A Fortnight Without Caffeine

Back during the dot-com bubble, I worked with a programmer who liked to experiment with caffeine. When he wasn’t wasting time and money with interesting computer science theoretical esoterica that didn’t quite pertain to us releasing software on time and on budget, he would try to see how much caffeine he could jam into his system.

Of his caffeine-seeking exploits, the Ultimate Venti incident stands out in my mind. One hot summer afternoon, he convinced the Starbucks on Yonge just north of Bloor — the one that used to be a book store — to serve him a Venti made with 10 additional espresso shots. He took it back to the office so that he could drink it in front of us.

Half an hour later, he was more hopped up that a hornet’s nest that has just been used as a pinata, and unable to focus on anything for more than a minute or so. The work he did that day was fast, furious and completely pointless: most of it was tweaking his system (pun intended) — downloading new desktop backgrounds, checking mail waaaay too often, recompiling various utility programs and so forth. He crashed a couple of hours later on one of the nearby couches, treating us to some world-class snoring.

As for me, while I do like coffee, my preferred caffeine delivery system is Diet Coke. In the tradition of the great programmer J. C. R. Licklider, who liked to start the day with a Coke, I did the same, just with the diet version. On a mellow day, I might drink two cans’ worth; on a very busy high-stress day, perhaps 6. Such a habit is costly if you buy cans straight from the machine; I preferred to buy two-litre bottles and keep in the fridge (luckily, we’ve got three at work, and I like to keep the ice trays stocked).

My appointment at the sleep lab was, if you’ll pardon the expression, my wake-up call. “Don’t take any caffeine for at least 24 hours before your sleep lab session,” I was told. I decided to go without caffeine a full 48 hours beforehand. A mere six hours before my session, I was deep into one skull-crusher of a headache and went crawling to Maria, the keeper of the office’s ibuprofen supply for help.

“I really must be caffeine-dependent,” I told her, “I need three hits of Advil.”

Although I got a good night’s sleep at the lab, I was so caffeine-deprived the next day that I fell asleep shortly after dinner the next day.

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve stayed away from caffeinated beverages. The only liquids that have gone into my drinking mug at work — a pint mug given to me as a gift from the bartender at the Dubliner’s Pub in Osaka — are:

• Ice water
• Sparkling water
• My fakety-fake Italian sodas: four-fifths sparking water, one-fifth fruit juice

Aside from an initial couple of days of feeling slightly more tired, avoiding caffeine plus trying to get a little more sleep hasn’t been that big a shock to my system. I was never one of those “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my first coffee” type of people, so as far as I can tell, there’s been no noticeable change in my behaviour.

In fact, when Leona found out that I’m off caffeine for the next little while, she exclaimed “Why didn’t you tell us?”, in the same tone of voice one uses for the question “Why didn’t you tell us that you quit crystal meth cold turkey and took up collecting butcher’s knives as a hobby?”

But really, I feel fine.