September 2008 - McGillespie

Business

Depression Proof Your Money

By Terence Gillespie September 26, 2008

The money printing bailouts have only just begun.

Yes, we’ve had some deflationary bankruptcies to help decrease the money supply, thank God. But, as you can see, even the most staunch conservatives are now begging the government to crank up the printing presses. As history predicts, they just can’t help themselves.

Most of the strongest advocates for the bailouts know what they’re doing. They know that pumping this much fiat money into the economy will lead to hyperinflation. But, whoever gets the money first can use it to purchase valuable assets while it still has some purchasing power left. By the time the money makes its way to you and me its purchasing power will be mostly gone.

But, there’s still time. . . (As of 9/25/2008) . . .

. . .To Depression-proof your hard earned money, savings and retirement plans from the upcoming hyperinflationary depression.

If you know what to do it doesn’t take long to:

Move Your Money From Here . . .

Bank Accounts
Savings Accounts
CD’s
Government Sponsored Bonds
Money Market Accounts
US Domestic Stocks
Financial Stocks of Any Kind, in Any Country
Treasury Bills
Municipal Bonds
Mutual Funds Made Up of Primarily US Domestic Equities
Bonds and/or Bond Funds of Any Kind
Under Your Bed
In Your Backyard

. . .To Here

Swiss Franc Bonds
Foreign Stocks that pay dividends
Agricultural Indexes
Gold
Silver
Real Estate (Low Prices and Hyperinflation can payoff your house!)

It might only take one hour to preserve a lifetime of savings!

Talking Heads

Judging from the reactions and interviews on TV many wealthy people were blind-sided by the financial crisis’ of the past week. After those talking heads get off the air you can bet they’re moving their money and assets around to protect themselves.

I like Ben Stein. He’s a smart, likeable and decent human being. He’s also more wealthy than the average Joe and is frequently seen on TV commenting on economic and investment issues. Unfortunately, Ben didn’t see this financial crisis coming.

When history is used to predict or avoid an outcome the correct past event has to be chosen as the model. The dollar is losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. Central banks around the world are covertly dumping dollars and purchasing gold and other real assets. And the US government is largely powerless to do anything about it. In fact, the stewards of our currency are printing up their own personal bailout packages just prior to their exit from the world stage.

This is not a normal recessionary business cycle we’re witnessing. The talking heads on TV telling you to “Stay the course” are giving you the correct advice for the wrong time. If they didn’t warn you of a financial crisis of this magnitude then why would you trust their advice now?

Return OF (Not ON) Your Investment

In times like this the perfect is the enemy of the good. If you haven’t already reallocated your investments then you don’t have time to be a perfectionist. Think in terms of preserving the purchasing power of your money and consider any increase a bonus. Look at the list of destinations, recommended above, and choose one you’re comfortable with.

Brokerage Accounts

Correctly choosing the particular holdings in your brokerage account is much more important than choosing the brokerage firm, itself. People who were using Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers to hold their investments did not lose the holdings in their accounts. It was the stock of the brokerage firms, themselves, that plummeted, not the investments they held for you as custodian. I don’t use this firm myself, but, one company that is getting it right is Peter Schiff’s Europac.net. Check them out if you’re looking to make a switch.

Banks

Even with a bank you’ll probably get money less than $100k back if you want it. You may have to stand in line, be limited to partial withdraws and be inconvenienced, but money you have in the bank will most likely still be returned to you. But, the dollars may not have much purchasing power when you get them back. The FDIC does not have enough to insure all the deposits in banks that are about to fail. But, the government will just create more money for the FDIC to keep functioning when they run out.

If you want to be spared any inconvenience for your short term banking then choose one with a high star rating at www.bankrate.com.

Silver May Not Be an Option

In the Bailout Plan sent out two months ago I recommended silver as my personal favorite way to store and preserve value. There is very little physical silver left for purchase. I still recommend calling your local coin shops to check. However, you may end up having to purchase gold instead of silver. If so I recommend gold eagles, austrian philharmonics and any denomination of bullion bars from a well-known mint.

You could purchase shares of the silver ETF SLV, but, this is a far less attractive alternative to keeping the physical metal in your possession. See my article SLV is Not Silver for more on the pitfalls of investing in SLV.

For a broader perspective on precious metals read my article Silver and Gold Do Nothing or Why is Gold Money?

