I Quit Drinking Coffee For A Month — Here's What Happened
PHOTOGRAPHED BY: ALICE GAO.
Once upon a time, I was dating a guy who blamed everything on coffee. Not caffeine, mind you, just coffee. Feeling tired? That’s because of coffee. Not thinking straight? Coffee! Didn’t sleep well? You guessed it — coffee. Ugh. This went on and on, and frankly I found it profoundly irritating (like, really profoundly and deeply irritating). It wasn’t so much that his points were wrong (though sometimes they were, which was even more irritating), it’s that I LOVE coffee. And, yes, I am the first to admit that I am addicted to it. But at one point, his relentless commentary pissed me off so much that I vowed to give up coffee for one month just to prove him wrong.
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That is the first and last time I will ever do that. It’s not because I experienced withdrawal symptoms like raging headaches or extreme crankiness (I allowed myself green tea and matcha). It was more a simple pleasure of life issue. Ah, perfect. Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” just started playing, so I am calling this “The 30 Reasons I’ll Never Quit My Lover (Coffee) Again.”
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There’s caffeine and there’s CAFFEINE.
The caffeine jolt from a cup of tea is just not the same level as a cup of coffee. And it’s not just the amount of caffeine I’m talking about here. The jolts from coffee are better, more fun, last longer, are stronger, and help make early mornings and general a.m. ridiculousness more bearable. And furthermore…
I refuse to live in this totally amped world and be completely coffee-free.
By “amped world” I mean my little world — New York City. Being coffee-free in NYC is like watching a really fun dance party from behind thick glass with cotton stuffed in your ears. This city moves fast. It’s relentless. It’s loud. People can be grumpy and rude. The caffeine from my cup of coffee or a double espresso gives me that extra jolt to get my “back up off the wall,” bring my best dance moves to every single day, shrug off the bad attitudes, and be one of the last people dancing/still standing. And thank god for that, because…
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Turns out, most of my personality is tied to coffee.
I think most people would describe me as a “get up and go” type of person, and that is something I have always prided myself on. It turns out, this character trait is completely caffeine-driven. Without coffee…
I got nothing done and turned into kind of a useless slug.
Without my morning and afternoon coffee, I got nothing done. No seriously, nothing. Any to-do lists I had or little errands fell by the wayside into an abyss of “I’ll do that mañana” — even buying batteries for my remote control. Let’s not even get into my email inbox and unanswered correspondence. My blasé attitude extended to everything…
Including the gym.
I LOVE sports. Like, I really LOVE SPORTS. Turns out, this is also tied to coffee consumption, along with any semblance of athletic ability. So basically…
I became Zen to the point of feeling like I had a lobotomy.
Not too long ago, I listened to a This American Life podcast on testosterone: One of the segments is an interview with this guy who stopped producing testosterone and describes how it made him feel and think. At one point, he talks about how he kind of stopped having feelings and his inner monologue became just kind of observational. I totally understood, because that’s EXACTLY HOW I WAS WITHOUT COFFEE! I was a total Zen Master Flex. But is there such a thing as too Zen? (Yes, IMO). And does that kind of Zen fit NYC life? Also, let’s get into the quality of my life during this experiment…
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My mornings became a little sad without coffee.
My coffee habit started very young: Every morning when I was growing up, my mom would make herself a moka of coffee and give me a little splash of her espresso in a small bowl of warm milk. I would drink the warm coffee milk with Italian cookies — it really was just the best. Over the years, the coffee quantity went up and the milk went down to the point where I now drink my coffee black. Our morning coffee was the time of day when we would chat, gossip, read the paper together, and that mood often carried me throughout the day. I tried to replicate this morning ritual with tea, but…
Tea is not coffee.
In my favorite Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode, Larry David is asking Jerry Seinfeld why his wife is so angry at him for quitting coffee; after all, both coffee and tea can be served and consumed from hand-warming mugs, and they both have lovely, fragrant steam coming off the top. Larry asks incredulously, “I’ve got it in a cup, you don’t know what it is!… I can talk just as well with this cup, just as if there were coffee in it. What’s the difference?!” And Jerry answers, “You wanna know what the difference is? We go to an ice cream shop, I get a cone, and you get a salad. That’s the difference.” Amen, Jerry, AMEN. And also…
I don’t fit the tea culture.
I know I am going to get major flack for this, but I am just going to say it: There are tea people and there are coffee people, just like there are dog people and there are cat people. I am a dog/coffee person. I like cats and I like tea, but it just ain’t my thang. Plus, I realized that I feel totally awkward in places that sell and serve tea ONLY. And you know what?
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Coffee tastes damn good.
Can we also just point out that coffee tastes really good? And that life is short and often quite difficult? And can’t we just enjoy things for the pleasure itself sometimes? Is that too much to ask?!
On a side note, green tea makes me kind of nauseous.
Like, I turn the color of my tea when I drink green tea. Can that be good for you? (If someone writes to me that it’s the green tea “detoxing” my body from coffee, I will get very upset.) Not to mention that…
Dealing with jet lag without coffee is a TOTAL bitch.
In the middle of my coffee-free month, I had to fly to Europe for work and that was definitely a low point: Jet lag and no caffeine is a doozy. Not being able to have a shot of espresso in Europe is also no fun. That’s really when I started asking myself why the hell I was doing this. Because, after all…
Coffee is good for you.
Too much of anything is too much, but a few cups of coffee per day isn’t going to kill you. In fact, it’s probably even good for you.
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And, no, it doesn’t stunt your growth.
I have been drinking coffee since I was a pre-pubescent child and I am almost six feet tall. Speaking of small children…
I am going to have to give up or cut down on my coffee if/when I get pregnant.
So why deprive myself now? And speaking of things that are expensive (like having kids)…
By Elettra Wiedemann
