no caffeine

So I'm on day 3 of no caffeine. I've never been a huge consumer of soda or coffee. Actually, coffee makes me jittery, and if I do have the urge for coffee, it would be a tall, decaf, skim latte (maybe with vanilla). I'm really a tea drinker. Earl grey, mango ceylon, lady grey, jasmine, chrysanthemum, bo-lay...you name it. What can I say, it's definitely my Chinese upbringing. It's why I get agitated at work when the water's not scalding hot enough for a proper cuppa.

But now I'm on day 3 of no caffeine. Sigh. It's because I had a very surreal experience the other day when an hour after lunch, I felt jittery, racing thoughts, what felt like a racing heartbeat, slight tremor in the hand, cold hands, hot head and just full of adrenalin. Now granted, I had been feeling very keyed up with work (writing 2500 word articles will do that), but I couldn't figure out why I felt so crazy. I had to lie down.

But first, I had to go find someone on the floor who could tell me what was wrong. When in doubt, look for someone who's a mom. So T. looked at me, said "you're not feverish, so tell me, what did you have to eat or drink today". And that's when it hit me - I went to Pret A Manger and had bought one of their cups of home-made organic ice tea. The tea was so strong and so caffeinated, it gave me the shakes.

Wow. It took a while to calm down, but luckily my deep breathing techniques came in handy. That, time, and drinking a lot of water.

So I haven't had any caffeine since because it was unnerving, and I had trouble sleeping later that night.

I cheated a little this morning and got a weak, decaf English breakfast, but honestly, it's just flavored water with a lot of milk.