fudgemallow bars
Oh, geez, this is why you people do caffeine, isn't it.
Not this lying-awake-in-bed-for-hours. No, that's one of the reasons why I generally avoid the stuff. But the quality and clarity of thought, as opposed to the mumble-mumble-don't-ask-me-to-think I spend much of my days in.
So, one of the things this leads me to think about is why I'm so resistant to adopt caffeine and some of the other socially acceptable psycholubricants. It's certainly not because I think I'm perfect as I am, thankyouverymuch. I'm all too willing to believe that my mindbody needs some outside support. If you tell me I need to stand on my head, or spend energy running in circles, or ingest a few extra grams of some amino acid, all in order to perform a little "better" in some respect, I'll eagerly accept that idea. And a hack that allows real-time monitoring (and perhaps regulation) of my biochemistry or endocrine system is at the top of my Christmas list.
Really, I think what stops me is my fear of addiction, of not being able to manage it. I mean, I know what a poor job I do of managing my electronic-stimulus addition, and a chemical addiction seems like an invitation to disaster. And there's my perfectionist belief that anything that has this sort of decreasingly-effective negative feedback loop, where you need higher and higher levels of stimulus over time to achieve the same result, must not be the right answer for shifting what I would like to be a baseline state.
Although, some of what I know of biochemistry says that's the way all stimulus works, so I'm not entirely sure on what grounds I'm holding out hope for some other model.
Shifting subjects slightly, it's often true that my thoughts are freest when I'm heading off to sleep. Part of it is that the fact that I'm going to sleep means that I'm freed from the consequence of my thoughts. I have really good reasons for not getting up and following through with them. It's the middle of the night, I can't call them at this hour, now that I'm in bed I should get some sleep instead, etc. It's also one of the few times that I'm both a) unplugged and b) not preoccupied (dominated) with the feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something else.
But, speaking of heading off to sleep, I've finished my drink now. The ginger may not be exactly calming but it should at least help with that uncomfortable too-much-candy-before-bed feeling. And I really would like to get some sleep tonight.
A word I learned from reddit this evening: anhedonia.