Buzz Kill

Rise, coffee, kureg
Risë Birnbaum shows her love of the office coffee maker
Are you coffee crazed?  Risë Birnbaum has the buzz on what’s bewing

(ZPR) – Who doesn’t like coffee raise their hand? Don’t see many hands. It’s a fact, everyone I know in the PR biz can’t start the day without a cup of coffee…or two…or make that three. If there isn’t a Keurig machine in the kitchen there are at least 3 Starbucks within half a block.


We all know coffee gets the blood rushing to our heads where we need it to make the life and death decisions we PR mavens make every day. I mean how would we be able to tell the world that pork is the new salmon and that the white powder found in Lindsay Lohan’s car was just baby powder without our first, dark, rich, roasted, steaming, grande cup of Joe.

Well, hold onto your head ‘cause a new Time magazine report says that one cup too many might actually lead to something called “caffeine intoxication.” The deal is if we drink more than 250 mg of caffeine (just 2-3 cups of the brewed stuff) we probably get a real caffeine buzz which can result in “restlessness, nervousness, insomnia, muscle twitching, leg bouncing and needing to pee a lot.” Don’t know about you, but now I have a much better understanding of why I can’t sit still for more than 10 seconds at a time and watch “Caddyshack” at 2am.

But, what’s up is that The American Psychiatric Association has just made a brand new entry in its famous “Manual of Mental Disorders” for “Caffeine Withdrawal.” This new mental disorder includes fatigue, headache and difficulty focusing and happens when we stop drinking our usual 2-3 cups of coffee a day.

So, here’s the rub. We work better and more clear-headed with a few cups of coffee (despite the frequent pee breaks) jumpiness, twitching and insomnia (hey, there’s always ambien). But, when we lay off the lattes, we get headaches and feel tired (at least for a while).

Guess the best of both worlds is just one big ole cup of coffee to kick off the day and then a few days of headaches and naps to get us through the caffeine withdrawal.
Don’t know about you, but this whole caffeine withdrawal as a mental disorder is giving me a headache, so I think I’m gonna forget all about it and run and get my third cup of the day. How bout you?

rise-Sig

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