Hi. My name is Amanda, and I am addicted to caffeine.

More specifically, I am addicted to coffee.

A little over a week ago, I wrote about my visit to the naturopathic doctor, and how she put me on a tincture to be taken three times a day, and instituted various dietary changes. She “allowed” me half a cup of coffee per day, which obviously is not going to happen because it’s a big pain in the ass to make HALF a cup of coffee. She told me I could drink all the green tea I want, so I simply gave up coffee and switched to green tea.

All week, I had the occasional minor headache. Today, though, it reached a crescendo and bordered on a migraine. I woke up this morning feeling pretty well-rested, and with the sun rising brightly in the sky as I backed the car out of the driveway, I felt good, positive. It’d been a good, relaxing weekend and I was ready to head back to work for the week.

By 9:30 though, I started to feel awful. Rundown. Exhausted. The headache was quickly forming, and I found myself shutting my eyes briefly while I waited for a document to print or a screen to load, just to give myself a couple of seconds’ relief. I took an Advil, but it didn’t do anything. I drank a second cup of green tea. Nothing.

Then the lunch hour rolled around. I pulled out the vegetarian, high-protein dish that was one of the recipes the doctor gave me. It was brown rice, chickpeas, chopped tomatoes, cilantro and parsley, and then I made a homemade dressing for it consisting of olive oil, dijon mustard and basalmic vinaigrette.

Well, I ate it. It didn’t taste awful, exactly. It just didn’t taste like much of anything at all. I put more of the dressing on in an attempt to give it a bit more flavour. But see, I’m not a huge fan of mustard, so that didn’t go over well. I ate it because I didn’t have anything else.

That’s when I started to get angry.

My lunch sucked. My head felt ready to explode, and I had a very strong suspicion that ONE.SIMPLE.CUP.OF.COFFEE would heal me. Before I went to see the doctor, I used to have two small cookies for dessert at lunch (I take after my Granny - a meal is not complete without dessert!). She wanted me to limit that to three times per week. I decided to have only ONE cookie Monday to Friday (which actually works out to fewer cookies per week). But I bit into my one measly cookie today and found that it was soft and stale. Gross. I threw the other half out, and eyed the chocolate Santa I had picked up last week at the Charity Committee meeting.

And I ate it. I’m supposed to fill out a diet journal for one week and I’d decided it would be this week. Feeling rebellious, I decided NOT to put that piece of chocolate down.

Ahem. I am 28 years old. Why the hell am I sneaking chocolate like a child hiding it from her mother???

I started thinking about how my diet is pretty damn healthy already. And I started thinking about how life is too damn short to be depriving myself of things I enjoy. Not too long ago, a friend of a friend died of cancer after having led a remarkably healthy lifestyle. I think he was only in his 40s. I kept thinking, “I want a coffee. One coffee. It will make me feel loads better. Why am I denying myself?”

So I went and made a coffee. As predicted, I felt a million times better. The headache finally went away. I felt like I finally woke up after the day was nearly over. Earlier, I had wondered how the hell I would be able to get my ass to my Tai Bo class tonight (and make it through it), but it suddenly seemed possible.

Coffee is my crack.

I decided that I will email the doctor and tell her my decision:

* I will TRY to incorporate more meatless meals into my diet, but no promises. I am not going to eat bland shit.

* I will drink ONE cup of coffee per day. A whole cup. If I’m having a particularly bad day, had a rough night sleeping and am trying to operate at work on four hours’ sleep or something, then I may have two cups. Otherwise, I will supplement the remainder of the day with green tea.

* I will limit myself to one cookie per day, but if someone happens to bring in a treat some day, as occasionally happens, and I wish to partake of said treat, then by god, I’m going to partake of it. And enjoy every last bit.

I will then ask her if it is her opinion that this whole thing won’t work if I go by my rules. If so, then I may have to try other avenues. Truth be told, I haven’t REALLY tried counseling for my worrying and anxiety. I’m not sure why I thought I’d try a naturopathic doctor first, when I knew they usually try to change your whole life around. Also, my worrying tends to worsen when Neal is away simply because there’s more for me to worry about (house, car, etc). Neal is going to be home in less than five weeks (HALLELUJAH!!!), so my worrying should lessen significantly very soon. Then he’ll be home for a good long while, which can be my opportunity to go see a counselor/shrink and work on my anxiety and on building up my self-confidence so that I don’t worry so much the next time he’s away.

I am hoping to continue on with the tincture because that does seem to be working, and I’m hoping that despite what I wrote above, it’ll help heal my adrenal glands which are, according to the doctor, fatigued.

SIGH. I am much, MUCH happier with coffee in my life.

(And hey - anyone know of some good high-protein vegetarian meals? If so, PLEASE email me at akosborne(at)gmail(dot)com)