I got my ADHD diagnosis about a year ago and started taking…

I got my ADHD diagnosis about a year ago and started taking Ritalin for it. After playing with dosage, settled on 18mg time release and that all worked fine.

But I started getting headaches occasionally and then more regularly and started to become concerned. So after doing some research it became clear to me that if I continued consuming several cups of coffee a day that I was going to have a heart attack!!

So I quit coffee.

The headaches went away and I got used to a life without my morning caffeine dose. Rooibos still had enough tannins in it to provide me with a satisfying sweet creamy beverage…. For a while. It hit a lot of the marks but eventually I bored of it.

It was missing the bitter!

When I was a kid, my mom switched to decaf coffee. I didn’t get it tbh. Once I became a coffee drinker myself it was “why bother?!?” — why would you want that bitter stuff in you if it wasn’t kickstarting something…

But I get it now. There’s something evolutionary I think about children disliking bitter. My kids HATE it and I think it’s there to help keep us safe. But as we age we learn to appreciate ALL of the flavors.

Bitter included.

I really miss coffee. Not the kick… I got over that long ago… but the taste. The experience of warm sweet creamy beverage to start my day is something almost canonical to my idea of adulthood.

It’s time to follow in my mom’s footsteps and go get me a bag of Colombian….. decaf.