea, and eating chocolate.  I have decided to ditch the birth control (NOT TO HAVE BABIES,) but because I don’t want to take birth control anymore.  And because my womanly time is typically a horrible, gut-clenching, want-to-die, cramp-having, self-paralizing experience, I quit all caffeine in hopes that my cramps would be better.  I don’t even care if they don’t go away.  If they don’t make me want to lock myself in a garage with some carbon monoxide, I’ll be happy.  I’d settle for miserable; I’m just looking to avoid a once-a-month end-of-the-world feeling.  Is that so much to ask?

So sometime before Christmas, I accidentally went a whole day without a Coke.  I wasn’t ready to quit yet, but I figured, hey, I’m already one day into it, might as well keep up the roll.  It might have been a Friday.  I only say that because I remember waking up the next day with a blinding caffeine headache, and thinking, “holy crap I’m glad I don’t have to go to work today.”  What’s even more shocking than the fact that I don’t remember the life-altering day in which I chose to not drink Coke anymore, is that I have already survived a holiday season without it.  At my parent’s house where Iced Tea flows like wine and at Zack’s parents, where Cokes instinctively flock to table tops like the women of Capistrano, I remained fortified in my quest to remain caffeine free.  It’s nothing short of a freaking Christmas Miracle.  

So it was Threat of Physical Pain that finally drove the stake deep into the heart of my chronic caffeine consumption.  Who knew.  All this time me and my addictive personality could have quit all our vices, had we just had the foresight to hire a troll and a club to walk around behind us, threatening to whomp us if we thought about/touched/were tempted to partake in whatever evil it was that we were attempting to leave behind.