CaffeiNE(IN)

My preternatural and laughable experience with caffeine as a highly-sensitive person

Hi! Happy New Year. Here’s a new story!

I ingested the drug of choice after around 2 hours of waking. I hadn’t checked my phone first thing in the morning, making sure to have my circadian rhythm in sync by viewing the morning sun AWA (After Waking Up).

The drug I’m talking about here is caffeine, yes, the same caffeine that 30-40% of the world consumes on a daily basis and does not go crazy, at least for the most part (I suppose). The recommended amount for an adult was 1-3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight and doing some rough calculations at the back of my head by looking at the back of the coffee powder packet I had in my fridge from the last time someone wanted coffee in my apartment, I was pretty sure I was having less than the minimum recommended amount. I tried to play it safe. I mixed the coffee with a tiny spill of almond milk and gulped it down like medicine. It tasted bitter.

I started feeling its effects within a few minutes when I decided to do the dishes. I put on a podcast and felt like I ceremoniously washed each plate, spoon, lid and vessel at 1.75x my usual speed and agility. I remember texting someone that I had all this energy pouring through me and I didn’t know what to do with it. Chores were a breeze - I could go on and never get tired. Throughout this fiasco, though, I had an incessant background buzz of jitteriness that I conjectured was an inherent effect. I ignored it. I figured trying to learn something would be a good use of my experimenting time. I watched lectures at 2x speed and noticed how my reading ability was significantly bumped up interspersed with a bombardment of my brain with grand ideas. The irony was very evident as I struggled to capture these ideas (which filled up two leaves of my notebook) while breezing through them. Something interesting happened on the struggling end just then. Contrary to the expected effects, I started feeling very sleepy. To add fuel to the fire, my appetite demanded a full meal just a couple of hours after having breakfast.

I cooked some food and devoured it still feeling only 80% full. Little did I know the food monster would come back for more. I was forced to take a nap by the pricking pain at the back of my head and troublesome yawns. I had about a forty-five-minute nap interrupted by my mom’s phone call which I felt like I answered in a dream. All were at least manageable until a few seconds after waking up when I was staring at the wall and my gaze shifted and rested upon the mirror. The everyday things I saw in there reflected off of my room started appearing like rough cartoon forms. I was seeing patterns everywhere I looked! That’s the moment I knew this was serious. Raise your hand if you ever felt this high on a bare minimum dose of caffeine. I’m guessing you probably didn’t and I’m telling you you’re qualified to pity me.

The night was the worst part. I could barely sleep and as if that wasn’t enough, my neighbours decided to cook or perhaps clean their kitchen utensils at 1:30 AM. The jitters from the caffeine combined with the idea that there might be a burglar in my house, trying to make Maggi at a wee hour caused my brain to scream so hard internally that it was just funny in retrospect - the kind of funny that arises when it’s become so bad you can’t help but laugh at it. Hysteria? I think all that wakefulness caused me to feel feverish and brought with it a pain at the back of my neck that devilishly imitated a minor migraine.

It’s the next day evening now. I still haven’t completely recovered from the effects of sleep deprivation caused by caffeine and the meta-worry. I had a pretty good laugh with a couple of my close ones over this crazy incident and maybe, if there’s a next time (which probably shall not be from my deliberate addition of ‘NEIN’ in CaffeiNE(IN)), I’d take a lot less caffeine and add in a trip-sitter to get me through it! Meanwhile, if you’re one of those people who can have three cups of coffee a day and still be okay, I’ll always look at you and wonder away into the distance, you, not-so-sensitive, normal human!

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