In sort of a bad mood today, my caffeine patch failed this morning

My caffeine patch failed this morning and so I was awakened "cold" by my alarm clock: totally old school and very unpleasant. I am assuming that the patch was defective, as the alarm clock base I purchased was the most expensive one that Amazon sold (for wireless caffeine patch activation) and there are no other signs that it is not working. If I check other unused patches, the tiny green patch glows, showing that it is receiving the the wireless signal and has been synched with the base. So, basically I think the patch I had on last night just didn't work. I honestly can't remember whether it was checking out OK when I put it on, but I am pretty sure I would have noticed if not. So that is annoying, because how will I know in the future whether it's going to work?

So, I woke up with a start at 7:01 am and it took me a while to realize what was going on. The patch should have triggered at 6:16 am and I should have been peacefully awake by quarter to seven. I was completely sound asleep when the alarm went off (now I realize why the clocks are designed with an audible alarm for backup purposes). So, I've only been using the patches for about 8 months or so, but I definitely am spoiled and had forgotten what it was like to wake up from a deep sleep with no caffeine. It was even worse than before I finally invested in the wireless caffeine patch system (why did I ever hesitate?!). What I did then was just set my alarm much earlier than I needed to wake up, and when the alarm went off, I'd quickly pop in a 200 mg caffeine pill and then go right back to sleep. I had a dual alarm clock, with the second alarm scheduled for 45 minutes after the first, but I almost never made it to the second alarm, unless I'd only had less than three hours sleep. So, in principle I was always waking up out of a deep sleep by an audible alarm, but it seemed tolerable because I knew I just had to pop the pill and then go back to sleep and my body would slowly wake up "naturally."

So, today was just terrible because I had no plan in place and didn't have my caffeine pills next to my bed. After some time I did realize that all I had to do was manually trigger the patch to release the caffeine. So, now I know first-hand some problems that can occur. Having had this happen, I for sure for a while will only use the patches which are manufactured specifcally for my base clock (which is what I've been doing). They cost about $1 / use, but it's totally worth it. The cheaper ones are about $0.79 / use, but it's not worth the savings to risk what happened to me this morning happening more often. Here are some other things I am thinking:

• I would not even THINK about trying the cell phone / PDA / wireless drug patch trigger combos. It just makes sense that a dedicated base whose sole purpose is alarm clock / drug trigger would be more reliable than a cell phone / PDA version, which for my whole life have always been buggy and prone to breaking. I have only had one clock which didn't keep time, and I never really understood how that was possible, since it was an AC powered digital clock.
• I do see now why there hasn't been a huge push to start making triggered patches for other more critical drugs. Just because it's possible the patch will malfunction and you can't trust the consumers to check and manually trigger it. Although, when you think about it, most drugs, even if they are more "important" than daily caffeine are not as time critical as when you are using caffeine to peacefully wake yourself up. But I do understand the hesitation to market for other purposes.
• I wonder if I should start wearing two patches, in case one fails (like today)? I'm sure the extra caffeine wouldn't hurt me and then it would be almost impossible to have a failure (unless the base fails...I could use two bases, but that's annoying and expensive...also there could be problems I suppose with cross-talk and confusion while initializing and setting the patches).

OK, well, now that I am done writing this, I actually don't feel as crappy as I did when I started. I guess I was sort of acting like a baby to be so pissed off that I had to wake up with a regular alarm. A huge fraction of the population in the U.S. still does this routinely and not to mention poorer areas of the world that don't have these devices. They don't even have caffeine pills in these places, so I really shouldn't complain at all. Although, in my experience from watching TV, they probably do have better access to roots and herbs that probably work better than caffeine, but definitely not digitally triggered release.