Caffeine Induced Delirium
About four months ago I decided to completely cut out caffeine from my diet. This decision came when I realized that if I didn’t drink roughly three cans of Mt. Dew a day I would get terrible headaches. In fact, there was a time a few years ago, when I didn’t have enough money to buy Mt. Dew and I actually had to call in sick to work. The migraine that I had from that was so bad that I threw up twice that day. So when I realized that the caffeine was running my life, I stopped drinking it.
The bad new is that I realized that if I didn’t do something to keep me up later than midnight I would never be able to finish the NaNoWriMo. So, last night I drove to Wal-Mart and bought some Mt. Dew. I only drank one, and I could feel it keeping me awake before I even finished it. But what happened next, I never would have guessed.
Instead of keeping me awake so that I could write, the caffeine kept me awake just enough to still have my motor functions as I was nodding off at the keyboard. This caused me to write some of the most incoherent babble I’d seen since I taught myself to take notes in college while asleep. First my main character was at a circus, battling bears. Then he turned into a woman and was taking a walk on a beach. Then, he was at a coffee shop reading poetry… Battling bears. Okay, so maybe he never battled the bears in a coffee shop, but that was about the level of my writing at about 2:00 am this morning.
My conclusion? Either my years of caffeine abuse has made me mostly immune to it’s effects, or I just didn’t consume enough of it. Either way, I’ll probably find out later tonight since I’m still 5,000 words behind schedule.
-Rich
