How do the Starbucks-coffee chugging addicts do it? That is, consume barrelfuls of liquid caffeine and still feel normal? I eat three pieces of choco chip cookies, two squares of dark chocolate and a glass or two of iced tea and I am as good as a zombie on adrenaline high the whole night.
Today I decided to skip work because I thought that it was the lesser of the two evils, the other evil being taking the risk of involuntarily sleeping while reading a manuscript. I was tossing and turning all night—this time not out of thinking of something or someone. The culprit, I suspect, is the abovementioned ingestion of food laced with the legal drug caffeine. My heart palpitated last night and in the wee hours of the morning as if I was on the ringside of the Pacquiao-Marquez fight. Late sleeper I might be, but insomniac I am not.
Déjà vu. This feels familiar, I said to myself. And I immediately recalled the time when I consumed a small Starbucks mocha frappucino and no sleep came until it was 5am the next day when I went to bed at 10pm. What was different then was I bravely went to work notwithstanding the headache or lightheadedness I might experience. This time, I didn’t take the chance.
What probably contributed to this unusual caffeine sensitivity is what day of the month it is. I could lump this symptom together with the irritability (last Sunday I got irritated with my super-cranky driving instructor. I think he has forgotten the reason why I enrolled in a driving school; he scolded me for every wrong move), the food cravings, the water retention, and a host of other symptoms women of child-bearing age experience some days of the month.
If I had a bout of paranoia that coincided with the palpitations, I could’ve imagined all the heart problems—the medical kind—I must have had. Or I could have wondered: What if my days are numbered because my tachycardia is caused by a disease of which there is no known cure? What if my health card won’t cover the hospitalization cost? What if all the cardiologists in the Philippines are attending a seminar in the US?
Funny how my only real concern when I realized I might be hypersensitive to caffeine is this:
Coffee I can bear not to drink, soda I can give up. But chocolates, what if I won’t be able to eat a bar again for the rest of my life?
I shudder at the thought.
The order of the day is to cut down on the caffeine. If I eat with you, please stop me from having iced tea or soda with my meal. As for the assets on my chocolate bank on top of my desk, they will remain frozen until I get enough sleep and stop having horses galloping on a racetrack inside my heart.
Filed under: Chocolates and Other Loves, Daily Life
where i live, starbucks is a lightyear away. We buy Barako coffee! My husband and I, however, have taken a vow…yes, a vow…to drink coffee only on Sundays. Once is enough. And because our systems have gone from caffein-miniscule to caffein-free during the week, the coffee really works in an instant! Yes, I would toss and turn at night and have all these fears running berserk in my mind. Always, I would vow not to drink coffee anymore…until next Sunday
. Recently, we decided to neutralize the effects of the coffee by drinking mint tea before sleeping. A strong dose of it! Result? I still toss and turn and think Hitchcock scenarios.
I think barako coffee is so much better! Well, at least I know how strong it is. Thanks for telling me that what I’m not the only person in the whole universe who has these caffeine-induced attacks. Tea before bedtime? Hmm, I know there are teas to make one fall asleep. But I think it will have the same effect on me, like you! I think the best form of caffeine to have before sleeping is chocolate, a bar of it. haha. Stubborn me. But te Bernadette, thanks for sharing your caffeine story.
Hehehe…so, does this mean no more bus commute for you when we meet up pag-uwi ko?
No, I’ll still be taking the bus. Let’s see if I’ll have enough guts to drive in EDSA. Uwi ka na. Malapit na. 
Yeah, pag-uwi mo magji-jeep na ako.