No more coffee

I stopped drinking coffee.

Yesterday.

I've stopped before for lots of reasons, and generally have been fine without coffee for months at a time.  Quitting coffee was on my mind when I quit smoking two and a half years ago, and I'd like to give it another go.  I know that my mornings are much more cheerful, my moods more predictable, and my skin is happier when I don't have caffeine in my body, so I'm doing it again.  

I have an oppressive headache.  I drank Yerba mate today and yesterday, which I remember really taking the pain out of withdrawal, but that is not the case this weekend.  Zak just reminded me that I could take an aspirin and make the headache go away, and I RAN to the medicine cabinet.  

I remember years ago, I went out to a party with my friend Paula.  Somebody gave me a ride home around 5 in the morning, and I was hungry, a little hungover and not ready to sleep yet, so I grabbed the National Geographic that had just arrived in the mail, and headed to Denny's.  I was still smoking then and I looked forward to a long stretch of time, drinking coffee, smoking, and reading about the world.  There was an article in the magazine about caffeine and the brain, and somewhere in the middle of it, I drank the first cup of decaf of my life.  It was not delicious, but it was too impossible to read the article AND drink coffee at the same time.

I'm one of those people for whom the pain and physical symptoms of withdrawal are comforting signals that I'm doing a good thing.  (This was true when I quit smoking too.)  It's still distracting as hell.