Flashback Blog: Slaying the Dragon

Lent starts this week, so I thought it only fitting to revisit an adventure in self-denial. (Note: This blog was originally posted almost two years ago. I'm happy to report that Jay successfully made it through the ordeal with minimal psychological fracturing.)

Those who look for Jay online may have a hard time finding him after next week. He will be giving up his computer—outside of work-related needs, of course—for about a month. He's apparently decided he needs to break his dependency. I for one applaud Jay's self-initiated pseudo-lent.

"Good for you," I told him. "Admitting that you have a problem is the first step toward kicking an addiction."

"Is it also the last step?"

"Uh, no. That would be actually conquering it."

"Aw, crap. That sounds hard."

It is, I told him. And I should know. Not long ago, I had to come to grips with a similar demon in my own life. You can probably guess it: Caffeine. Liquid crack. Seattle C. Black gold. My life blood, for a while. I realized I had a problem one day when, while eating out with friends, I was duped into drinking decaffeinated Folgers crystals—on hidden camera, no less—rather than my normal coffee, and I subsequently flew into a fit of rage. I doubt that my reaction will be the take they use for the commercial, and I've likely worn out my welcome at Nonnah's for some time.

I hadn't planned on relaying the gritty details of my struggle, but I figure it could inspire others with similar vices to break free. You just have to say you're going to do it, accept the unpleasant side effects, and then jump in with both feet. It also helps to have people keep you accountable.

The sad part was having to throw out all my caffeinated beverages at the start, but I didn't want the temptation of them lying around.  The first day wasn't too bad, but after that I began a slow spiral into full-fledged withdrawal. As some of you may have witnessed, it wasn't pretty...

Day 2: I felt tired, obviously, but only in the general I-didn't-get-enough-sleep-last-night kind of way even though I'd slept for nine hours. The headaches began soon after. I had trouble concentrating, I was dragging, and I chugged a lot of decaf coffee (yes, I know it has trace amounts of caffeine—that was one concession I gave myself). I'd hoped the psychological effect of drinking something warm would make me feel better. It didn't.

Day 5: I become irritable and generally no fun to be around. Katie asks me a question at work, and I throw a stapler at her—a twist on the usual exchange. A driver cuts me off going home from work, so I speed up and run him off the bridge and into the Congaree River. Simple tasks become difficult. The directions on the cup of microwavable noodles might as well be instructions on launching the space shuttle—in Cantonese. I begin to think that maybe my taste buds have become compromised one morning, only to discover halfway through my bowl of cocoa puffs that I'd doused it with V8 instead of milk. I try to go to the gym, but they ask me to leave after I fall asleep on the treadmill. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. I decide that maybe if I increase my sleep habits to eleven hours per night, I won't be tired anymore. Wrong.

Day 9: I'm tired. My head hurts. I hate the world. I can't think straight. I can't blog. I can't work out like I should. I can't blog. I realize that if I don't cut back on the aspirin, I'll have to follow up lent with a detox for that, too. I smell coffee from down the hall and wonder if maybe just one cup would ease my pain. A small devil appears on my shoulder trying to tempt me. He looks like Juan Valdez in a cheap halloween costume. Come on, he says. Going forty days with just one cup is pretty impressive. What's the point of hurting yourself? No! Must not give in... People start looking at me strangely when they pass my office. Maybe because I'm shouting at the invisible devil on my shoulder.

Day 14: Reality has become fractured. All the world's a stage, and I am but an actor—butchering my lines, missing my cues, and generally being a nuisance on set when the lighting doesn't suit me. I throw a tantrum, demand better treatment and a bowl of blue M&Ms and chocolate milk with a whimsical twisty straw. Now. I hurl a platter of pastries across the set and inform the director (or is that my boss?—I can't tell anymore) that I'll be in my trailer whenever he decides to start giving his star fair treatment. For lunch, I eat a cold can of black beans and imagine that they're the coffee variety. For a moment—only a moment—I fool myself into believing they are. For that moment, it was wonderful. Then it was just plain disgusting.

Day 22: I am the walrus, koo koo ka choo. I flash in and out of lucidity. Nothing is as it seems. Is that Tony in his uniform arriving home from work? Or are government agents coming for me, now that I have intercepted their secret code written in cuneiform on my honey bunches of oats? Just to be safe, I hide in my room for three days until the black helicopters stop circling over my apartment. I craft a helmet from styrofoam peanuts and gorilla glue to prevent them from reading my thoughts via microwave transmitters. I rearrange my furniture into a barricade, sleep in the closet, and pass the time by lecturing Marxist economic theory to my shoes. My pair of Adidas Sambas plan a mutiny, but I overhear their cabal. On the fourth night, I feign sleep until they doze off, then seize one and use it to beat the other to death. A cruel and ironic fate, true, but they deserve no better, the traitors. I am finally flushed out of my barricade by a horde of ill-tempered, genetically-mutated tree frogs that only I can see. Jay is behind this, somehow. I know it. I'll get that treacherous, invisible tree frog-controlling scoundrel...

...

I woke up four days later in a dumpster behind Jammin' Java. I guess I was drawn to the smell. There's a lesson to learn in all of this: everything in moderation. Excess of caffeine can be dangerous, but apparently absence of caffeine can be equally traumatic—though psychadelically intriguing. Or, in the words of John Calvin, which I will now attempt (and likely fail) to paraphrase, "Our sin is usually not in what we want, but in that we want it too much." It's true. We too often polarize ourselves.  There are lines that we know we cannot cross, true.  But for many aspects of life, all or nothing are usually both pitfalls. We are, as one theologian put it, like a drunk who cannot stay in the middle of the road. We stumble into the ditch on one side, then climb out and proceed to stumble into the ditch on the other side. I suppose you can also think of these extremes as the gutters lining either side of our spiritual bowling lane. Let this be a lesson to you.

I must now prepare to encounter similar psychotic breaks when Jay finally pulls the plug on the computer. Help me help him—if you see him online, kindly ignore him. It's for his own good. When you see him, encourage him. And remember that he has to go through hell to get out the other side. If he starts looking at his shoes in a distrusting manner or raving about tree frogs, don't fret. It's not pretty to watch, but it's a sign that the healing has begun.