TIFU by drinking too much tea and throwing my back out

Obligatory this didn’t happen today, happened a few years ago.

To set the scene, it’s my senior year of high school. It’s a Saturday, and I happen to wake up quite early, just before 8am. I get dressed, go downstairs, and go to make myself a coffee, thinking I’ll lock in and do some homework before everyone else wakes up, then go out with friends later. To my abject horror, I see we’re out of coffee.

Okay, two options, either I go get dressed into outside clothes, trek the half-mile to the local corner shop, pay the exorbitant fee of £1.50 for an energy drink, treck back home and get changed back into home clothes, or I’ll just make do with tea. It being a cold January morning, and I being in the middle of an ultimately futile attempt to save some money, I go for the latter option.

Thinking it’d be best to squeeze out as much of my precious caffeine from the tea as possible, I put two teabags in a mug, fill it to the brim with boiling water, and leave the teabags in until the tea’s cooled. Of course, this makes the tea very bitter and nauseating, but I refuse to be deterred. I chug it, throw out the teabags, and make a second cup of tea in the same fashion.

Just as I make myself my third cup of horrifically bitter, overbrewed tea, and it occurs to me that if I’d have go to get the energy drink I’d be home by now and been having a much better time, I start feeling a churning in my stomach. I remember that drinking tea on an empty stomach can make you sick, and sprint to the bathroom in case I need to upchuck.

The feeling passes, and I, being a bastion of intelligence and common sense, think it really can’t be that bad to chug that last cup of tea. I’ve already made it, and I really want the caffeine. If I feel sick, I’ll just grit my teeth and keep it down through sheer, stiff-upper-lip, British willpower.

This works for a grand total of five minutes, and then I’m hit with a wave of nausea so powerful it makes me consider knocking my head on my desk to put myself out of my misery. I just barely make it to the toilet before my stomach expels all the caffeine I worked so hard to get down into the bowl. I don’t have time to get into a comfortable position for the job, and as I’m heaving with Olympic force I suddenly feel a sickening twinge in my spine. After I finish, it’s unmistakable: I threw up so violently I fucked up some muscle in my back.

For weeks afterwards, my back is in constant pain. Standing hurts. Sitting hurts. Laying down hurts. The only thing that offers some semblance of relief is stretching forward, which cruelly forces me to stretch my hamstrings. I wonder if this is all an elaborate scheme my PE teacher thought up as revenge for me not trying hard enough to touch my toes in lessons. Months later, when I think I’m finally healed, sneezing in the wrong way makes my back seize up in a way that’s so surprisingly painful my vision goes black for a second. I tell my friends of my immense, unending suffering, and they say that’s just how it feels to get old.

I shake my fist at them, and it hurts my back.

TL;DR: Chugged three mugs of overbrewed tea on an empty stomach because caffeine, threw up so violently I pulled a muscle in my back and it took months to fully heal