changes

 i was once a coffee drinker.  man, did i drink the crap outta coffee.  it all started back in middle school.  i was a terrible morning person.  not any kind of morning person at all.  which made my dad's job of getting me off to school very difficult.  it's hard to imagine he didn't get more impatient with me.  i would snooze on, in spite of his wake-up efforts, until the very last minutes.  i would groggily stumble out of bed, throw something haphazardly on, barely make it through a piece of toast with jelly, stumble on to the bus stop, and then be half asleep throughout my school day. then one day, dad spiked my hot chocolate with coffee.  he called it a "mocha".  BAM!  everything changed.  i was excited to wake up, eager to taste the savory sweet elixir, and hyped up about life!  thus began my love affair with coffee.

as time went on, i realized i couldn't really wake up without coffee.  but i didn't notice any negative side effects until way later, in college, when cumulative stress and acidic gut-rot led me at 21 to suffer my first stomach ulcer.  i still didn't quit the stuff.  but it spun me out, gave me anxiety, gave me the shakes, and suppressed my appetite.  yet i kept on.  i didn't think it was really a problem until i started getting into books about natural medicine, which told me that excessive caffeine could be a part of the adrenal exhaustion i was suffering from.  yes, adrenal exhaustion, the exact opposite of that trademark coffee perkiness.  so i quit the stuff, started drinking green tea, and haven't looked back.