Withdrawl

Monday afternoon my long-standing headache^* got really bad. I couldn’t think of anything that might have caused it to accelerate. Then I remember that the iced tea I’d made on Sunday was caffeine-free, and we didn’t have any diet pop left in the house, so there had been on caffeine consumption since Saturday afternoon. Since I was working from home, I really needed to get the headache down to a manageable level, so I grabbed a couple Excedrin (with the added bonus of caffeine) and a regular Coke (my first non-diet pop in about two months). Wouldn’t you know that I felt much better within half an hour.

I don’t like the idea of being that dependent on a chemical, so I’ve decided to cut out caffeine for the next week or two, just to get it out of my system and hopefully cut my dependence. Tuesday was bad, with a horrible headache in the afternoon. Yesterday was better. (I suspect that the chai I drink in the morning has a bit of caffeine, though not much. Maybe it was just enough to keep my body satisfied.)

^* I’ve had a headache for over a year now — I wake up with it and fall asleep with it. I visited a neurologist, and she believes that it’s from grinding my teeth at night. I did get a mouth guard from my dentist, but that doesn’t stop the clenching and grinding, it just prevents that clenching and grinding from damaging my teeth. The neurologist refused to give me any muscle relaxers, which might have helped, because my blood pressure was high when I visited her (it’s always high in the doctor’s office, but normal at home — white-coat syndrome). I won’t see that neurologist again, and my primary care physician has since left my HMO. Sadly the primary care physician was the only doctor at my clinic that I’ve seen that I got along with, so I’m now waiting until open enrollment this fall when I will change health plans. Until then, I’m resigned to having a headache.