How Much Inflation and When?

10% and now. One, three, six months from now? Increasingly more. But, isn’t 14% and climbing enough?

Start making decisions now while your dollar still has enough purchasing power to purchase things that have lasting value.

Checking Account Alternatives

If you’re losing 14% a year in your checking account due to inflation then even simple things around the house start to be a better “Investment”. You should probably have at least three months of expenses in your checking account. After that, if you’ve already paid off your credit cards and reallocated your Retirement account then here are some alternatives for the money left in your checking account:

Food That Stores for Long Periods like cereal, canned goods, rice
Water, Water Filters or Storage
Computer Upgrades
Software
Prepaid Utilities like gas, electric, cable, cell phone
Prepaid Property taxes

Or anything else you’re going to have to purchase in the next year or two. Why not purchase them now while the purchasing power of your money is stronger and you still have a job?

Web Resources

This article is an update on the Your Optimal Bailout Plan I sent out at the end of July. See that article for more background.

www.europac.net

www.shadowstats.com

www.lewrockwell.com

www.allamericangold.com

www.silverstockreport.com

Children

Vaccines For My Baby

By Terence Gillespie September 18, 2008

I knew very little about vaccines before our son came along.

If you’d asked me whether I would vaccinate my children I would have said, “Of course”. I mean, nothing happened to me and I didn’t contract any of the diseases I was vaccinated against. Why wouldn’t I want the same for my child?

Well, things have changed since the 60’s when I was born. I received 6 vaccines and 2 of those were in the 1st grade. Today, a child gets 32 doses of 12 vaccines before the age of 2!

“That’s great!” you may say. “Medical science has come a long way!”.

Uh. . . .No, not really.

A Web Search and A Can Of Worms

What started out as a quick web search before Timothy’s vaccination appointment turned into serious concerns and heated discussions between my wife and I. We even tried using google search terms that were deliberately positive in hopes of finding thumbs-up recommendations on any of the vaccines. Out of the 12 on the CDC’s schedule we found some positive things to say about 4 of them. Feel free to give it a try. Most of the positive comments are by a government or pharmaceutical company source.

Two months is not much time to make optimal vaccine choices for your baby. That’s how long parents have to wade through the pros and cons.

Two months. What am I saying? They come at your baby with a syringe full of hepatitis B the day he’s born!

Is all this necessary? Well, I’ll tell you our answer in this article and I hope it saves you some time in coming up with yours.

Executive Summary for Busy Parents

The increased number of vaccines is more a tribute to the sales and marketing of pharmaceutical companies than to better protection for your child.

The drop off in measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever and whooping cough that everyone thinks the vaccines accomplished has more to do with better nutrition, improved sanitation and cleaner water than anything else.

After doing extensive research we did decide to vaccinate our son. But, we’re making specific choices about which vaccines truly protect him and those around him. We’re also using advice from doctors (With no vested interest or liability), our intuition and research to decide on vaccines that builds up his immune system rather than destroy it.

In order to achieve these goals we’re throwing the CDC’s schedule (of insanity) out the window and into the trash where it belongs. There are vaccines on the CDC schedule we’re going to give our son, but, not on their schedule and not all at once. That’s because the CDC’s vaccination schedule is:

Too Much
Too Soon
Too Many
Too Toxic

Here’s an excellent article by Doctor Donald W. Miller with a broad, balanced and thoughtful view and vaccination schedule that will protect your child and the children they interact with. As Dr. Miller’s predicts in his article, most pediatricians would be shocked by his recommended departure from the CDC schedule.

Another balanced view by an excellent doctor is put forth by a source many pediatricians are already familiar with: Dr. Bob Sear’s, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child.

We’re about to make final decisions on what vaccines to give our son. One way to summarize what we’ll do would be to say:

Not zero.
Not everything.
Not all at once.

Decision Criteria

Our criteria for anything injected into our son is:

Does more good than harm.
Strengthens rather than destroys the immune system.
Does not shock or confuse his body.
Protects him when traveling and other known risks.
Protects others around him.

Common sense? I thought so. Aren’t these these the stated goals of the CDC?

If I thought the CDC schedule came anywhere near achieving these goals I wouldn’t have put so much effort into all this research and writing this article.

First Do No Harm

That’s the oath all doctors take. Sounds good. I’m taking it too when it comes to my baby. I hereby swear.

