Digital Lifesavers

You gotta give it to Canada! Canadian University Offers Spam and Spyware Writing Course Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything, except that I tried Mozilla Thunderbird for a week to try its spam-filtering capabilities, only to run whimpering back to MS Outlook 2003 this week after desperately missing its wealth of features and integration with a Pocket PC sych’able calendar.  This still has nothing to do with any of the rest of this post, I’m sure.

Last week, I had this revelation that all of the falling asleep at work, in the car, and occasionally on the floor of my home theatre was*maybe* indicating to me that it was time to try the caffeine again.  (And yes, get more sleep, yadda yadda yadda.)  Now, most of you are probably thinking, “Try caffeine?  What’s the big deal?”  But you have to realize that I haven’t consumed caffeine (at least not on purpose) for the purpose of being more wakeful for, well, ever, actually.  Yes, I have NEVER used caffeine to keep myself awake.  Ever.  How is this possible in Silicon Valley, land of Starbucks and Cola?

Well, a couple factors may offer an explanation:

1) Some people have warm milk before going to bed.  I used to drink a can of room temperature Mountain Dew every night before turning in.  I guess it was a quirky thing to take pride in, some sort of stupid human trick.  Anyway, after doing that throughout freshman year at Stanford, I pretty much concluded that caffeine did not help me stay awake.  Neither do road construction noises, loud dance parties in the same room, nor Chinese water torture devices.

2) I largely stay away from soda and other caffeinated drinks.  I really don’t care for carbonated drinks in general anymore.  Probably also after freshman year, I got pretty fed up with soda, especially when the orange juice was unlimited in the dining hall.  (Well, unlimited until the concentrate ran out and you ended up with orange-tinged water.)  I think I often feel that my teeth are actually rotting away when I have no choice but to drink soda.  I can’t think of a *single* occasion of having consumed Coca Cola or Pepsi in the past… 3 or 4 years(?).  Coffees and teas aren’t that interesting to me either, especially the part where they stain your teeth.  Bleh.

3) I suck at taking drugs.  By some combination of chemical aversion and laziness and pride and absentmindedness, I say no to drugs, whether we’re talking about antibiotics, cold medication, vitamins, neosporin, or caffeine.  I think that in general, if I can be fairly confident that not taking a drug is not going to kill me, I just default to not taking it.  Yeah, it drives my mom crazy.

Anyway, to take us back to the beginning of this story, I was feeling oh-so-sleepy at work yesterday (i.e. nodding off in a meeting with just my boss and two other coworkers), so then I decided to try a can of Red Bull again (which didn’t do anything in the past, according to me) because I had had this revelation that maybe that’s what was missing in my life.  Well, all I have to say is that its effect on me was simply remarkable.  I felt great!  I really did feel like it gave me new wings and delivered its promise of “improved performance especially during times of increased stress” and “increased concentration and reaction speed” for the rest of my day.  I felt like I could do anything with the sudden boost of taurine and glucuronolactone.  I went to jujitsu last night and got tossed around the mat like a rag doll by a 250 lb. guy, and it felt fantastic.  Wahoo!

Only time will tell whether or not I soon join the millions around the world who subscribe to this miracle drug, who cannot get by without their daily shot of caffeine.  In the meantime, since I am obviously completely and utterly clueless about how to use caffeine appropriately, I’d appreciate any tips you may have to offer from your wealth of experience.  Thanks!