I WIN! (technically)

I finally feel good again! I beat the no caffeine blues!


Eight whole days of laboriously lumbering my aching body around like a zombie comprised primarily of car crash (it's hard to move a car crash), pinching myself in painful areas to stay awake, and trying to prevent my brain from squirming out of my nose, purchasing a gun and holding up a Starbucks are finally behind me.


I don't know how a brain would hold up a Starbucks, lacking the appendages to hold a gun, but it's a brain... it's smart... I'm sure it would find a way.


Although a smarter brain would use the money it purchased a gun with to simply buy a coffee at Starbucks.... an even smarter brain would get coffee somewhere else.


Anyway over the last few days I have attempted three different cures to make myself feel like a member of the living world. The first being ibuprofen... which does nothing.... if you have ibuprofens at home, either feed them to your local wildlife or send them back to ibuprofenland with an angry letter asking them why they are wasting your time.


My second attempt was codeine. I have a stash of codeine left over from when I was seriously ill last year (because I'm super healthy all the time to the point where God feels it is unfair for me to be such a prime specimen and occasionally decides to spite me with crippling conditions) which I save for emergencies such as this. Codeine works by making you feel awesome... it should pretty much say that on the packet. However what it also does is make you a blissful ball of couch jelly that is even less productive than the tortured caffeine-starved zombie you were before.


So I have finally settled on my third cure choice, coffee!

It's amazing how great of a cure for caffeine starvation coffee is. I would like to take this time to inform you how great coffee is. Coffee is a versatile drink that you can enjoy hot or iced. You can put Baileys in it for your Gran, or drink it from tiny little shot glasses and pretend that its a regular sized coffee and you are a giant who just happens to be fueled by coffee.


Coffee makes you feel 100% of everything, double coffee makes you feel 200% of everything and so forth. Coffee contains caffeine which is what the allies defeated Hitler with probably and coffee is also the reason cows invented milk, otherwise we would have to drink it black and nobody likes black coffee (pending source checks but take my word for it).


Here is Craig Charles without coffee.





Here is Craig Charles with coffee.

I feel that makes my point for me.


If anyone is thinking my title of I WIN may seem a little misguided. Firstly I feel awesome again now except for the crushing monotony and loneliness of my life and secondly I have probably extended my lifespan by eight days, which is exactly the sort of result the evil health inspector lady would have wanted for me anyway.

Scratch that. This is probably death approaching

I'm just trying to be healthy!!!


Remember how I posted the coffee scale and I was all like 'oh hey guys let's go drink a fuck tonne of coffee and get super buzzed until we can stop time and spit coffee grains from our ears!' Well, as totally harmless as all that sounded I have recently had a growing suspicion that my intake of caffeine may be at an unhealthy level.


The clues that pointed towards this included about as many trips to the toilet a day as Craig Charles has pictures drawn of him, as long as Craig Charles has a number of pictures drawn of him per day equal to about five times the average number of toilet trips per day (which he probably does). And whilst I do love going to the toilet of-course, it is the only sanctuary where I can draw up dastardly plans, this was growing tiresome.


What made me rather more concerned was my chest. I had a routine medical at my work, and the medical lady seemed confused when reading my heart rate. The sort of confusion where she may be wondering whether she had just monitored a human heart, or a PlayStation rumble pad (gamer audience outreach! BOOM).


She took a urine sample (which I could easily oblige) as she assumed I was on seventeen varieties of speed.


When it showed up clear she asked me if I had had any energy drinks that day.


I said "No. Just some coffee"


She asked how much coffee.


I said "......a lot?"


She asked how much that was.


"..... 7 cups?...."


"seven?"


"they're also big cups"


(I own a pint coffee mug that I got for free from somewhere. Real men drink everything in pints)


My answers cleared her suspicion that I was a speed addict, but her concern convinced me that I should at-least attempt to see what life would be like without caffeine. Which brings us to now.


I haven't had caffeine for three days and I think I am dying.


For anyone who thinks that caffeine is not addictive, I HATE YOU AND I WILL HUNT YOU WITH DOGS!..... ok I didn't mean that but you are most definitely mistaken. I can also confirm that there is a small possibility that I am one of the addicts.


