The Coffee Experiment

I do this annoying thing every so often where I want to change something about myself. It’s not even really about changing myself as a person but more like, trying to challenge myself. There is so much information out there about health and nutrition that I sometimes like to just try things myself and see how it turns out.

My new ‘thing’ is quitting coffee. I was a late coffee bloomer. I drank it here and there on occasion but never first thing in the morning. I didn’t actually become a full on coffee drinker until I moved in with my old roommate, Hillary. She had this amazing espresso machine and once she showed me how to make espresso, I was hooked. I went from one shot of espresso in a latte or cappuccino a day to two. Which, I know is not much so I was curious to see how quitting coffee would affect me.

Two Fridays ago I read about the new ruling in California for coffee shops to state the possible risks of drinking coffee and its carcinogenic component but then I read (https://www.livescience.com/61598-lawsuit-warns-of-coffee-cancer-risk.html) so I wasn’t too concerned with my consumption. However, it did spark my interest in trying to quit coffee. I love it but I know it increases the stress hormone and I already have so many stressors in my life that I can’t change so I have to try to eliminate those that I can control. Stressors such as: Driving, traffic, owning a business, trying to conceive, and exercising. I don’t want to give up exercise and even though it’s technically a positive stress, it’s a stressor nonetheless. In my head I didn’t want to quit forever. I still wanted to have coffee with friends here and there but I really wanted to remove the habitual first-thing-in-the-morning-coffee. When you wake up at 5am, you shouldn’t be using coffee to wake up, you should be sleeping enough so you’re rested and not needing a coffee.

So I just wake up on Saturday morning, and I don’t have coffee. No withdrawal symptoms, nothing out of the ordinary but I was told they would start around day 3. So day 3 rolls around, absolutely no withdrawals! Slight headaches but nothing I couldn’t handle. I go  5 days without drinking it and then I have a coffee at 9am. Immediately I am so jacked up on caffeine I feel like I could run a marathon. I then proceed to have full on anxiety all day. It was awful! Nine pm rolls around and I can’t sleep. When I finally fall asleep I have crazy nightmares and I wake up almost every 2 hours.

I realize now that coffee is not my friend. Which is sad because I love it and probably have 10 bags of coffee in my freezer. Anyone need coffee?

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