So why do so many of the vaccines have a negative effectiveness rate? No kidding, the vaccine gives you more chance of getting the disease its supposed to protect you from than if you weren’t vaccinated, at all?

Ok, stop laughing. This is serious business when you’re trying to sell vaccines. . . . I mean for parents.

If I want to protect my child from disease A and find that I increase his protection from disease A by not taking the vaccination for it then the choice is easy. Throw in the added benefit of withholding from our 8-week old baby a dash of mercury, formaldehyde, latex, monkey kidney and other goodies and the decision is a slam dunk!

Ok, vaccines in this category are the easy ones to decide on. But, avoiding harm while deciding on vaccines that may benefit your child is the approach to take with all of them.

New Parents Are Blind-sided

Timothy was 1-day old when it was “time for his Hepatitis B shot”.

Well, it wasn’t time for Timothy’s’. We declined the shot and said we’ll take care of vaccinations at the pediatricians office. We gave them the doctor’s card and a signature and that was that.

We also declined applying for a social security number while filing for his birth certificate. The clerk came back with the box checked “Yes” for social security number. When we pointed it out he said, “Oh, sorry. Its just that I’ve done 25,000 of these and no one has ever done that”. I believe him.

It makes me think that very few new parents are prepared for vaccination decisions before they have to make them. The CDC schedule is presented to you as if its written in stone. If you protest they make you feel like a bad parent that will never be able to find a daycare, school or pediatrician that will “put up” with people like you.

Wrong on all counts, but, I do admire the expert marketing.

Day Care Visit

We have a day care near the house. I went to visit them and asked about vaccination requirements. The administrator said, “Yes, they have to have them. All parents have a card from their doctors and we verify that they are up to date”.

I was horrified. Did that mean everyone just goes along with the program and any deviation from the state dictated norm was a giant hassle?

No, exemptions are easy. You just download the form, print it out and sign it. And that form stays on file with the daycare. Done. From the daycare’s perspective your child is now “Up to date”.

Same goes with schools or any other facility you may be concerned about.

Spoke With Doctors

Our OBGYN was in favor of giving all the vaccines. And she put her money where her mouth is by administering them to her kids. I don’t agree with her. But, she was consistent and goes down as one solid yes for the CDC schedule.

My mothers’ doctor was all for them, too. He doesn’t have any kids, so, that’s less of an endorsement than our OBGYN’s. He said he’s seen some people with the conditions that could have been prevented by the vaccines and that convinced him. At the time, I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to ask questions about specific vaccines.

And, finally, our current pediatrician is in favor of the CDC schedule. On our first meeting we weren’t even there to discuss vaccines and I wasn’t in a position to be specific about them, yet. She mentioned that after 2001 they don’t have mercury anymore (Thank you O’ previous parents). In many cases, she’s right about that. However, the flu shots still have mercury (Thimeresol) and there are many other ingredients to be concerned with besides mercury. More on our vaccine meeting with our pediatrician, later.

Ok, so the doctors were 3 for 3 in favor. No wonder everyone just gets them all. Who wants to go contrary to those odds?

Well, maybe it was just my sample. Because, research turns up dozens of doctors who not only disagree with these three, but, have done extensive studies and research on why they don’t agree.

Spoke with other parents

Most just went along with the program, of course. One of our friends makes sure that no more than three shots are given in any one visit. That has the effect of letting the immune system get some time to react before intoducing another vaccine immediately. That’s definitely a good thing to do.

Overall, who has time to sift through all this information? And parents are threatened with the law and lots of hassles if the don’t so what do you expect?

One thing that came up in three of the conversations was that they knew of someone with autism whose parents suspected was caused by vaccines. I’ve only talked with four parents, so far, so that’s a high hit rate (And I didn’t bring it up).

Caring vs. Emulating

I care about people and want to listen to their stories and what they are doing and going through in their lives and their children. That doesn’t mean that I can always find something in their experience to emulate. I think all parents want to learn from each other, but, we should also have the strength of our convictions to follow through with our beliefs on what’s best for our kids.

In my case, my ‘beliefs’ on the subject have been formed by an exhaustive review of as much research as I can digest. I offer this article as one of many sources that may compress time and serve as a gateway to their own research.

Mommy & Daddy in Sync?

