Giving up Coffee a Recap

For the month of November, I gave up drinking coffee because I had become dependent on it to get through my day. I traded in my boutique, ethically-sourced coffee for Italian espresso when I moved to Milan, which I then traded in for burnt, “dirty water” as Jesse would call it. It is the kind of coffee that provides enough caffeine if you drink the right quantity, but it does not provide a pleasurable experience. I found that for the first two months of moving to Belgium, I had steadily been increasing my coffee consumption to the point where I felt as though I needed it to function.

I decided that giving up coffee for a month would give my body an opportunity to reset itself so I could relearn to function without the caffeine crutch I had become reliant upon. I hoped that I would reach the end of the month, waking up early, running every day like someone who suddenly learned to love mornings. I had the additional goal of being able to keep myself from falling back into a coffee habit by only drinking coffee on occasion because I wanted it.

Beginning

I started this experiment at the start of a four-day weekend for the city of Brussels; All Souls Day fell on a Thursday so many people took the Friday off as well and left the city. I knew I would not have any labor-intensive tasks during those couple days so it would be the best moment.

The first couple days were challenging:

During that first weekend, I left my house as little as possible and spent the majority of my weekend lounging around the house watching Netflix.

On a semi-consistent basis, I have problems either forming or recalling short-term memories. At the beginning of the month, I experienced this without any of the other flare symptoms, leading me to believe it was related to not drinking coffee. I also struggled with concentrating on tasks, and everything around me felt fuzzy and surreal.

I have a high tolerance for pain. Coffee-detox headaches are typically no big deal for me since I regularly go through these detox periods. More than anything, they are just obnoxious, because they hurt enough to periodically remind me of my discomfort, making it challenging to do anything enjoyable.

I am not a pleasant person when I am not feeling well. I am an even less pleasant person when I am tired. Unfortunately for Jesse and for Igneous, he had to endure four days of me being grumpy, tired, and overall dissatisfied with anything that crossed my path.

Throughout the process, there were many occasions where I wanted to cave and drink a double shot of our Italian espresso that I went so far out of my way to bring with us to Milan. Self-control is not something I have a lot of experience with. But I knew it was worth it, and I knew, over time, it would get easier.

Thirty days after giving up coffee, my life has not changed all that much. I drink tea instead of drinking coffee. I have the same amount of energy, and I am learning to find other, non-habit-forming, strategies to improve my concentration.

I would not say my quality of life has improved or changed at all for that matter. But I will say, I am grateful for not feeling dependent on a substance to make it through the day or to feel like myself which is more than enough for me.

Challenges and Setbacks

I had high expectations for this process. I have made many rounds through the cycle of coffee drinker, coffee addict, detox, casual consumption. For the most part, I knew what to expect. Or at least I thought I did. I thought I would be able to return to the natural energy I always had within a month. I thought cutting out coffee would be a quick fix and unfortunate sacrifice to feel like my old self again.

I do not know if it is age: I am, in fact, two years older than I was the last time I did this. (I have been told there is, for some reason, a tremendous difference between being twenty-seven and being twenty-five. But I find even though I have more energy, and I am overall more functional in the mornings, my overall energy levels throughout the day have not radically changed.

Social

As I mentioned in the post about giving up coffee, coffee breaks are a big part of my work/team culture. The editors at my company often take a break at the same time of day to catch up on life, work, and anything else we find to discuss during those breaks. Granted, there is the option to drink tea during these breaks, which made the experience much easier to navigate.

However, we had friends over for dinner one night and Jesse made carbonara for us and at the end of the meal, he offered everyone a coffee. It was the most difficult coffee to turn down because it was a want not a need like I had been aiming for. It was the kind of coffee I want to be able to have in the future, a high-quality coffee while out with friends after a meal every couple weeks, but I knew I wasn’t ready.

All’s Well that Ends Well

Throughout this month, I often found myself explaining to my coworkers at the coffee machine (while getting hot water for my tea) that I had given up drinking coffee—partly because coffee is an important element of office culture, notably our office culture, and in part due to them coming from countries with their own strong coffee culture, like in Milan.

Many of them responded with, “I could never give up coffee” or with perplexed expressions. I can empathize with this. I have often said this in the past. For me, however, it is the “why” that is more important. For many of them, when I explained why, they thought about how they experience coffee in their lives. Several people agreed with me that they no longer appreciate coffee the way they used to and that it is a need even if they did not feel the dependency I developed on it.

Looking Forward

I will say that drinking coffee, like drinking alcohol, or eating in a restaurant enriches my life. None of these habits themselves have a direct benefit on my health and overall wellbeing. None of these things are necessary. They are indulgences and I would prefer to keep them that way. When you drink coffee every day or drink wine everyday or eat in a restaurant everyday, you stop appreciating the experience because it becomes routine, habitual, expected. Because this is not something I need to live and because it is something I enjoy, I want to keep it as an occasional, preferably social occurrence in my life.

Ideally, I will be able to drink coffee on an occasional basis under the right conditions to maintain its status as a pleasurable indulgence:

I will not be rushing back into it.