Caffeine Blues

Early today, I heard that some Food Association in Sweden is looking into a ban of Monster, Red Bull and other energy drinks; reason: since 2004, 4 people died from consumption of Monster/booze mix. Now, there is so terribly much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start.

First, I offer for your consideration: Maybe, the energy drink had nothing to do with their deaths and actually prolonged their lives because it thinned the incredible amounts of booze these people drank.

Really, if people don’t know when to stop, maybe it’s simply evolution at work; thinning the herd by natural selection. I’m not militant about anti-alcoholism. Actually, in my youth, I drank a damn lot. However, I only once in my entire life drank to the point of blacking out as a teenager. And as snobbish and holier-than-thou as it may sound, I did it in a responsible way – at home, with no school the next day, to see what it is like. I found out I didn’t like it and the aftermath wasn’t worth the experience at all. I never once missed school or work because of drinking the day before. I never did “stuff I couldn’t remember” or “stuff I did because I was drunk and then regretted it”. The worst thing I ever did because I was drunk was planning a vacation with some guys I couldn’t stand sober. Needless to say, we never went on that trip, so no harm done.

At age 21 – ironically – I decided I don’t want to drink anymore at all. Not because I thought I was addicted or because I did something awful or anything like that. It was simple logic. I had calculated how many DVDs I can buy with the money I used for drinks in clubs. Overpriced drinks in clubs I only went to to drink and rant about the music, people and prices of the drinks. In other words, it was way more efficient to buy DVDs I liked sober, watch them at home, with people and music I liked sober and buy snacks and drinks at regular prices. That realization was 11 years ago. In the meantime, I did have a beer or something here and there, but on average, I’m perfectly sober on 360 out of 365 days a year. And have shitloads of DVDs.

I certainly don’t expect everyone to follow my example. I also don’t mind if others drink, go to clubs and whatnot. But I also can’t help to think it’s their fault if they don’t know when to stop and drink to the point of blacking out or even dying.

Caffeine and especially energy drinks, on the other hand, are my addiction. My voluntary addiction and my lifeline. I really made a concious choice to get myself hooked on Red Bull when I was 15. I didn’t like the taste at first, at least not in large quantities, so I forced several cans down my throat. Because I had also figured out that caffeine had the opposite effect on me than legends claim it has on most people. My parents raised me with the same damn orange lemonade for my entire youth. The only drink with caffeine I got was Coca Cola, when staying at my aunt’s and uncle’s house. I figured out that it wasn’t some magic that made me sleep better there – it was drinking cola all day. Where my mom went “OMAIGAWD if you drink cola, you can’t sleep!”, my aunt was more liberal about that. I could never really sleep anyway – except when I drank a lot cola during the day. In my childhood, doctors had the (ridicolous) theory that I had the biological rhythm of the opposite side of the planet and this was the reason I couldn’t sleep at night – because it felt like daytime to me. Of course that’s bullshit, but it did help me to make the connection between “caffeine” and “opposite effect”.

During my teenage years, I experimented with caffeine and especially Red Bull and Flying Horse – the only available energy drinks back then – instead of drugs, like the average rebel teenager does. I managed to regulate my sleeping pattern and attention span by that. It sure never became a healthy pattern – staying up to the point of total exhaustion with Red Bull, then kickstarting myself with Red Bull after a near-comatose sleep. But it did get me through school, it did keep me functional and it did help me to regulate and develop at least healthy amounts of sleep. Red Bull pulled off what none of the countless sleeping pills and doctors managed to do.

Of course, back then, the assumption “has opposite effect” was the only thing I had to work with. Many years and hours of research later, I know it’s no coincidence and caffeine is in many cases an effective way to deal with ADHD. The “opposite effect” is a fact for many people, it’s not me being a freak of nature. In the light of that, it seems utterly ridicolous and biased to me to blame energy drinks for the death of 4 morons who didn’t know when to stop drinking booze.

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Second Hand Emotions

Many people can’t imagine what it is like to see the world through a looking glass – detached, not a part of the “big picture”, but the beholder. It goes both ways. It took me a while to figure out why I always felt there was an invisible wall between me and others; what made it so hard to relate to people: People have emotions that vary more than “meh, that sucks (but whatever, life goes on” and “guess that’s nice (but whatever, life goes on)”.