I woke up on the first day without coffee with a crippling headache. I usually have headaches in the morning and it is usually a cup of coffee that makes them go away... it's astonishing I didn't connect the dots earlier.


My determination was strong to begin with, and I didn't let my crippling headache phase me for at least the first three hours. Thankfully after that time I had to go to work for eight hours, where I could do tedious repetitive manual tasks that require minimal brain function and, more importantly, have my access to coffee completely restricted.


It was in a headache daze, my body not understanding how a wake/sleep cycle functions without caffeine, that I survived my first two days.


I hadn't realized just how many different aspects of your body caffeine affects. Come the third day however, I noticed that it was not just my brain that was suffering.


I went to work on the third day and suddenly realized that my monotonous job of wrapping and moving many things had become infinitely more difficult. Every muscle and limb on my body felt as though it was now comprised primarily of concrete, and as concrete is rather heavy, this made every attempt at movement incredibly tiring. I spent the day shuffling around and leaning on things. It was too tiring to lift my feet as I move like normal coffee drinking people do. I'm not sure how I survived, eight hours is a long time to work anyway, but time in my caffeine zombie world had slowed considerably.


It is day four now. I know I said it was day three but I started writing this post and then got tired and shuffled off.


I don't know when this will end. I have read some discussions on caffeine withdrawal and people say it can take weeks! Weeks!


I don't know if I enough energy to keep shuffling to the fridge to sustain myself for weeks.


It's day five now... you see that up there. those three sentences between 'day four' and here... that's all I could be arsed to do yesterday. I'm not a terribly productive person when I'm not dying, but at this rate this may be the end of my blog and the majority of my bodily functions.


I'm rambling now. I would think of a good end to this but I'm too tired. I will write one if/when I survive and return to full mental capacity. It will probably have Craig Charles in it but I can't see how he is relevant right now.

That is all

Harry

The Coffee Scale

Ever since I discovered coffee in the late 17th century I have spent a great amount of time drinking it.


As with keeping fish (again new readers, you have no idea what I am referencing, please consult one of my original readerss, who are better than you), discovering a drink as powerful as coffee was only ever going to end in extreme abuse of these powers. Through my own lack of control I have therefore discovered the many stages and abilities that coffee is able to grant to a person, and I want to share those with you!


I encourage all of you to take your own adventures into coffee consumption. You can do this at home or in public! For first time adventurers I recommend doing this at home in a padded room surrounded by people you trust.


Some of you are reading this thinking "Harry... what are you talking about? We all drink coffee and there is nothing adventurous about it..."


Do you? Do you really drink coffee? Or do you just reach phase 3 and decide to stop?


"Phase 3? You are making less sense than an Austrian octopus with a speech impediment!"


.... Ok well I don't know why you would make that analogy. But I see you are unfamiliar with the phases of coffee. Therefore I have illustrated the coffee scale to help you track your progress.


You seem scared... What if I told you that if you drink enough then you gain the ability to be super inflatable AND a train!?


Well it doesn't. Im not even sure how that would look or feel. But you were excited weren't you? Well I assure you that there are things almost as exciting and definitely more physically possible waiting for you to discover!


ON-WARDS COFFEE BRETHREN!

The comedown time from being John Coffey is the same as the run-time for Green Mile multiplied by the inverse square of the number of John Coffey bees you have spit at people in that time, so bear that in mind.


I spend the majority of my life in phase 3 although I have broken through to phase 7 on a few occasions. Usually resulting in a satisfied hangover and the release of a Hollywood film.


For anyone wishing to cheat, energy drinks essentially jump 2 phases at a time. This does make it impossible to be a productive member of society however.


And once again I will warn you that tea is a lie. Anyone who drinks too much tea risks becoming Shia Labeouf. If you thought I was going to say Mr. T ...... shame on you..... that would just be silly.


Appropriate places to become John Coffey include supermarkets, public swimming pools, theaters, library's and Grandmas house. There are no appropriate places to be Shia Lebeouf.