A Bad Buzz

I love coffee; it’s smooth and bitter and delicious. It’s my breakfast beverage of choice, and I look forward to that cup of coffee in the morning to wake me up. Rarely will I have a second cup of coffee in the day, but if I do it’s in the afternoon so my body has enough time to process that caffeine. Well, recently I had a cup of coffee after dinner and while it was a fine decision in the moment, I paid for it later that night when I couldn’t fall asleep.

Perhaps my body was confused and thought it was morning so it wanted to be up. It was quite frustrating because that caffeine wouldn’t let me sleep even though I was tired and I wanted to sleep. I tried multiple times to make myself relax. I tried reading. I tried counting to ten repeatedly. I tried thinking of nothing. And I repeated most of these fruitless relaxation attempts numerous times over at least a four-hour period and nothing really worked.

I guess eventually I sort of fell asleep but it wasn’t good sleep. It wasn’t refreshing sleep. And I still woke up about the same time as I normally do, so I didn’t sleep for that long either. Of course, once I woke up I had my cup of coffee because I knew I needed that caffeine buzz to stay awake during the day. [Sigh.] Caffeine: a great friend and a great enemy.