caffeine deprivation

in a departure from my usual two cups a day routine (OK lah, sometimes 3 cups...), I went without my morning caffeine dose since I woke up late and had to dash off to town to run errands. by 4pm, I had a splitting headache. by 5pm, I detoured into Far East to slurp down a cup of Ya Kun coffee (minus the kaya toast and soft-boiled egg). right now at abt 9pm plus, I'm still having a headache (less agonising though). now I'm trying to marinate my brain with another cup of coffee next to the iBook as I blog. missing that morning coffee was really painful and I had to make it up with two cups!!!

the last time I went thru such agony, ironically, was during my coffee-swilling postgrad days. Together with Siva, I took part in a drug testing programme done by Eli Lily in NUH (no radio-active spider was involved). They want to test drug excretion rate in Asians and caffeine was used as the test chemical. But because caffeine was the test subject we had to be caffeine-free for 48hrs before the test. Here comes the painful part, we had to lay off coffee, tea, coca or pepsi colas, even some vegetables like cauliflowers and cabbages. basically any possible source of caffeine or similar chemicals in our food. by the afternoon, I was non-functional. a skull-splitting headache was detonating my brain. I didn't remember how I got thru that 48hrs before we are supposed to gulp down two packets of 3-in-1 coffee. to add insult to injury, we were not allowed to pee during night. needless to say, I was hopping around by morning. but in the end, we did our small part for the advancement of medical science.

coffee, glorious coffee!