My Snooze-Button Life

Sitting at the coffee shop sipping my *scratch: Americano* Mint Tea… it’s early… early for me anyway. The fact that I’m here before business hours, before I’m due at work, I consider a major accomplishment these days.

The thing is, I’m a recovering addict.

I’m finally ready to acknowledge that I’ve developed a major addiction to the snooze button. I mean I simply cannot keep myself from hitting the button, knocking back a few, as it were. So I’m trying to get clean. Which is no easy task when you’re as deeply and desperately addicted as what I am.

The withdrawal symptoms are excruciating… Just to mention a few: shivering, heaviness of the eyelids and sometimes the entire body, stumbling in the dark to find the obnoxious alarm clock one has hidden in increasingly more creative places so as to keep oneself away from the snooze, fumbling in search of one’s glasses, inability to focus without consuming massive amounts of caffeine, sudden bursts of acute afternoon sleepiness…

So far, I’ve been unable to practice total abstinence, and I’m trying to manage my addiction – with varying degrees of success. I know the only way out is to go cold turkey, but until today I just haven’t gotten myself to do it.

It started innocently enough during high school with just a little snooze here and there, and became more pronounced during my college years. Everybody was doing it. And before I knew it, I was hooked on the button as well.

Truth be told, looking back at it all, it should have been clear from early childhood that I had a strong propensity towards the condition, and had I known better, I would never have as much as touched snooze. Addictions run in families, and I’m afraid I carry a genetic predisposition towards snoozing.

My Father was said to be able to snooze standing up in his younger days, and had a penchant for sneaking away for an afternoon nap – especially while at tedious social gatherings – and could be gone for hours. He’d return red-eyed and rumpled, and nobody would say anything, but we all knew.

Even my Mother took to snoozing during the day, and her naps gradually became more and more compulsive, to the point of debilitating. She was dealing with some very challenging things emotionally, and snoozing simply became her means of escape.

When I was a child, my Father would work very hard to get me up in the mornings; I was a difficult child in that way and would simply refuse to get out from under the covers on chilly Norwegian winter mornings. Once, he went so far as to carry me into the bathroom and turn the ice cold shower on me – while I was still in my PJs! I actually thought that one was funny, even as shocking as the cold water was, but the time he squirted water in my face while I was still in bed, I got angry.

To be continued...

Health Month

After feeling depleted for weeks and ending September flat on my back for 24 hours, I figured it's time to kick that immune system into high gear and boost overall health and vitality. So, October is going to be health month. First challenge: No caffeine for the entire month!

Day one: so far, so good.