My own emotional life can be illustrated with a mostly straight line. I don’t know what it feels like to be “so happy you want to hug the entire world” or “so sad you wanna die”. Especially when I was younger, I often felt left out when others around me experienced strong emotions. Expressing joy or anger or sadness feels unnatural to me, like performing for an audience. I never understood why people expected me to laugh and jump around like a maniac to show I was happy about something, or to scream and stomp to show I wasn’t.

As a child, I had no idea that other people really felt like doing these things and it came, in fact, naturally to them. I thought everyone was putting up some act because parents and older relatives expected it; something like saying “Bless you” or “Gesundheit” after someone sneezed.

When I grew older, I began to realize that people did not simply stick to a social convention because it was expected of them. And that I was still acting for simplicity; to be understood by others. I laughed when there were funny scenes in movies so no-one would ask why I didn’t find them funny. I expressed sadness when someone told me about bad things that happened to them. But on the inside, there was apathy. I rarely gave a shit either way; I didn’t find most movies to be very funny and I wasn’t touched by the misfortune either. I tried to fit in, but I was the square in the circle.

Looking back, my attempt to get behind the motivation of others to express their emotions, or only their ability to have them, was a subconcious reason to get fascinated with horror movies. Those were the films advertised as being “thrilling”, “the scariest movie ever” and “will leave you sleepless”. In a way, they claimed to provide strong emotions. And I was somehow hoping that I only needed something to “wake me up” from my apathy – a big bang that would unlock the door to my emotional storage; and after that, I would feel like everyone else. Obviously, it doesn’t work that way, but I found my theory to be sound. Why it didn’t work? Simple answer. I hadn’t found my “big bang”. I was 12 or 13 when I made it my declared goal to find the movie that would do that.

Mind you, I still haven’t found this movie 20 years later. It really doesn’t work that way. But over the years, I have made my peace with the “flattened affect” in regards to my emotions. (That’s what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders calls it.)

First of all, the internet has made things a lot easier for me. In Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, I’m the linguistic type. Expressing my emotions with words feels more natural than the social obligation to smile or frown to make myself clear. And if all fails, I can always fall back to smilies and emoctions. Many people say that online communication can never replace real life face-to-face contact because it lacks of body language, expressions and nuances in spoken language. Well, I do lack those things face to face. Taking them away from others online just levels the playing field.

The wonderful world wide web is the answer to many of my limitations. While “real” people in direct proximity drive me insane in no time, “virtual” people don’t. My online friendships are a lot closer than any I had in “real life”, where I can’t do the things I need to do to keep my sanity: withdraw, at any given time, with nothing but a click. Face to face interaction is very draining for me – I have to perform the things that are unnatural to me, I have to try to read those things in others and react accordingly. I have to pretend to have a lot emotions I simply don’t have.

I have also become a student of human behavior, emotions and social interactions. From an observer’s point of view. I try to learn and to understand how people “tick”. Often, it leaves me puzzled, yes. But my attempts to understand also gave me a different perspective. I can appreciate the rare emotions I experience where others take them for granted or even wish they wouldn’t feel them. I treasure them all; the good, the bad, the ugly. It is a small treasure chest, but each piece reminds me that, despite all the differences, I’m still human. Each piece is a success in my quest to find out what emotions really feel like; the universe being one step closer to figure itself out.

I treasure the moment I felt genuine disgust when reading the novel “The 34th Rule“. I treasure the deep and utter sadness when watching “The Wrestler“. I treasure the pain and the anger I felt when watching Varro’s death in Spartacus – Blood and Sand. More than anything, I treasure the Babylon 5 scene – pity, despair, sadness, bitterness – when G’Kar tells Londo he forgives him. Others may find these things depressing and hard to watch, and I agree – and that is a rare thing; that I can truly agree, with first hand experience instead of hearsay emotions. Yes, I also treasure more uplifting moments, and not only scenes from movies and books, but my own life. But then, who doesn’t? The ability to see the beauty in the tragedy is the blessing of (what others percieve as) my curse.

Judging by my own collection of emotional treasures, I wouldn’t want to be any other way.