By
Sarah Clark: For Complete Post, Click Here…
ngd-Also, high doses of B-6...
Dear Caffeine,
God, I love you. I have loved you for as long as I can remember. The sweet nectar of Dr Pepper is a lifeline after a long day, a need for an all-nighter or just to soothe my day. We have had a love affair for my entire life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t drink soda.
I do not like you in coffee. I do not like you in tea. I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I Am. However, I love you in soda and I used to have a brief tryst with you in energy drinks. My love of Dr Pepper is not just for the energy burst, but also the memories of times long past.
I began to love you because I wanted to be like my Aunt Meleea. She was my idol, all throughout my youth. She drank Dr Pepper, so I did too. My father is a Coke fanatic, but I only tolerate a Coke every once in a while. No, Dr Pepper is the greatest toxic relationship of my life. I also have a weakness for Big Red. Perhaps it’s the Texan in me.
We had a bad breakup when I was in college, my dearest Caffeine. I decided to quit you cold turkey. I paid for that. Weeks of headaches and emotional attachment put asunder. However, I was in a weird headspace at the time. I went on a health kick, primarily because I felt so weird. Looking back now, I realized I was in the beginnings of my bipolar disorder fluctuations becoming a cycle, instead of just bursts of lower level mood swings I have experienced all my life.
Bipolar tore our love affair apart, Caffeine. Looking back, she has always been in our way. An interloper. I can see the signs of childhood bipolar quite clearly now, and my first prolonged manic episode was when I was 11 or 12 years old. We had a particularly hot couple of months, you and I. I drank more and more soda as a way to maintain the high. I needed you, Caffeine. Sometimes mania makes me run into your arms, in a way that is manipulative for me, at least.
