I am giving up coffee and Diet Coke/Pepsi cold turkey. I will still drink iced tea for now though. I expect the caffeine withdraw headaches to start in earnest on Saturday and probably last until Monday.

I knew I have been drinking way too much caffeine lately, but yesterday I could feel my heart fluttering for a couple of hours. I have had that happen before, but it usually only lasts for a minute or so. Last night about every third beat it would flutter. After a while it decreased to a flutter maybe every five or six beats, and then went back to normal.

I am continually on a caffeine roller coaster. The pattern is that I get to a point where I am drinking way too much caffeine and decide to stop. I go cold turkey and stay away from it for a couple of months or so.

Then one day, usually at work, as a reward for a job well done, I will have a delicious Diet Coke, and really enjoy it.

The next day I will remember how good that Diet Coke was and usually near the end of the day decide that just one can won't be bad and I will really savor it. But no more than one can.

The one-can-per-day routine usually lasts about two or three weeks. Then I move to two cans per day, and stay at that level for another couple of weeks.

After that I rationalize if I am already drinking two cans a day, there's not much difference between that and three cans per day.

Then one rough Monday morning I will think that a nice hot cup of coffee would really do the trick, and I will just give up my three Diet Cokes for that day and I will call it even.

This slow increase of consumption continues for several months until I am getting acidy stomach, too hot, or in yesterday's case, heart flutters. Then the whole cycle begins again.