Day 3

I’m on Day 3 of reintroducing caffeine into my diet.

Sleeping last night was fine. I had decaffeinated black tea this morning (even decaf tea has some caffeine in it). Felt the same lift as the previous two days for about two hours.

I’m starting to focus on the quality of that lift, though. While it’s true I feel more awake, at least temporarily, there are other effects that are not all positive.

I think these other effects are what people mean when they say they feel “wired” on coffee. It’s a kind of tenseness that was not there before–the opposite of relaxation. An eyelid is tremoring slightly.

There also seems to be a difference in the character of the experience with the different beverages. The white tea was the mildest, and produced the least of the “wired” feeling. The black tea seems to produce more of the undesirable side effects. Maybe it’s the other ingredients present in the black tea (I know that white tea comes from the same leaves as black tea, but it still seems different. A chemist would probably scoff at this).

So, the experiment continues. It may be that I decide that the feeling of greater alertness is not worth the tenseness and other negative side-effects created by caffeine.