A while back I joined Arnold Schwarzenegger's newsletter. Like any kid in the 'Eighties, I loved the hell out of his movies, and it looked like he was trying to cultivate a "positive corner of the internet." The internet can be a truly awful place, so I thought, what the hell? Why not? You can join it yourself if you want to here. There is a monthly one that is very lengthy and a brief daily one that goes over how to be more healthy and how to get in shape.
I don't always read everything because a lot of it doesn't apply to me. I can't do a lot of the workouts because of my bad leg and my ever-increasingly-bad hands. But it makes for interesting reading sometimes, and it does leave me feeling warm and fuzzy every now and again. Even a misanthrope like me needs that sometimes.
A lot of you know about my struggles with caffeine. Quitting booze was infinitely easier than quitting caffeine. I will say, when I was in detox I also detoxed from caffeine, but here I am, glugging down Monster energy drinks every fucking day. At least I get the sugar free ones now. The Zero Ultra is pretty good, actually.
In one of the daily newsletters something caught my attention. Very few people on this planet view caffeine as a bad drug that shouldn't be consumed. That's because almost everyone is addicted to it, and they don't give it a second thought. My own doctor (the one who once told me that fat diabetics don't survive the zombie apocalypse) reacted like this when I told him I was trying to quit caffeine:
In the newsletter in question, it brings up a study that shows that chewing gum in the morning is just as effective as drinking a cup of coffee. (I'm paraphrasing from memory, here, so don't hold me to that exactly.)
No one knows why. They just know it works. The theory is that chewing puts your jaw muscles to work, and it sends signals up to your brain for awareness. Goddammit, I wish I wasn't hooked on caffeine again. I'd love to try this experiment. The thought of going through the headaches again is not a pleasant thought.
Fuck. I guess I'm going to have to give it a shot. Because gum is a lot less expensive than the giant Monster cans I get every day. It's a matter of necessity at this point.
Fucking fuckety fuck. OK, maybe I'll give this another go starting next week.
PS: I'm really upset with Blogger because last night, in the tags section, I put "Mandatory Metallica" something like five or eight times. It let me do it in the draft, but when I published it, it deleted all except for one. So yeah. I said it a lot more last night than you read. If I die tomorrow, please remember that I did that last night. Tell your kids so they can tell their grandkids, etc. It might be my only claim to immortality.
