Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I can take it

Sunday night I decided to try an experiment. I decided to give up coffee. It's no big deal, I told myself. I drink two, maybe three cups a day. I can take it or leave it.

Ya right. 48 hours later I'm a wreck. I feel blurred, lethargic. I feel like I used to have a superpower and it's been taken away from me, like I can vaguely remember being able to leap from one tall conclusion to another, but just now I couldn't jump over the intellectual equivalent of a dead gerbil (see - I'm reduced to making Scott Adams jokes). I feel blunt. Worse, I'm starting to turn religious. This evening, I tried reading Dante and ended up watching Monty Python. If that isn't a return to the true Faith, I don't know what is. Before long I'll be having visions where I'm wandering through the desert, desperately seeking mocha from heaven.

The worst part of this is that the worse my cold turkey jitters get, the more I'm convinced of the need to break the habit. So if blogging is infrequent this week, or even more morbid than usual (yes n! Wristcutters is on my to-watch list - though given the Imamura retrospective in town I may not get to it till the weekend) you know the reason why.

Meanwhile, over at Harriet, don't miss A.E. Stallings' 'Snark and Blurb: A dialogue' - it's luminous, brilliant, urgent, liminal, radical and, well, necessary.

13 comments:

Space Bar said...

how brave and foolhardy of you. but why? why would anyone ever give up coffee? you mean you're determined to go through with this? will you feel pure and, um, liminal once you've reached the other side of what can't even be called an addiction?

Anonymous said...

give up coffee??
why live then?

Anonymous said...

but you don't even smoke, do you? so what are you going to be doing when you sit and write? drink OJ? or worse, diet lassi?

AakASH!!! said...

Afterall, coffee is not 'necessary', Plumbing is. :D

??! said...

aha! Baron Falstaff's Kryptonite is discovered. *gleeful rubbing of hands*

Tabula Rasa said...

good for you! coffee is poison in disguise. i had to go from a six cup a day habit to zero cups overnight and it was a nightmare -- i could neither wake nor sleep for two full months.

and the first sip at the end of it was heaven.

km said...

I am *shattered* by the fact that I don't have a Monty Python quote about coffee addiction

//why doesn't anyone talk about their raging tea or Horlicks addiction?

Falstaff said...

space bar: Because it is there? Just don't like the idea of being addicted to something. It's this almost Kertesz like will to avoid dependence - like what if they throw me into a concentration camp and I can't get coffee there? Better to break the habit now.

rs: Ah, that's what I'm trying to find out.

scout: Alcohol, you forget alcohol.

aakash!!!: Yes, but tell that to my aching head.

??!: More like Baron Falstaff's Spinach, no?

TR: Two full months? Two full months! I CANNOT take two full months of feeling like this.

km: Ya, I know. Let's see now. Coffee, coffee...

"There, he said it again!"

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should start with drinking tea before quitting cold turkey.

Btw, this is probably a question you've been asked many times before (and probably a dumb one too), but why the 2x3x7? Is it because it is 42, the answer to everything? But why 2,3 and 7?

Space Bar said...

what if they throw you into a concentration camp and you can't get books there? you going to practice getting used to it now just in case?

this is coffee, man! wake up and smell it!

:D

Anonymous said...

but then falsie..dear what about your addiction to books and blogging...naah..to single out coffee is being harsh..on coffee that is...lets take this to next level-no books for lets say a week...that would be the real test.atleast a start.

Falstaff said...

lekhni: Prime numbers.

space bar: Ah, but the difference is that reading a book gives you something to think about when you're in the concentration camp - so the more books you manage to read before they throw you in, the more you'll have to console yourself with / occupy your mind with once you're inside. But coffee consumed in the past won't help you then.

anon: see above. As for blogging - a) again, the point is to have as much out there as you can before they throw you in, so people have stuff to remember you by and b) actually publishing the post is somewhat irrelevant to the fun of blogging, isn't it? It's coming up with the posts in the first place, composing them in your head, etc.

ggop said...

I bet giving up alcohol is easier than giving up coffee.