I Think I'm Addicted to Caffeine

It's strange. I didn't think it was possible. But maybe that's because I used to only drink about 24 oz of coffee a day.

And then I switched to tea.

I don't normally drink the tea for the caffeine content like I do coffee, except for in the morning with my breakfast. The rest of the day, I'm drinking it for the health benefits and the fact that it's flavored water (I need to get my water intake somehow!). And even though tea has at least half the amount of caffeine as coffee, I'm drinking at least twice as much. I'm at 3-4 16oz cups a day (although I only use 1 tea bag for 16 oz of water). And if I still can't wake up, I have some coffee as well at work.

Here's what happened.

I woke up today after about 8-9 hours of sleep. I was still tired, but I got up anyway because we needed to go grocery shopping. Justin was still sleeping though because he went to bed late, so I made myself an egg mcmuffin (if I said 'egg muffin' instead, what would you think of?) and a cup of tea and settled in for a couple of hours of Once Upon A Time (great show by the way. I'm half way through season 1 already). The tea I chose this morning wasn't my normal faire of Bigelow Vanilla Chai Tea. It was a loose leaf organic chocolate chai blend from Marlene's. I have no idea of its caffeine content. Just as Justin was about to get up though, I became soul-crushingly fatigued. I had a pressure headache that felt so different than anything I'd ever felt before. And the fatigue was new too. I've been lazily tired before. I've even yawned myself to death and had droopy eyes. That's normal for me. But this... my headache was causing me to feel as if I could barely stand. Barely walk. It was kind of scary. I decided to take a couple of advil and see if more sleep would help. Justin went out for a bit and I thought that if I could sleep until he returned, my headache would be gone and I'd feel better. But nope. Although extremely fatigued, I didn't really fall into REM while Justin was gone and woke up when he got back. Still with the headache. 
So, I reached for the caffeine. The only source in my house is through tea, so I made my strongest kind: the vanilla chai. Almost instantly after I drank it, the headache disappeared, and the first thing I thought was "uh oh".

I had thought I was immune to the addiction. After all, I drank coffee every morning and skipped weekends without any consequences. But I guess I just hadn't been drinking enough before. I still find it odd, though. I'd had caffeine this morning. Oh well. It's still worth it. The tea is very much worth the cost of the caffeine addiction. After all, I do seem to have a bubble of immunity from getting sick! It wakes me up and keeps me well! Win freaking win, in my book!