Coffee Divorce

*Updated Friday January 29, 2015 with more info.

That’s it. It’s over between me and coffee. Me and coffee have officially been broken up for almost a full month. I’ve been faithful by not messing around with any other source of caffeine (and no decaf, it’s weird and still considered cheating in my book). I have been juggling with the idea of quitting coffee for a couple months and that now my baby is finally doing her nights, it definitely help make the hard decision. So I was “using” coffee to get through.

Why do such a cruel thing to myself? I did it for me. I wanted more energy. I also don’t like the idea of being “addicted” to anything. The motivation also came from a friend of mine, a more intense coffee drinker than me I just should note, who has quit coffee and as a result claims he has way more energy than when he was on coffee. I heard that from other folks as well. I had to test it myself.

I should give you a little background on my coffee habit. I’ve been a daily drinker for 9 years (same amount of time that I’ve been with my spouse). I average two cups a day, occasionally three. One or two in the morning and one after lunch. I’m also not one of these grumpy people in the morning because they didn’t have their cup of coffee.  I love my coffee. I like waking up the morning and making it. It’s almost like a little ritual and there’s pleasure in doing it. Those who visit my blog probably read a couple posts on coffee. They have been among my most popular posts. I think people visit the blog more for the coffee posts and than the investment stuff. I’m one of those coffee “amateur”. I have a few coffee/espresso machines, grind my own beans, shop for organic beans etc… I’m that coffee guy. As many coffee lovers know, the idea of quitting coffee can be torturing.

The verdict: It has been 28 days and I feel awesome. The first benefit I noticed is the quality of my sleep. Now I have these very long colorful dreams. it feels like the dream never stops.  It’s definitely sign that I’m sleeping more deeply. The first week is the roughest but it gradually gets better. The first three days I didn’t notice anything different. Then I think on the fourth day that’s when my  body realized that the good stuff wasn’t coming in anymore. I got hit by random fatigue attack. My thinking was at times blurry and I suffered from the lack of concentration. So my start to 2016 wasn’t the most productive. If you Google a list of symptoms, I had about half of them. And fortunately I didn’t get any headaches, and that’s a big one and a deal breaker for a lot people. Four weeks in I can testify that I have more energy than before and it’s going to get marginally better. We know that non-coffee drinker don’t need coffee to have energy. We drink coffee to get that “natural” energy level, whatever that might be, and not to be above.

After a couple weeks the benefits outweigh the cost. Quitting coffee is an experiment that’s working well  The break up was fine for the most part. There were a few instances where I really wanted a cup, like the time I had breakfast at a restaurant. It feels really weird not have a coffee when reading your newspaper. I could have ordered decaf so I could have the complete experience but I didn’t. Coffee and a newspaper. They go together so well. I’m not a smoker but when a smoker says they need a cigarette with their drink, I can sort of relate to that now. They call themselves social smokers. I haven’t banned coffee from my life. I plan on drinking the occasional cup sometime the future but I don’t plan on reintroducing coffee in my daily diet. I will treat coffee like alcohol, I will have it occasionally for pleasure purposes. Maybe on weekends or when I read the newspaper. I guess you can call me a “social” coffee drinker.