I drink a lot of coffee.

Anyone who knows me responds, “No, duh.”

I could attempt to trace this back to when I first started drinking coffee-if I remembered-and my subsequent evolution as a coffee drinker. That would appeal to my strength of context but would not serve the point of this essay.

Currently, I drink three cups of coffee a day: one with breakfast, one at school during planning and one as I unwind at the end of the day. That final cup is just as caffeinated as the first. At the beginning of the school year I discovered that I needed that cup of coffee to sleep well. I tried to cut it out in an effort to get the best sleep possible but found that effort counterproductive.

Last week, the “unthinkable” happened. I ran out of coffee.

Mom offered to make the Costco run for me, something that I had to keep putting off thanks to several long days at school. She also brought over some of their coffee to tide me over. (I have the best mom ever.) The “crisis” would have been averted. Unfortunately, all she had left was decaf.

Finding the words to describe the brain fog that ensued would be a Herculean task. I have never experienced anything like that before.

I first noticed the effects in first period when I attempted to speak in Spanish. The words took their time to come if they came at all. Perhaps a better way to describe this would be a brain quagmire. The thoughts were lost in a thick, soupy mess.

During my planning period, I could barely keep my eyes open which meant that my first planning period without a meeting drowned in the brain quagmire.

I trudged through the remainder of the day which included a two hour grad class after school. By that time, a pounding headache joined the quagmire. I felt terrible and still had Life Group ahead before I could go home. I even contemplated taking the next day as a sick day; that’s how awful I felt.

After a couple ibuprofen and a large cup of coffee at Life Group, I felt completely fine. By the time I got in my car to head home, I felt like a normal, functioning human being again.

This experience generated thought-provoking questions, questions to which I do not have answers. Two conflicting facts drive this dilemma. One, I sleep significantly better when I drink a cup of regular coffee in the evening. Two, the lack of caffein has the potential to detrimentally affect my work and overall functioning.

Over the weeks and months to come I hope to explore this and come to a much better balance, a balance that, hopefully, does not include dependence on a thing, in this case a chemical.