my harrowing 36 hours without caffeine
Because I like to always have a Sisyphean, money-burning personal project going on in the background of my life, I decided toward the end of 2021 that I needed to get a handle on the workings of my endocrine system. In August I'd had a weird extra-long menstrual cycle, followed by a Shining-elevator period and some dramatic physical anxiety symptoms. My next few cycles were capped with slow-onset then extra heavy periods, which are especially annoying when they are coming 20 days apart. Was this "perimenopause" or was I, likelier, dying? Another possible answer, and one that I didn't need a specialist of any stripe to tell me, was "you have turned 40, and also there is a global pandemic," but I nevertheless became determined to find out if either of those conditions could be mitigated by, like, taking a magnesium supplement (or something equally easy). I love to periodically convince myself that all my intractable personality/physiological issues can be solved by changing just one thing about my life. I'm not alone in this, judging by how many instagram ads I get for bespoke $50/month probiotics subscriptions and reishi mushroom hot cocoa. The algorithm is correct: I am these ads' ideal audience. I am nearly always running some kind of budget-GOOP science experiment on myself. The actual "cure" for all of my unspecial problems is most likely "get more sleep, exercise more, and don't eat candy or drink wine" but how boring is that?? Please, sell me an alternative and make me feel special while you're doing it!
Anyway, I went to the functional medicine doctor my acupuncturist recommended (look, I know how this sounds) and she ordered bloodwork with a little more thyroid stuff than my GP has done in the past thrown in, and also something called a "Dutch complete" test, which is basically 5 sticks that you pee on over the course of 24 hours to see what's going on with your cortisol and sex hormone levels. I eagerly await the results of this test! (They're probably "get more sleep, exercise more, and don't eat candy or drink wine," but I live in hope!) Lol, sorry, did you think this was going to be an essay about how I had a mystery ailment, ran around looking for a diagnosis, had some exciting adventures in our broken healthcare system and then found a cure that you, too, can participate in without having to do any of that heavy lifting yourself? No way, buddy, this is my newsletter! I'm just here to tell you about the experience of abstaining from caffeine (and alcohol ,but whatever) for 36 hours so that I could do this pee stick test without invalidating its (probably useless and pointless) results.
I usually have one ... or two ... small cups of very strong coffee in the morning, and after that I usually have a cup ... or two ... of black tea in the afternoon or whenever the coffee starts to wear off. I know this is a "lot" of caffeine. The same acupuncturist who pointed me in the direction of the functional medicine doctor had also told me to wean myself very slowly off of coffee over the course of a month. That month being December, I ... did not do this. I think I might have made a conscious effort to make myself put more (almond) milk in my coffee -- to have a "cup" of coffee be about 50/50 milk and coffee. For a few days, or until I forgot about it. Anyway, heading into yesterday I had been drinking a totally normal-for-me amount of caffeine (lots.)
Yesterday morning I woke up and didn't have coffee. I made a pot of holy basil tea, lol. For several hours afterwards I was like, "who needs coffee? This holy basil tea is really doing the trick." I went to my semi-shuttered coworking space and opened my computer and gazed at a document I had been working on, attempting to make the shapes on the page resolve into words. I tried typing some words. Nothing doing. I looked at my email to see if there were any low-stakes admin tasks I could attempt and found an email from a publication that has been halfheartedly attempting to pay me a small amount of money for so long that I have changed addresses twice and they have changed their freelancer payment system three times. I opened the portal to their new system and stared at that page, then immediately closed the tab. It was one of those systems that is for multinational conglomerates and random individuals like myself alike and so there were a lot of spaces on the form for things like VAT and where I plan to ship my goods. I did my best with it but I probably published my social security number on some kind of widely used public internet portal, or at least it seemed like it? It started to seem like I should adjust my goal and make it "not do any more damage." I texted my friend N and we arranged to meet up to go for a long walk.
The walk was amazing. It was warm out and we went all the way from Myrtle and Classon to Dumbo and then back to Clinton Hill via Brooklyn Heights in a big loop. We saw a block I'd never seen before, this house in the Navy Yard that's a private residence on a sort of bluff overlooking the ConEd plant (and the odorous East River) in Vinegar Hill. It turns out to be called the Commandant's House because when it was built (in 1809) the Commandant of the Navy Yard lived there. Now it is a national landmark as well as a private residence. In 1914 the interior looked this this!
More amazing photos are here. As we were ogling it from behind a tall fence that surrounds the navy yard (and it), a guy came to get the mail from the mailbox near the gate. We asked him if he was the owner and he scoffed and said "I wish" but maybe he was lying? I can't find out much about the people who do live in this house but I can confirm based on their mail that they subscribe to the New Yorker.
By the end of this magical walk, as I picked up Raffi, I was beginning to feel ... not great. More than fuzzy-headed, I was starting to feel headachy and exhausted. I sat down on the playground and felt like it might be impossible to stand back up again without an enormous effort. Also I wasn't allowed to even have a sip of water because you're supposed to not drink anything for two hours before the first sample, and in general are only supposed to drink 40 oz total the day of testing. I called Keith to switch places with me and went home and started making dinner.
My dinner was a failure, way too salty. Culinary incompetence happens to me only rarely and when it does it's usually because I'm going through it. I ate the too-salty dinner anyway because I was ravenous and after that took to my bed. I managed to read aloud to Raffi, a chapter of fucking Harry Potter and the horrible Order of the cursed Adverbs but then when Raffi started being hyper and demanding (as he always is at bedtime right now) I simply covered my face with my hands and moaned until he went away. My head felt like someone was trying to separate the two halves of my cerebellum with an oyster knife. I felt nauseated every time I moved my neck from side to side. I was extremely not okay.
I turned off the lights and lay there in silence, trying to will my eyeballs to stop feeling like someone had replaced them with red hot ball bearings. I wondered if I had COVID (I do not have COVID.) I got up to pee on the second stick at 9:48 (it was supposed to be 10 but I couldn't will myself to remain conscious any longer) and after that I have no memories at all.
This morning I peed on the third stick immediately on waking. I felt totally fine. Two hours later I peed on the fourth and final stick and after that I was allowed to have coffee again. Right before taking the first sip I thought to myself "Hmm, I have actually done all the hard part of caffeine withdrawal and now, if I wanted to, I could say goodbye to anxiety juice forever, simplifying my life and regulating my cortisol a great deal." I took a sip anyway. I had a second cup, too.