Blog #23 for HONO1397

 For this part of the personal blog I want to discuss a caffeine problem I have dealt with for some time. As you know through my previous blogs, I’ve struggled with sleeping for a couple of weeks and although I blame it on me staying up late, the reason behind me staying up late is because of caffeine. It is difficult to explain and it’s even harder to open up about it but I’ve realized that I consume a hefty amount of caffeine. I’ve noticed that I tend to be more attracted to caffeine by the end of the night rather than in the morning or throughout the day. This obviously results in my inability to sleep and why you read that I’ve literally gone to bed at 4am for consecutive days. I drink at least one caffeinated drink a day and in some instances, just because I need a drink to go along with my food I’ll sip on another one. The effects that caffeine used to have on me no longer exist, the only neurological effect my body has is the blocking of the adenosine receptors in the brain which prevent me from going to sleep. Regardless of how much darkness I succumb myself to, I can no longer produce a decent amount of melatonin to get me to sleep, and I toss and turn in the dark for hours before I can finally go to bed. I try to not take caffeine everyday, at least not in big amounts, and sometimes I do successfully go a day or two without consuming caffeine but I have realized that any longer will cause me to develop slight headaches. Just a couple of days ago, I began to have headaches because I hadn’t drank an energy drink in a couple of days. Therefore, unfortunately, I’ve become dependent of caffeine to a certain extent. If i look at it through the lens of caffeine’s half life, I don’t think my caffeine levels have been below 100mg in a long time, which is bad! It’s extremely bad and I know I need to decrease my caffeine consumption but the road is long to do so. I write this now in order to spread some sort of awareness on the effects caffeine has when you’ve consumed too much of it for too long.