No, not completely. But, we owe it to our son to go with our collective best choices. My wife was persuaded by the 3 doctors we asked to go along with the full CDC schedule. Frankly, so was I. Re-read the “. . . Can of worms” section above for why we did’nt do that.

The benefits of going along with the program are considerable:

No explaining to do
No research necessary
No problems with pediatricians
No tension with you spouse or other family members
No exemption to download and sign and possibly explain to whoever
The warm cozy nod from all government agencies and pediatricians that you’ve been responsible parents and ‘done the right and educated thing’.

Fantastic. But, those are benefits for the parents and this decision is about our son.

Gulf War Syndrome

This was an interesting discovery while researching vaccines. It turns out that many consider this GWS everyone is talking about to be due to the compressed vaccination schedule of the troops just before they’re deployed.

Take Vitamins Before Getting the Vaccine

According to Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.:

“Numerous studies have shown that nutritional depletion, even of one or two nutrients, dramatically increases vaccine complications. This is especially so for Vitamin A (as mixed carotenoids), vitamin E and vitamin D3. I would recommend a daily multivitamin/ mineral supplement without iron. In addition, I would recommend 1000 mg. of ascorbate (as magnesium ascorbate) three times a day between meals, vitamin E either as d-alpha-tocopheryl succinate or mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) 400 IU a day and DHA oil capsules-100 mg. three times a day. Dosages for children would have to be adjusted for weight and age. Vitamin D3 is particularly important since it is known to regulate immune reactions and calm down those reactions that are overactive. New studies have shown that adults should be taking 1000 to 1500 IU of vitamin D3 instead of the previous 400 IU recommended by the government. A number of experiments have shown that vitamin D3 can significantly reduce the neurological damage caused by multiple sclerosis-like experimental reactions (experimental allergic encephalomyelitis). ”

What About the Other Kids?

I believe we have a moral obligation to consider the implications to society (Other kids) when making vaccination choices for our own baby. As I’m going through each vaccine other children than our own are a big factor in making our final (Optimal) choice.

Travel

We are all only a jet plane ride away from an infectious disease from another continent.

When Columbus discovered the new world he also killed most of the people living there. Infectious diseases from Spain made the sword unnecessary.

The only difference between his ship and our planes is the planes are faster and there’s more of them. For that reason, even if you Don’t Travel with your baby you are, in effect, still traveling because ‘foreigners’ are coming to you.

Travel is a prime consideration for letting Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus and Polio stay in your child’s vaccine schedule. When they should be given is a different matter.

Play The Vaccine Lottery

“My child got all the vaccines and she’s fine”.

I have two responses to this:

Thank God . . . .your child handled the shots, well.
Think of your vaccination card as a lottery ticket. 1 in 68 ticket holders are autistic and 1 in 6 have some kind of learning disability, neurological problem, or autoimmune disorder like Type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma or a bowel disorder. Later in life ticket holders are entitled to an increased chance of getting cancer or problems associated with having a live virus in their spinal column for the rest of their lives.

Low Criteria for Success

Since there are no long term studies on the effects of vaccines what is the criteria of success?

Simple: A vaccination is successful if your child doesn’t have any seizures, intestinal obstruction or anaphylaxis (severe, whole-body allergic reaction) within 4-6 weeks of the shot(s).

What happens later? I couldn’t tell you because nobody can. There are no follow-up studies. Even if there were, which of the 12 vaccines are you going to blame?

That makes for an excellent defense in court, doesn’t it? It wasn’t our vaccine, your honor, it was those other eleven they’re baby was injected with.

Japan’s Two Year Delay (And the Amish)

My wife was asking for study results showing the benefits of delaying vaccines until two years of age. That’s what Dr. Donald Miller recommends to minimize brain damage. He says the brain is at least 80% developed by then.

Since there are no long term tests on the effects of vaccines I couldn’t offer her any. But, I could offer her the results of the entire nation of Japan and the Amish. When the Japanese government started losing vaccine cases and having to pay up they decided to relent and delay the vaccines until age two. That’s when their SIDS rate plummeted by 90%! Raymond Obomsawin, M.D. says:

“Delay of DPT immunization until 2 years of age in Japan has resulted in a dramatic decline in adverse side effects. In the period of 1970-1974, when DPT vaccination was begun at 3 to 5 months of age, the Japanese national compensation system paid out claims for 57 permanent severe damage vaccine cases, and 37 deaths. During the ensuing six year period 1975-1980, when DPT injections were delayed to 24 months of age, severe reactions from the vaccine were reduced to a total of eight with three deaths. This represents an 85 to 90 percent reduction in severe cases of damage and death.”

