As I’m sitting here writing this, my hands are shaking and I can feel my heartbeat in my cheeks. It’s not as bad as when I insisted I could hear colors, but we might be close, people. 

I have a pretty insane tolerance for caffeine, which is both a blessing and a curse. The question I’ve recently been pondering though is: how much caffeine is too much caffeine? 

My go-to coffee order is a 16 oz vanilla latte with four shots and two sugars, and I can usually drink two or three of those a day and still sleep. Somewhat. 

My heart is in great shape by the way, I’ve passed every physical with flying colors. This morning though, I woke up with a resting heart rate of 139… which was interesting, to say the least. 

My secret? Celsius energy drinks. Although it was unknown to me at the time—probably because I was too tired to read the label— it advises consumers that they shouldn’t ingest more than two a day. 

Now technically, I didn’t. I had two Celsius drinks… and my regular four-shot latte. A singular 12 oz Celsius drink contains a whopping 200 mg of caffeine. An espresso shot contains around 64 mg of caffeine. All together, I consumed nearly 700 mg of caffeine… sorry, mom. 

It was a really rough week, don’t judge me. However, I highly don’t recommend it. I had more anxiety in those two hours after waking up than I had over this entire last year. I basically levitated out of bed and can’t remember breathing.

College students in general are known for being major caffeine consumers; we’re all walking around like a flock of permanently exhausted pigeons with backpacks full of overpriced textbooks. 

I’m jealous of anyone who can simply just—wake up. How do you do it? Everyone else seems to have so much energy, especially the freshman at football games. We could power the entire school if we could harness that excitement and use it to run a generator.

So I’m making a pact with myself. No more than two Celsius drinks a day, less if I can help it. 

But, I’m just so tired, guys. I can’t be the only one feeling this way. One of my friends mentioned sleeping, but do any of us actually do that? Another mentioned doing yoga, like what? I barely want to be vertical when I wake up, let alone contorting myself into a pretzel and sweating. 

Until I figure it out, caffeine will just have to do. But maybe a little less of it.