My growing relationship with coffee couldn't have anything to do with my growing insomnia, could it?
I am writing this in the silent, softly carpeted living room known as 2 AM.
I’d love to be in bed, asleep, but it just doesn’t come easy to me anymore. My insomnia kicked in sometime after I graduated from college, as the once-occasional sleepless nights gradually became the norm.
There have been nights when I would literally be near tears: so exhausted, but utterly unable to drift off.
I was on Ambien for a little while, but it didn’t really help. It would wrestle me into unconsciousness, but it was an artificial and unsatisfying sleep that only lasted a few hours, tops. When an all-powerful substance like Ambien doesn’t work (the warning label practically says “Do not take if you are more than three feet from your bed”), it’s time for drastic measures. So I tried giving up coffee.
• • •
When I was very young, I loved the smell of coffee, but I thought it tasted terrible. I imagined an adulthood in which I brewed the same pot of coffee every morning just to fill my mansion’s kitchen with the aroma. When my public complained about the wastefulness of making coffee that I never drank, I’d gently remind them at a press conference, “I appreciate your outrage, but I’ve only ever made the one pot of coffee. I’m not wasting it.”
But I remember my first coffee-fueled morning, my sophomore year of high school. I combined equal parts Folgers crystals and sugar, filled the mug halfway with milk, and finally added the boiling water.
We had a bus driver who would greet every kid who stepped on: “Morning.” Usually, I responded with a muttered “Morning” in return. But this day, the dawn of my coffee life, I shot back a sprightly “Good Morning!!” It wasn’t until I was in my seat that I realized how exuberantly I’d answered. Surely, I had stumbled upon some kind of miracle chemical.
It was a time when my body liked to show off by drinking Coke late at night and sleeping like a baby. I simply didn’t understand all the fuss about caffeine keeping you awake.
• • •
I’ve learned to embrace insomnia. There’s a point during the night when I know that sleep is not coming. It’s tough to describe – it’s a subtle, almost feverish feeling, accompanied by a sense of the night unspooling before me. But instead of lying there cursing my fate, like I used to do, I get out of bed and find something else to pass the time.
Blackness and silence push against the windows like fog – I’ve slipped into an uncharted area of the day. There’s something giddy about the thought that everybody I will encounter today is asleep right now.
My eyes are usually too tired to read at this hour. But I’ve discovered that TV on DVD is an insomniac’s best friend. I’ve taken in seasons of The Simpsons, The Office, Six Feet Under, and (forgive me) Family Guy during these velvet, ebon hours. Usually, an episode or two will convince my mind to loosen its grip on whatever it’s clutching, and I’ll crawl back to bed and into slumber.
• • •
In college I was still only an occasional coffee drinker, and the coffee I made for myself was lousy and purely for utility. But during my junior year, I was involved in a group project for an advertising class, and we decided to hold our first meeting at the Espresso Royale coffee shop in Champaign. In over two years as a student, I hadn’t set foot in the place, but I showed up early and had to order something while I waited. For some reason, the “raspberry mocha” caught my eye.
It was a huge cappuccino drink, supersaturated with chocolate and raspberry, then topped with an Everest of whipped cream and a lattice of scarlet raspberry treacle. It. Was. Magnificent. For the first time, drinking coffee was a pleasurable experience, having seduced me via my love of candy. And when a caffeine buzz dovetails with a sugar high, the colors of the world intensify.
I hated group projects. But I was an enthusiastic participant at that meeting.
• • •
After battling insomnia for a couple years, I underwent a sleep study.
Here’s what happens in a sleep study. They take someone who has trouble sleeping in his own bed and lay him down in a strange one. They attach cold, gelled sensors to his chest, each wired to a machine on the nightstand. Does he normally sleep on his front? Not tonight, he won’t. And the tossing and turning he’s accustomed to must be negotiated carefully, or he winds up tangled like a poorly stored marionette. And for good measure, why not affix a plastic clip to his index finger that starts beeping if his pulse drops too far?
In my case, the last thing the doctor said before disappearing into the next room (where I knew he would be monitoring me all night) was, “If you don’t fall asleep, the results will be worthless, so make sure you fall asleep, okay?”
Well, thanks.
• • •
By the time I finished college, my tolerance for caffeine had been raised pretty far. I didn’t get a rush out of it anymore. Plus, I’d weaned myself from sugar and cream in my coffee. (The last time I had a raspberry mocha, I shuddered at its sugary assault.) Sure, a vanilla coffee consoled me through a rough breakup senior year, but for the most part, black was, well, my new black.
One night shortly after I moved to Chicago, my then-girlfriend had a birthday. Her Italian mama made us all espresso, which I’d never had before. It was delicious, and it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on me. And such tiny cups, too! Yes, I’d love a second. And a third.
After the party, we headed out to see an improv show. While frantically beckoning to my friends to run across Clark Street against the light or we’d be late, it occurred to me how anxious and fidgety and paranoid I was.
Three late-night shots of espresso don’t make you very receptive to improvisational theatre. There’s a reason those theatres serve beer instead. (Coffee and beer are exact opposite beverages. Coffee is a stimulant, beer is a depressant. Coffee is an AM drink, beer is a PM drink. Coffee tastes best hot, beer tastes best cold, and they both become undrinkable as they approach room temperature.) By the end of the show, I had crashed. I was so tired I could barely string words together. Ironically, I think I slept like a log that night.
• • •
The sleep study was inconclusive. Tylenol PM just made me a groggy insomniac. And taking walks and eating bananas, in case I had restless leg syndrome, did nothing at all. So I gave up coffee, cold turkey.
As expected, the first several days brought intense withdrawal headaches. One day I told myself, “If I wake up with another one of these damn headaches tomorrow, screw it, I’m going back on coffee.”
Miraculously, the next day I had no headache. Nor the one after that. I’d licked it!
Except for the heart palpitations.
I’d be minding my own business, in a state of decent relaxation, when suddenly my heart would speed up for a couple seconds, and my body would be infused with an artificial sense of panic. Sometimes this happened several times in an hour.
As an experiment, I took up coffee again. Almost immediately, the palpitations stopped. (There’s a bit of irony here, in that my mom gets them when she does drink caffeine.)
So… I guess the bad news is I’m dependent on coffee.
But it’s 3:30 AM now, and my head feels heavy and my stomach feels weightless. I think I may be ready to leave this world behind for a few hours.
And when I wake up, the promise of a deep black pool of hot coffee will be the only lure powerful enough to get me back out of bed again.
I’m going to need it.
The Banquet of Life is a bi-weekly look at one man's life through the food he eats.
