Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"So when that bee flew into my ear a moment ago, I did the only sensible thing -- I screamed like a schoolgirl and executed a maneuver that would have Newton reconsidering a few principles, had he seen them. (You may be familiar with the phenomenon if you've ever tried to operate a vacuum cleaner near a housecat.) I'm not sure how I managed to contort myself that way, exactly... let's just say I'm glad I decided to fulfill my P.E. requirement with a Yoga class." -- joemorf, "There's Nothing in Here But Bees!", 2004-09-09

*grumble*

I finally heard the clue-phone ringing and looked at the label of the 3-liter bottle of root beer I've been drinking from this week. They've added caffeine to this brand where there wasn't any before! (It's something I check before buying an unfamiliar brand. This brand used to be safe.) Dammit!

Now I'm wondering how much of my body's working so poorly this week -- the headaches, the wooziness, the low-grade but long-lasting nausea, the too-drowsy-to-drive, the poor sleep, the shaking hands -- are from unexpected caffeine instead of the fibromyalgia and would-have-happened-anyhow migraine. That is, sometimes I have weeks this bad "just because", but I wonder how much of this week coud've been avoided. Dammit!

(It does finally explain that mysterious "caffeine hangover" feeling I reported recently anyhow.)

Caffeine is a useful tool, and it's good to keep some (and/or theophylline) in the house. Mostly for treating migraines. But I've got problems with the stuff in general. It makes me drowsy without actually making it any easier to sleep (yes, drowsy, and yes, I realize most of my friends use it to wake up). If I'm not already suffering the kind of headache it helps with, it can induce a pretty nasty headache itself. It upsets my stomach. It's nasty stuff for me to get by surprise. Y'all remind me to check all the other brands of root beer that I sometimes buy, the next few times I go shopping, just in case any other brands have suddenly decided to add drugs to the drink (or other store-brands are sourced from the same manufacturer), okay? *grrrr*

(Canadian OTC codeine comes with an analgesic -- either aspirin or acetaminophen -- and a bit of caffeine. This makes sense as a headache remedy, and I've read that it's also partly to deter recreational use (by making an uncomfortable caffeine overdose happen before recreational (or worse, overdose) levels of codeine are consumed), but it's a disadvantage for me when taking it for fibromyalgia related muscle pain, and one of the things I have to ask myself when the muscle pain is bad enough to reach for pills is, "Is it bad enough to put up with the caffeine hit?" But since I can legally obtain it w/o being able to afford health insurance, unlike oxycodone and hydrocodone (each of which works better for me anyhow), it's what I've got. If not taken with cheese, it causes pretty intense stomach discomfort (I'm extremely grateful to the friend who clued me in about the cheese helping a few years ago); I've never known whether the stomach discomfortt was from the codeine, the caffeine, or both.)

(Hmm. Come to think of it, this might also expain whu I've been even more reluctant than usual to take codeine this week for pain. Maybe my body knew something I wasn't consciously aware of.)

There are situations where I can handle reasonable quantities of caffeine. For some reason I can (usually) handle cola with pizza -- proper pizza-parlour pizza, not frozen, not even the brands of frozen pizza I like -- though even then, if I have a choice, I'll avoid it unless I'm using it as a tool against an existing headache. And sometimes when no non-diet, non-caffeinated beverage is available, I'll assess the current state of my body and decide, "I can probably get away with it today (and I'm occasionally wrong). But in general, it's good for me to avoid that particular alkaloid and it's kissing-cousin theophylline (which is found in tea).

Note that most root beer is not spiked with a stimulant. But there are a few brands ... And now at least one more, it seems.

When I was younger, caffeine had no discernable effect on me. In high school I cheerfully chugged huge quantites of caffeinated beverages (including triple-strength instant iced-tea (look, my taste buds eventually grew up...)) without really paying any attention to the presence or absence of caffeine in whatever I drank. Back then it didn't make me drowsy or give me headaches. It also didn't do a bloody thing to wake me up or keep me awake, nor make me jumpy. It was as though my body mostly just ignored caffeine. (Though I did occasionally, after long stretches of high caffeine intake, notice withdrawal symptoms for a few days when I stopped -- so my body wasn't completely ignoring it; I just didn't feel any of the effects that other people felt from it.) A few years later, something changed and I started noticing that it made me drowsy, and I started avoiding it. Nowadays, with the fibromyalgia, "feeling okay" is a pretty precarious state and I really don't want unexpected drugs tipping me off of whatever physiological balancing point I manage to achieve.

The way I felt when I woke up this mroning, I was dreading the entire day up to the point where we start playing tonight (the Homespun Ceilidh Band at the Pirate Feast in Adelphi, MD). Playing won't be so bad, though I'd much rather play feeling well and alert, but dragging my butt through getting ready and loading the car and setting up equipment, and worrying whether I fell alert enough to driv are going to pretty much suck. I also woke still feeling frustrated about not having made it down to visit anniemal during the week as both she and I had wanted -- all week I've felt too messed up to manage to get there; I made it out of the house once during the week, and was feeling kind of marginal about driving even then. If all of this was because I was insufficiently paranoid about beverage recipe changes ...

*grumble*

Yeah, I know the manufacturer doesn't have a contract with me that says additions to or deletions from the recipe will be marked in large print on the front of the label ("New Formula!! Now Drugged!!"), but it was still a surprise. I wouldn't be so annoyed if I'd simply forgotten to check the ingredients on a brand I'd never tried before, or if it were a beverage such as cola, where caffeine can be assumed unless its removal is explicitly noted.

Of course, I know I'm unusual for thinking of caffeine as a drug, which seems like a terribly odd situation, since so many of the people I know who choose caffeinated drinks seem to be very deliberately using it As A Drug while somehow maintaining that cognitive disconnect. ("I need a cup of coffee to wake me up." "I'm feeling tired so let me grab a Coke." "Gosh, what's the point of coffee if it's decaf?" -- none of these are unusual statements for me to hear.) It's one thing for someone who doesn't particularly notice the effects to not pay attention to it's drug-nature, but folks who use it deliberately as a chemical tool? (Frequently an appropriately applied tool -- 'drug" != "bad" -- but still, an "ingest this chemical for this effect" usage.) And I'm pretty sure most manufacturers who add caffeine where it doesn't naturally occur are not doing so for flavour (are they?).

So I guess most people wouldn't think of that "minor recipe change" as being such a big deal. For me, it matters.

Anyone got any ideas (other than not drinking any more root beer today) for speeding up my recovery from accidentally drugging myself?