I realized I was hardcore addicted to tea one day at work: it was a busy day but my brain was sluggish and irritated. Something was amiss, but what? No signs of withdrawal appeared other than a few symptoms quite invisible to the outside world. Then I got to thinking about my habits.. and realized that I had become accustomed to filling my mug three, four, five times a day sometimes - nuking 10 or 12 ounce sof water at 2.5 minute blasts, and brewing loose or bagged tea, just to keep warm. On those days when the little old Virginia office sweltered because the AC was down, well, I drank tea then, too. And not just health-conscious green tea, either - usually some fruity variety of relatively high-octane black tea, because I have a huge collection of it in the drawer in my desk - too close to resist temptation.
Compared to coffee, tea is mild; but caffeine is caffeine, and my body doesn't know the difference between two cups of black tea and one cup of coffee. What my body did know was that I was inadvertently starving it on the day of my realization.
The idea of becoming dependent on something outside the self is uncomfortable to me to begin with - I prefer to power through pain from minor scrapes or headaches without the aid of a pill, and antibiotics make me nervous - but that wasn't it for me. It was the withdrawal symptoms that hammered the point home. Into my frontal lobe.
Why allow myself to get into some habit that I would have to keep up for the rest of my life if I didn't want to experience a fog of irritation everytime I forgot to feed the addiction? I've weaned myself off other material comforts in the name of environmental conservation, but the comfort of a fragrant cup never fell into the same mental category before. Until now.
So I'm on a strict regimen of herbal tea from here on out. I'm down to one cup of black/caffeinated tea per day (max). I know I'll miss the process of brewing tea, and that I'll feel a little gluttonous when I glance over my rather sizeable collection -- they're from around the world, you know -- but my sense of integrity will be redeemed.
What about biking, then?
Back in May, I had a great experience biking the Tour of the Scioto River Valley in Ohio, but I wasn't physically prepared for clocking 200 miles. My muscles fared fine, and mentally I was fit, but now the rest of my body is fighting back.
The problem is I don't know what's wrong. I just know that when I go on easy rides - completely flat, less than 15 miles, and slow - I experience sharp pain in my right knee. It seems the less obvious parts of my knee - the shadowy connective tissues and tendons - are obviously displeased about something.
It's not like I've been ignoring the pain; the last 30 miles of TOSRV was a special kind of hell, in which I had to learn to pedal half as fast using the force of the left side of my body only, riding into a nasty headwind in the home stretch. All the while feeling the weakness of my right knee with every stroke, not knowing at all why this was happenning to me.
To try to get a real diagnosis, I have an appointment with an orthopedist, but that's not reassuring; I keep thinking, what if I have to get off my bike permanently? This is the first sport where I've felt at home - and free - on my bike; running never worked because my feet got too hot, snowboarding was too damn scary (and painful; who wants to be black and blue everytime they go to have some fun?), and few people actually want to play tennis with me without making it a match - competition I can't mentally handle.
Worse yet, what if I can't serve in Malawi with the Peace Corps, where biking might just be the main everday mode of transportation? Where will I be then? Sure, I could wait for another assignment to come along in a few months, but I can't - and don't want - to keep working as an intern at CHEJ forever.
This is a change I obviously haven't yet come to terms with. But the conclusion hasn't yet been drawn, so I'll have to wait and see.
