This may come as a giant shock to you...

...but I have been weaning myself off coffee. Or at least I have been attempting to.

It wasn't that long ago that I was honestly up to 5+ cups of coffee a day. It was getting out of control. I was getting jittery by about cup number 3 of the morning, and positively wired by late afternoon's 5th cup.

Oh, and while I've never been one to sleep much, or particularly soundly, at the best of times, it was getting out of hand....

This actually went on for months.

Then not long ago, after the fateful "Rrrrroll up the rrrrrrrrim to win" campaign at Timmy's (which was an unmitigated disaster for myself and others), I decided that I was going to cut back to just one cup a day. Granted, it was an extra large, but the point was: it was just one. I have since reigned myself in to the more human (humane, even?) large... and starting Monday, I'm attempting to downgrade again to medium. This might bring back the requirement for an afternoon cup, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Hold the phone....... While looking for the pic you see at the side, I stumbled across this article.

Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I should actually be stepping my coffee drinking back up....

It is unclear whether it is the caffeine or some other ingredient in coffee that provides the protection, said study co-author Dr. Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

Of course, there is a better way to avoid alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, Klatsky said.

"The way to avoid getting ill is not to drink a lot of coffee, but to cut down on the drinking" of alcohol, he said.

Oh... Well, now I'm just confused.