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My Trip To the Spa - De File
Does Collecting Make You Feel Dirty?
10:33 pm October 3rd, 2007
cbertsch
cbertsch
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My Trip To the Spa
Don't worry. I haven't really gone to the spa. It's just that I started my yearly withdrawal-from-caffeine ritual yesterday and I feel like I'm having one of those treatments that hurts in order to help. As I told my class yesterday, my condition also guarantees that I will randomly forget certain common words, that I will become unreasonably annoyed at inconsequential matters, that I will feel the need to drink lots and lots of orange juice, and that I will be overcome with fierce cravings for chocolate, Coca-Cola, green tea and even Barq's inexplicably carbonated, I mean caffeinated root beer many times each day.

My mind knows how to stop the coffee urge before I perceive it. But my body keeps remembering new ways to indulge. And ways of cheating, too. I'm sure I'll conclude that I'm due for a yerba maté soon, since it affects the brain similarly. So what's the benefit of this purgatory of purging? I'll gain weight, most likely. I'll get tired at odd times. I'll sleep more than usual. Oh, and I'll be grumpier too. The only consolation, the moment that I'm waiting for from the minute I start, is the moment when I have my first espresso after I decide my rehab is over. There's nothing like a good cup of coffee when your system is all cleaned out and ready to absorb its wonders.

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66 comments or Leave a comment
Comments
Thread started by Christopher Pratt
cpratt From: cpratt Date: October 4th, 2007 01:36 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Dude. Barq's is caffeinated. Drink AYOR.
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 01:42 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
As I discovered many years ago while thinking I was remaining pure, despite suddenly downing can after can. That's why I wrote "inexplicably carbonated," since root beer usually isn't.
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Thread started by Pure Wind from a Pure Land
_luaineach From: _luaineach Date: October 4th, 2007 01:55 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
::nods::
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 01:59 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Make what has become constricted open wide once more!
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
Thread started by Lavra
elf_owl From: elf_owl Date: October 4th, 2007 02:02 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
ooh. I don't know if I go do my vegetarian/vegan thing *and* cut out caffeine, but I'm tempted. I'm starting the vegetarian thing tomorrow. Maybe a week in I can cut out the caffeine, then a week later start the vegan thing. Then when I'm done the whole thing and have my first espresso and bacon, I'll have non-sex-related orgasms.
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 02:04 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Espresso and bacon. Mmmmmmmm. Or should I say, "Ohhhhhh."
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Thread started by catfishvegas
From: catfishvegas Date: October 4th, 2007 02:25 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
That's why it's so nice being an irregular coffee drinker - when it works, it WORKS!
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 10:23 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Good point. But I like it too much to be irregular. Sigh.
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Thread started by Elaine Axten
From: e4q Date: October 4th, 2007 06:54 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

in the fight club between the mind and the body...
the body gets some serious punches in.

personally, my body only allows me one coffee a day, otherwise it makes me shake and have severe head pain, but it also does demand the one it allows me, so that i can function long enough to play my morning scrabble goes and read my friend's pages. the rest of the day the television pretty much owns my ass.
if i could trade my body in for one that gives me a DAY - ordinary normal energy - i would take it. i am even ready to trade in my swishy hair and wondrous breasts.(what am i SAYING????)
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 10:25 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

Re: in the fight club between the mind and the body...
::laughing::

At least there's the telly. And at least you can have that one cup of coffee. Does tea affect you the same way?
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Thread started by Jim
jakemacalister From: jakemacalister Date: October 4th, 2007 08:20 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I am in the midst of my annual reduce the caffiene trope. I can only have "the stuff" outside of the house and only in one form but before 7PM. You know writing this out makes me sound crazy!

J
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 10:24 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Not at all. It makes you sound like someone who has read Aristotle's Ethics and the second and third volumes of Foucault's History of Sexuality!
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Thread started by elizabeg
elizabeg From: elizabeg Date: October 4th, 2007 01:31 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I keep thinking I'll go green tea only but never make it. I like coffee too much. I'm doing pretty well with my no caffeine after noon rule, though. But once the library re-opens its break room, I'm thinking about imposing afternoon tea to help keep me productive during my regular window of brain-freeze from 3 til close. If I'm good, I might make that a hibiscus/jamaica trip. But I might be bad and drink green tea or worse. Hmmm...

Good luck with your purge. The one day when my attempt to ice my coffee the night before failed and I didn't get my daily jolt until 1pm, I was enraged--partly from my foiled plan to avoid Starbucks, but partly from withdrawal. J was afraid--very afraid...
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 4th, 2007 01:34 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I don't think green tea has the same negative effect in the afternoon. Even black tea seems less likely to lead to agitation.
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Thread started by tpratt
tpratt From: tpratt Date: October 5th, 2007 07:04 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
The mind fights and claws and wheedles to get what it wants. If I can't have alcohol or dope or pills or cigars, I want the skin off of fried chicken or crispy bacon or ketchup or Mexican Coca-Cola or a bloody steak. I even tried a cup of strong Chock Full o Nuts coffee the other day and was so fucking high off it I could swear I was seeing colors brighter than usual. At least with your ritual you know in the back of your mind that you'll be making love to mother coffee again someday.
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: October 6th, 2007 12:48 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
That's the whole point of the ritual. Abstinence makes the ____ grow fonder! Please note that I've been craving every item you mention in your list since I read it. Especially the Mexican Coke and the chicken skin.
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Charlie Bertsch
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ABOUT DE FILE
You're looking at content from my Live Journal, which I have been keeping since 2003. I consider it a personal blog, though it lacks stream-of-consciousness revelations that typify that genre.

That said, if you manage to discern the confessional mode within entries that are superficially tight-lipped, I will reward you handsomely. Or at least pretend to do so.

In addition to reflections, however mediated, on my daily activities, De File features periodic excavations of material from my "files," a revelation sure to disturb anyone who has seen my garage. It's an experiment in integrating past and present, perhaps with a little redemption along the way.

Politics is always on my mind, but rarely explicit here. I’m working on a theory about what personal writing like this does to literary identification and why some people resist its pull so powerfully. But my goal is to make that theory dissolve in my practice, a density in liquid.

You'll note that I have links to blogs not on LiveJournal directly above, as well as assorted websites of note. The blogs I read regularly on LiveJournal itself fall under "FRIENDS" at the top, for those of you unfamiliar with LJ’s workings.

You can write me. I'm "cbertsch" before the circle-a and "comcast.net" after it.
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