September 25, 2007

Caffeine

Our staff took the last couple of days to gather at the beach and dream. It's been quite an amazing experience. Twelve totally different people sitting around a table for two days can produce some pretty amazing results.

Our Executive Pastor Paul Allen was kind enough to bring along his fancy shmancy Starbucks coffee maker. He gladly filled orders for mocha's and chai. It was great!

That night Pastor Rob started complaining about a headache - but we pressed on. The next morning we all placed our orders again, enjoying every last drop of coffee and chai. Then sometime around noon, Mike Cruse spoke up -- "Paul, do you have anything that is not decaf?" I thought for a second, realizing what was going on. By this time there were about 4 or 5 of us with major headaches coming on. I said "Are you telling me all that coffee we've been drinking is decaf?" Paul said "Yup." It was at that moment that all of us with headaches realized what was going on! We were suffering for caffeine withdrawals!

There, now you know, half of the staff at Southbrook Church is addicted to caffeine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coffee puts the system under the strain of metabolizing a deadly acid-forming drug, depositing its insoluble cellulose, which cements the wall of the liver, causing this vital organ to swell to twice its proper size. In addition, coffee is heavily sprayed. (Ninety-two pesticides are applied to its leaves.) Diuretic properties of caffeine cause potassium and other minerals to be flushed from the body.

All this fear went away when I quit, and it was a book that inspired me to do it called The Truth About Caffeine by Marina Kushner. There are five things I liked about this book:

1) It details--thoroughly--the ways in which caffeine may damage your health.

2) It reveals the damage that coffee does to the environment. Specifically, coffee was once grown in the shade, so that trees were left in place. Then sun coffee was introduced, allowing greater yields but contributing to the destruction of rain forests. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else.

3) It explains how best to go off coffee. This is important. If you try cold turkey, as most people probably do, the withdrawal symptoms will likely drive you right back to coffee.

4) Helped me find a great resource for the latest studies at CaffeineAwareness.org

5) Also, if you drink decaf you won’t want to miss this special free report on the dangers of decaf available at www.soyfee.com

The Via Colony said...

Hey, I think that's funny=) Glad ya'll had a GREAT time. Can't wait to see all the exciting ideas becoming reality!