Every time I open Facebook, I’m presented with a video of a woman—thin, blonde, smiley—jumping rope. It’s mesmerizing. It’s stupid. I know that if I pause to watch, Meta will just give me more jump-roping videos, but I can’t help myself. She jumps, I watch. Months ago, when I read an article reporting that Facebook was adding and prioritizing “Reels” to their site to make it more like Instagram, I thought to myself: “Well, that’s it for Facebook. I’m not going to waste my time watching a bunch of useless videos.” But I do. Jump roping, soccer, weightlifting, mountain biking, magic tricks, repair hacks… Pause, swipe. Pause, swipe.
1959 – Gave up smoking
1975 – Gave up drinking
1988 – Gave up red meat
1999 – Died anyway
I made a mental guffaw, but then I became introspective. A longer life? Is that why we make these changes?
Recently, and not so recently, I eliminated some vices in my life—alcohol, animal protein, caffeine. I didn’t do this to live longer. I simply wanted to improved the quality of the life I’m currently living. In two instances, these changes worked great, but giving up eating meat wound up being a major fail.
I became a vegetarian hoping to reduce inflammation within my body. I hoped to make my plantar fasciitis go away. Instead, I gradually became chronically dizzy, and it took me over a year to figure out that my iron levels crashed. After countless, tests and procedures, including an MRI, a simple blood test held the answer. My doctor prescribed adding meat back into my diet.
“You mean like chicken a couple times a week?”
“No, I mean hamburgers for lunch every day.” So much for a long life!*
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This afternoon, the sun setting, rays slanting through the back window filtered by the barren woods that adjoin my property, me on the couch where I sat most of the day, I drank a beer. It’s my current fave, a Hazy IPA by Athletic Brewing Company, who claims the title of world’s largest NA brewery—NA meaning non-alcoholic. Until eight years ago, I drank alcohol daily. I toyed with cutting back, tried, weekends only, but I wound up obsessing about my next drink. Counting the days and then the hours until I could have another. I decided it was easier on my brain to stop drinking altogether.
Now I enjoy an NA beer four or five times a week. Unlike many beer drinkers, I love the taste. And thirty-five years of conditioning has programmed my brain to associate my first beer of the day with relaxation and reward. I still get this without the alcohol. It’s the one positive benefit that resulted from a lifetime of misuse.
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Four weeks ago, I gave up caffeine. Six weeks ago, I would have bet my life savings that I would never give up caffeine. I was a proud espresso addict, drinking a thirteen-shot stovetop pot every day. What changed? I gave up my Tourette medication, the twice daily dose that helped suppress my tics, my involuntary movements and vocalizations. The medicine disturbed my ability to communicate—more tics seemed like the lesser of two evils. But without medicine, my tics went haywire. I grunted nonstop. I squished my eyes together. I gnashed my teeth so hard I snapped off a crown below the gum-line. I was so miserable that Susan went online looking for relief. “You know, they say reducing caffeine will help.”
And so I did it. Half-caf for a week and none since. I drank a Diet Coke a couple of weeks in, and it made me agitated and anxious. So now I’m caffeine free, drinking that same pot of espresso I was before, only with decaf instead of caffeinated. And yes, I know that decaf has a bit of caffeine. Nonalcoholic beer has a bit of alcohol too. These are acceptable remnants that don’t produce the effects of the full dose.
At one point in my life, these changes would have disgusted me. I was mistrustful of people who didn’t drink alcohol and coffee. It seemed unnatural. But these changes fit me perfectly. Just like sobriety has given me freedom from obsessing, decaffeination gives me freedom from agitation, which fuels tics. Without caffeine and medication, I now tic about the same amount as I did with medication plus caffeine.
These changes may or may not help me live longer, but eventually, just like the guy under the tombstone, I’ll “die anyway.” But if those jump roping videos motivate me to give that a try, I might eke out a couple extra years of life.
* Note: My iron levels rose and stabilized with three-day-per-week supplements and a reasonable amount of red and white meat. Sad to say I don’t get to eat hamburgers every day.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
