I have a monkey on my back.

[melissadrew]

All of Sunday I had a raging headache. 4 aspirins was all I had in the house and it took all 4 to kill it for about an hour before it came back with an angry vengeance. I had a suspicion that it was a caffeine headache and thought about going to the drinkery for half a dozen diet cokes but decided to forgo that to try to get some sleep. o...m...g... what an effing mistake THAT was. My head continued to hurt and get worse throughout the night. It was so bad the pain actually woke me up out of a dead sleep and factored in to all of my dreams...in all the dreams I had, in whatever scenario I was in a lot of headache pain and then would wake up, take a hot shower and try to go back to sleep. All totalled I think I took 7 showers from Sunday afternoon to Monday morning...no exaggeration. The showers would alleviate the pain long enough to make it possible to get a few more hours of sleep. I got up for good at 8 something, took another shower and tried to get dressed. For some reason it hurt more when I'd bend down so I was brought to my knees, literally, crying while trying to get ready for work. I didn't think I was gonna make it...but I had to try as I'd agreed to pick up a co-worker. Once I made it downstairs I had 1 800 mg ibuprofen left in my car and grabbed a diet coke at the gas station to wash it down. Within 5 or 10 minutes the bulk of the pain was gone. I was horrified! I'd kicked the habit once when I was in junior college and mostly stayed off it for a couple years til I started working for Starbucks, but the withdrawal was nowhere near that bad...I was bitchy and tired but still functional. Also of note, I have an EXTREMELY high tolerance for pain so this was beyond crazy for me that my withdrawals could bring me to tears.

I gotta kick this habit asap but the thought of purposely putting myself through that is making me such a titty baby. I wonder if there is a way for me to step down/wean me off until the withdrawal symptoms are half of where they were at on Sunday so that I can steele myself up to get it done.