And as much as I miss the taste, I don’t miss how everything got sped up in my life when I drank coffee, sort of like Kramer in this classic Seinfeld clip:
And that’s not an exaggeration.
Coffee and I go way back. I started hanging around coffeeshops late in high school, around twenty years ago. At the time, I loved my blended coffee drinks. I was told years later I was really #basic because of how often I drank them . . . though I never got into pumpkin spice everything.
I was one of those people who assumed they could never give up coffee. I drank it every day at different times in different amounts: regular, espresso, decaf, decaf espresso, plus sometimes caffeinated tea drinks like chai lattes. But it messed with my sleep–horribly–and worsened other issues, especially with money. In college, I crashed in the middle of the day on fluctuating amounts of coffee–like visibly falling asleep in classes–and in recent years, I’ve fallen and hit my head on concrete a couple times while walking fast on caffeine.
I’ve tried to quit caffeine multiple times in my life, usually cold turkey–it’s obvious that I have an unhealthy dependency. The easiest time I had quitting was when I became severely manic and couldn’t even drink decaf–the withdrawal was a lot easier with only decaf. That time lasted 68 months (five years and eight months), which included my entire graduate school experience, but I’ve been drawn back to coffee time and time again–I’ve missed the taste and the experience.
When it comes to caffeine, I never liked soda, but I sure liked sugary coffee–and yes, I understand coffee snobs love their coffee pitch black, but it took me a long time to even try drinking coffee that way often enough to like it. Humorist Samantha Irby has a hilarious essay in her 2023 book Quietly Hostile where she makes fun of those snobs as well as those who layer on ten modifiers to their drink orders.
I can still taste the deliciousness of (essentially) coffee milkshakes: frozen mochas and lattes, Frappuccinos, whatever you want to call them . . . and I miss that taste. But I wanted to write this to document how I am better off without coffee and caffeinated tea, though I used the latter much less often.
On December 28, 2023, I had a typical concoction of multiple caffeinated drinks: maybe some hot coffee and some chai, but that day I decided to try my first regular espresso drink in a long time. I didn’t just get a ripping headache; I got a wicked sinus infection–maybe the worst I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something–on top of my initial withdrawal. The infection might have been a reaction to the winter weather; I honestly don’t know. But with that withdrawal, that illness, and a painful cough, I was in bed for days. That was not fun.
On the other side of it, though, I can’t fathom how different my life would be if I still drank coffee. In the last year-and-seven-months, I have been rewarded with some unprecedented personal triumphs, especially at work.
Here are a dozen areas of my life that are better without coffee:
- Sleep: I can’t function well without adequate sleep, and today my sleep is much more consistent and only occasionally interrupted.
- Energy level: I am much more calm and able to do different tasks.
- Physical sturdiness: Though I am still clumsy as hell, I am falling a lot less often or severely.
- Sweat: Coffee accelerated my metabolism so much that I often came into work, for example, with my shirt drenched in sweat. That doesn’t happen nearly as much anymore.
- Speed of talking: I don’t sound hyper or manic, and especially when I work with ESL students, this makes a BIG difference. One ESL teacher I work with even called me “cool, calm, and collected” . . . all I can say is, wow, that is not what I ever expected.
- Speed of physical movement: I don’t bump into things or people from walking so fast, and I am okay walking less fast down the street.
- Medical tremors: I get tremors (shaking) in my hands from something medical I deal with, but they are much less conspicuous today.
- Hyperactivity: It’s not just the speed of how I talked; it was that everything, including tone and volume, was heightened when I drank coffee. I feel much more even and level in my mood and vocal delivery today.
- Concentration: Even with ADHD, my ability to focus and sustain attention to tasks, including schoolwork, was very compromised on coffee. I get much more done, much more effectively, today.
- Impulse control: Coffee affected everything in my life, including tendencies to do anything impulsively. This is very much a work in progress, but my level of impulse control has improved significantly without coffee.
- Weight: Coffee encouraged my desire to eat and drink more than I would otherwise. Today, I am more able to lose unhealthy fat and eat more nutritiously with coffee out of the equation.
- Time management: Today I am much less spacy and able to manage my own time, though executive functioning still takes plentiful effort with me being neurodivergent.
As for habits and experiences related to coffee, I still go to coffeeshops, though not so often. I drink herbal tea (usually iced), hot chocolate, juice, smoothies, and other alternatives. Herbal tea especially is not the same, and I could fill a notebook with complaints about it not having the same taste as coffee, but I feel so much better without coffee or caffeinated tea.
And as many have asked, in theory I could do decaf coffee/espresso, but it’s too tempting and not worth the expense. It tends to lead to more and more until I consume regular caffeine and am back where I was.
I thought about centering this piece on why others “should” quit coffee, but I know that many people can manage their coffee consumption better than I can–in other words, it’s not a problem for them. I realized it would be better for me to share my experience.
But if any of my issues resonate with you, it might be something to consider. If so, I would suggest searching “how to quit coffee” or “how to quit caffeine” online because there are more gradual and less painful and disruptive ways to undergo withdrawal than doing it cold turkey.
What is your experience like with coffee and caffeine? I’ll be interested to read the comments.
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Previously Published on substack and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