The Amish have no Autism and they’re not dropping dead from the diseases the CDC is warning us about, either. They’re like Hawaiians who have no word “snow” in their vocabulary because it doesn’t exist in their world. But, the Amish have two words they don’t need in their vocabulary: Vaccine and Autism.

Making Your Optimal Choice

Much of the information on the web is from the three groups of people who have the most to gain from speaking up:

Pharmaceutical Companies who are selling their product
Parents Who Have an Injured Child Trying To Help Others
Government sources promoting public policy

Sometimes its hard to distinguish between the drug companies and government sources. Both are 100% positive on every vaccine and 100% negative on whether any cause more harm than good. The parents become better sources as their objectivity is restored after the incident with their child.

So, it can be hard to get an objective view of all sides of the issues with the twelve vaccines. The best sources I’ve found were doctors who used their education to take an objective view of vaccines. They don’t work for drug companies and just decided to delve into the subject. Then you start to really got all sides of the issue.

All Experience is Anecdotal

If you shut your car door and lock yourself out because the keys are in the car you’ve had yourself a personal experience. Will you learn from that experience? Will you change your behavior and avoid locking yourself out again?

If you say, “Yes” or “Probably” or “Maybe” to that question then your conducting bad science according to the AMA. All you’ve done is have yourself an anecdotal experience. Unless you’ve conducted a clinical trial of N number of other people locking themselves out of their car you can’t conclude anything about your personal experience. In fact, any conclusions you’ve come to based on any experience you’ve ever had in your life is mere anecdotal evidence. Learn from it at your own risk, pal.

That’s a great way to shut the mouths of all those parents with anecdotal horror stories of what happened after their baby was vaccinated. Bad science. Not valid. Doesn’t mean anything.

Ok, so don’t put the horror stories in your medical study. But, parents with “anecdotal” stories have managed to sue the crap out of pharmaceutical companies for bad reactions to vaccines. So much, in fact, that all 50 states give parents a way to opt-out of all vaccines. They didn’t put the exemption in place to protect or defend your rights. They make it available because state’s attorneys told them parents would sue the state broke if they made vaccines mandatory.

Websites & Sources

Opt Out Forms for Every State

Gary Nulls Vaccine Nation Documentary Video

Shirley-wellness-cafe re: 2 years and sids

Vaccine Friendly Doctors

Try Dr. David Bannister in Roseville or Dr. John Oberholtzer in Davis. I’ve heard they are both respectful of parents’ rights to make informed medical decisions for their children.

Dr. Marcus Porrino
Dr. Rebecca H. Porrino
Sonoma Naturopathic Medicine
710 West Napa St, Suite 1
Sonoma, CA 95476
(707) 996-9355
www.SonomaNatMed.com

Julia Getzelman, M.D.
GetzWell Pediatrics
1701 Church Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 826-1701

www.GetzWell.com

Selective and delayed vaccination forum
2001 overview by Harold E Buttram, MD
Head of the CDC Admits Autism Link
MMR and Mitochondrial slide show
How To Vaccine Safely
Robert Kennedy on the Vaccine Autism Coverup, thimerosal
Hidden CDC Data Confirms Vaccine-Autism Link
autism-vaccine blog
Gulf War Syndrome: Too Many Vaccines Within One Week
The Law Considers Official CDC schedule to be a Recommendation ONLY
exemption website
Look up History & Ingredients of EVERY Vaccine!
Interactive Lookup Table for Vaccines & Ingredients
National Vaccine Information Center
Jenny Mcarthy Interview Part I
CBN News Story

Diet

How to Quit Drinking Coffee

By Terence Gillespie September 10, 2008

The best way to quit drinking coffee is to replace it with something else. For coffee you’ll need direct and indirect replacements.

The indirect replacements are for the routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes, feelings, circumstances and occasions that surround your coffee drinking.

The better your choice of replacement(s) for the drink and all these other things that surround your drinking the easier the quitting will be.

In the rest of this article I’ll tell you what replacement(s) I chose and describe my current experience with quitting.

Should you quit drinking coffee?

Not knowing if or why you want to stop drinking coffee is probably why you haven’t quit, already. Or maybe your why is not enough to motivate you.

