Celebrating with caffeine

Yesterday Daniel learned that he's getting an NSF grant, a tough one to land -- he had about given up hope when other started hearing weeks ago and he hadn't yet. So we celebrated with a trip to Starbucks, and I ordered a Raspberry Mocha Frappuccino, a drink which I highly recommend. Except it's high in fat (it left an oily taste in my mouth because of all the whipped cream) and I totally forgot to order it decaf.

I have a caffeine sensitivity and after yesterday I'm thinking it's borderline allergy -- in high school I noticed if I had a caffeinated soda two days in a row I'd get a withdrawal headache on the third day, so I have mostly stayed away from it. I drank diet sodas or regular tea on occasion when we were first married but when I started trying to have kids I gave up all caffeine (except in chocolate -- I'm not crazy) for a while. Ever since then I've found that if I drink more than a half cup of coffee I get hyper, unable to stop talking (worse than usual), with a fast heart rate, and I'm queasy, and jittery, and I have intestinal discomfort. Well, mocha frappuccinos are supposed to be lower in caffeine than coffee by half, but I did drink the full drink and it's larger than a mug of coffee. So I probably had about a full cup worth of caffeine. And not only did I have all the above symptoms, I also had shortness of breath along the lines of the asthma attacks I used to get in high school (I can breathe fine but the breaths aren't fully satisfying -- it's very frustrating. It hasn't happened more than a half dozen times in the 18 years since). And I had a bit of vertigo whenever I changed positions. And this went on for SEVEN HOURS. Ugh. I still got hungry and ate dinner but I just couldn't shake the caffeine buzz until bedtime. And I suspect I only got to sleep because I also had a glass and a half of wine (in the hopes of counteracting the effects). In short, I am NEVER knowingly going to drink a caffeinated beverage again.

So food wasn't at all good yesterday. On top of that drink, I also had my usual breakfast, lunch of a half ham sandwich and milk to drink, snacks of almonds and a few pretzels and numerous bites of Alexander and Cecilia's Starbucks cookies, and a banana and some raisins. For dinner I had sauerbraten meatballs -- three meatballs and a medium serving of noodles -- as well as cucumber slices and steamed green beans (the vegetables are from our garden!). After dinner we had tortilla chips and cheese dip (Daniel was celebrating still), but I kept my portion quite small (still queasy) and I had the wine.

I had no exercise except for 20 seconds of running around the outside of the house as part of a school game of Mary's. But my weight was 146.0 today.

I looked up caffeine sensitivity and allergies last night and there's just not a lot of information out there. 20% of the population is sensitive, and they say the less often you drink the worse it's likely to be when you do. But they talk about jitters and don't really get into breathing difficulties and dizziness. And if it's just a sensitivity I should drink a little bit with some regularity to diminish the sensitivity. But with allergies the effects are cumulative, leading to diagnoses of depression, manic depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, and other types of psychosis (most of which go away when you give up caffeine long-term) -- but those were generally noted in people who are daily coffee drinkers and don't know they're poisoning themselves. I have been aware of my caffeine troubles for more than 20 years so I've never had a build-up, but I have had occasional panic attacks (but not since the first few years of grad school, except when I was pregnant with Cecilia) -- they went away about the time I gave up caffeine entirely! But that could be coincidence. And I've had mild bouts of depression, but they run in the family. I don't much want to build up a tolerance to caffeine because of the dependency and headaches that will surely follow, and the risk of this being a true allergy is a bit scary. So I do think I need to swear off it entirely. But it's just kind of frustrating -- what happens when I order decaf and they give me caf by mistake? It has happened, and I don't want to go through this every time!