The doctor laughed pretty heartily then, and I felt gratified that she thought I was funny.

I think she also thought it was just generally funny that I chose to drink a pot or two of coffee per day, while also complaining of anxiety and psoriasis.

When the doctor stopped laughing, she said, "You can't do that. You can't drink all the coffee." She wrote as much on my homework and said to wean off of it by cutting a quarter per day.

I did that last week, and now I haven't had any coffee since Saturday.  I do have a low grade-type headache, but otherwise, the symptoms aren't that bad. My energy is high, my mood is good, and I can drink green tea now. That has caffeine, but it doesn't cause the same digestive problem. There's something that happens to the coffee bean when its roasted, you see, which alters its chemistry or something and makes it tough to digest. Green tea, though, has caffeine to stem my headache and also a compound in it that actually acts like Xanax, but isn't habit forming.

My doctor told me all of that herself. I'm paraphrasing.

I also want to talk for a couple more seconds about how I quit sugar last week, but I hate to brag.


When Shef and Dan told me to "try harder" at tying skates.

The November 2015 Bragging Challenge.