In the case of coffee we’re bombarded with conflicting stories about whether its good or bad for us. Both sides of the health argument for coffee are about even and the question will probably never be resolved.

If coffee controls you instead of you controlling it then you should quit drinking it. You’ll know it’s controlling you when you can’t start the day without it. Or, if you get a headache when you don’t have enough.

Replacements

Quitting is a transition to something else. Here’s a few things to keep in mind about picking and using replacements:

The best replacements usually have a lot in common with what you’re trying to quit. Things we have to quit often involve routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes and feelings surrounding the thing we’re trying to quit. You may need replacements for them, as well. For coffee, there is the taste, the caffeine buzz, the smell, the warm liquid flowing down your throat and the routine of grinding the beans and setting up the machine.

You may need a series of replacements before settling on the final. That means Your Optimal final replacement may not be the best first replacement to use. Your body may have to detoxify or have other reactions and compensations it has to cycle through before you can ultimately quit. In extreme cases that may mean moving from something toxic to something less toxic and eventually to something non-toxic. The final replacement should be something actually good for you.

But, we’re talking coffee, here, not heroin. One or two replacements will probably do it. I used four replacements for coffee: Two for the morning and two others for the afternoon, see below.

It may be best to allow yourself as much of your replacements as you want as long as your replacement is not toxic. It may serve as a psychological reward for following through on the quitting.

My Replacements for Coffee

My first replacement is tea, with caffeine.

For me, it is the perfect first replacement because it has so much in common with the way I drink coffee. Tea is hot, I add milk and stevia to it, it prevents my caffeine withdrawal headache and the physical routine surrounding its preparation is almost identical to making coffee. We have one of those “Instant Hot” water dispensors in the kitchen so I get the added benefit of having the tea ready, almost instantly.

My second replacement is tea, without caffeine. By this time I’ve ramped down on the amount of caffeine in the tea, so, probably won’t get a withdrawal headache any more. If I do then alternating with caffeinated tea is the quick remedy. After about seven days the whole craving for coffee in the morning is gone. That’s surprisingly quick for someone who couldn’t imagine starting a day without coffee only a week ago!

My third replacement, used in the afternoon, is a nap. I was using coffee as a crutch to power through the afternoon without a nap or a break. I decided not to fight afternoon naps any longer and just take one. The benefits of afternoon naps have been enormous! If fact, I feel it gives almost a full extra day of productivity every day! Wow, talk about a replacement.

Every once in a while I have a diet Rock Star after waking up from my afternoon knap. So far, its been a great way to start my ‘second day’. It’s one of those sugar free health drinks that has healthy ingredients. I’m skeptical about the pink, blue and yellow stuff they use in sugar free drinks and prefer stevia. But, for now, I’m enjoying the Rock-Star until I find something better. Leading candidates are pelligrino with a little fruit juice added for taste or some of the exotic teas my wife gets on her trips to China.

How Long Does It Take?

The whole thing took about a week, for me.

As much as I was addicted to coffee it just didn’t take that long to quit drinking it. I had a headache for the first 3 days if I didn’t have enough caffeinated tea. A little bit of tea and “Poof”, headache gone.

One of the surprising things for me was accepting the fact that I’m a slow riser. It takes me a while to leave dreamland and cut over to wakefulness. Because of this I find the routine of making the tea just as useful as the tea, itself. Therefore, when I wake up I go right into preparing the tea and, by the time its ready, I’m ready for the day.

How Will You Know When You’ve Quit?

You’ll know you’ve quit when you can take it or leave it.

Coffee will take its place among the multitude of drink options available to you depending on occasion and mood. You’ll be able to start your day with a clear mind and ready to go to work even though you’ve had no coffee.

A few days ago, we were over at a friends house and I was starting to fade. We were late in getting together and didn’t want to leave, yet. The conversation was interesting and another couple had just walked in the door that we wanted to socialize with. I made myself one cup of coffee. It was just the thing needed to keep the conversation going for a while until it was time to go. One cup of coffee and that was it. No coffee needed the next morning and no problems sleeping that night.

Coffee is now just another drink option. I neither crave it, avoid it or even think about it. If I want a cup I have one. I’ll even just have a decaf since I don’t need the buzz to think clearly, anymore.

Start acting and feeling like this and you’ll know you’ve quit.