Decaf? You’re having a laugh!
I’ve been sleeping much better of late but today I’m “spiked,” my word for being unable to switch off. And having been very careful today, it looks like decaf coffee is again to blame. Now, I didn’t have any of the reveries I was subject to the other day following my half nescafe, half decaf mix, but still I cannot sleep, and I’m just lying there cuddling up to my life size doggie having sexual fantasies of secretaries in publishing houses and cellists (which I must, incidentally, write up one day).
The rationalisation? That it was something I enjoyed. Fair enough, except that this rationalisation came at the exact time that I was tired, meaning that it related not to the taste at all but to the effects of the little caffeine that remains in decaf coffee (if you have two or three cups it is the same as one ordinary strength coffee, making decaf, in effect, far stronger relatively, than non-alcoholic beer is to the ordinary stuff, and for this reason in many ways quite misleading). I admitted this to myself briefly before repressing the fact. And besides, even though it is important for me to enjoy my food, in and of itself, and because this aids conformity to the diet, which as I have proved again and again is very important for my health and wellbeing, I know that caffeine, whether it is decaf or not is bad for me and so, should avoid it.
Just as with the struggle to give up smoking, I find that conforming to this diet is as much an intellectual struggle as a battle of will power. Only in anticipating, catching and arguing against these rationalisations can we make it. And of course, with problems such as ADD, this struggle is made much more difficult because of the tendency to impulsivity and obsession; but the more you conform, the more easy it is to conform, not only because you gain habits and knowledge, but because this impulsivity starts to recede.
Still, there will be slips, and through them we learn. Important too, though, not to punish ourselves for them.
