Addictions

I used to smoke. I smoked for a little over 10 years, starting when I was around 14. I quit on Christmas eve 2000. I didn't want to be a bride standing there in her wedding dress with a cigarette hanging from her lips. Wasn't an image I wanted. I still want a cigarette at least once a week. I am smart enough to know that I cannot be a casual smoker, it is either all or nothing with me. I could never understand some of my friends who could just smoke when we were out drinking and then have nothing to do with it the rest of the week. There are times it smells so appealing that I feel my heart start to race and I salivate. Crazy the way an addiction can control a person.
I now find myself addicted to Chai tea, namely the brand Big Train that comes in powdered form that you milk with steamed milk. WOW, it is so good. I like the spiced flavor the best, but will drink the vanilla or chocolate too. It has started to bother me that I DO feel addicted to drinking this stuff. I am realizing this and have started to limit the amount of times I am allowed it during a given week. Monday is double punch day at the drive thru coffee shot, so that is my splurge day. The stuff is expensive and fattening, plus I feel addicted. How do I feel addicted you wonder? I get raging lack of caffine headaches if I don't start my morning off with one. I can barely stay awake to get through the day if I don't have one. I am addicted to caffine. It effects me in the biggest way. I don't tend to drink caffinated things while pregnant, definately not while nursing under 6 months of age. So, that is a fairly long time to go without caffine. Once I start introducing caffine back into my body I talk really fast and shake a little and there is no going to sleep for me till at least 8 hours have passed. Crazy I tell you!!
With this new goal of limiting the Chia intake, I find myself talking me out of buying a chai practically everyday. Conversations in my head go along the lines of "you can do it, keep driving past, you don't need chai, you are stronger than that". Other days it is more "you got up and out of the house early for Church, you deserve to stop, or, you have a long day ahead of you, you need it". I can rationalize anything I want. But it bothers me that I feel addicted to chia. It is helping me understand my husbands need for coffee in the morning. Up till now, I never really got it. Coffee tastes and smells like crap and I couldn't understand a persons need to drink that crap to start the day off. Chia on the otherhand tastes like heated up heaven in a cup!! I'm drooling, luckily it is monday and that is double punch day, so I am allowed the indulgance.