March 10, 2014

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Below is a journal-esque account of my first experiment of the year: one week without coffee (caffeine?)

 

DAY 1: Thursday

7AM: KILL ME. It’s raining outside and the thought of no coffee makes me sad.
9AM: Ok, people have gone through worse with less. And I don’t feel any craving for it at this moment.
9:30: Forgot about it until someone mentioned how badly they needed it and I got jealous. I got a really cheesy bagel instead.
11AM: Feel a bit down. No headache though. Also about a normal level of anxiety for the morning.
11:18AM: Just had a piece of donut. I feel WORLDS BETTER.
11:20AM: Casually wondering what replacing coffee with food is going to do for my figure.

Final thoughts for the day:

Afternoon coffee cravings never kicked in because I went to an afternoon dentist appointment. Overall I felt somewhat the same. I didn’t actually get a headache or any decrease in heart races. Well, maybe minorly. I attribute this to my body maybe not having all of the caffeine out of my blood stream yet? Who knows. What do I know. I was a bit on edge in the morning because it’s part of my normal routine, but I actually forgot that I even gave it up on my way to work.  I think cause I’m so obsessed with this new podcast.

 

DAY 2: Friday

7AM: Felt ok.
9:30AM: Made myself some hot chocolate. There was no way I wasn’t drinking anything warm when it was rainy and stormy out. It was a poor substitute but it tasted good and made me forget about coffee for a bit. I did notice that my heart race only lasted about 30 minutes versus an hour or so.
12PM: Getting hungry for lunch but feeling a bit tired/low. Feels like there is something uplifting missing. I think it is more just the thought of not being able to have coffee than anything else though. So far I have had no headaches.
2:45PM: Craving a pick me up like mad. Water is not helping. Went out for some iced tea from Coffee Bean.

 

Final thoughts for the day:

 I feel like it’s during the day that is the worst without coffee. At least so far. The morning I can power through with some hot chocolate and water, but the afternoons are depressing and make me want to die.

 

DAY 3: Saturday

7AM: Up this early on a saturday without coffee is the devil’s work. I felt pretty awake and got up to brush my teeth but then felt tired again and snoozed for another hour. Let the record show that I would have stayed awake and gotten things done if I had had the soothing taste of a good brew. A good brew would have given me the motivation to stay up and get things done.

8:30AM: I slept till 8 and then walked over to Einstein’s for a hot chocolate. It tastes sweet and horrible but it’s warm. It’s making me feel nauseous. I texted my mom to tell her I would be over to visit her in a little bit, after I finished my hot chocolate. Her response: “Great! We are having our coffee :)” Don’t kill me, but kill me.
12PM: I am at my mom’s house helping her with her Etsy shop, and my stepdad is walking around with a coffee cup in his hand. A few minutes later he says “I’m going to get more coffee from the store.” I wince.
12:30PM: Mom decides she is going to pour herself a cup of coffee while I am figuring out how to upload a banner on her Etsy shop. I am uncomfortable because I am not hungry, not thirsty, but I feel like I need something. Something warm. Coffee.

 

Final thoughts for the day:

Cravings dissipated after 4pm. But until then, yes, it was a hell.

 

Day 4: Sunday

8AM: This is still horrible. If I have another hot chocolate I’ll puke, and I’m craving that warm coffee taste like nothing I’ve ever craved before. I feel tired, have a slight headache, and I just want the taste of coffee. There’s no way I’m getting a decaf anything though because I know it has traces of caffeine and I don’t want to break my seal. You know how earlier I said during the day was worse? It seems like during the day is worse during the week, but on weekends, the mornings are absolute killer. I just want to sleep off the cravings. And I really don’t want to get in the habit of substituting coffee with cheesy bagels.

 

Final thoughts for the day:

The coffee cravings mostly went away as the day progressed. In the morning I ended up making myself some food and they went away.

 

Day 5: Monday

730AM: I woke up sad and whined a bit because I wanted coffee. I told myself maybe I’d have a tea. Adam said that tea had caffeine and was I giving up caffeine or coffee? I ended up getting a non-caffeinated iced tea from Starbucks before work and actually that helped kick the craving.
2:30PM: I am feeling tired and want coffee. The thought of not having it makes me sad still, and a bit low. I feel like I need something uplifting. Starting to get a little bit of a headache.
3PM: GRUMPY. Will never do this again. Want to hulk smash something and also sleep.
3:15PM: Feel much better after eating a fruit cup. It was refreshing.

 

Final thoughts for the day: 

I don’t ever want to be this unhappy without something.

 

Day 6: Tuesday

730AM: You know that calm that comes after you’ve cried really hard for 10 minutes? That’s the kind of calm I feel this morning. The craving for it is still there, but the disappointment about not being able to have it each morning is getting easier to deal with. Vices are a strange beast. This is the first morning I was able to come to work without replacing it with something. I’ve just been drinking water.
10AM: Having drank nothing so far this AM except for water, my entire body feels fabulously like a tooth ache.

 

Final thoughts for the day: 

I ended up having lunch for breakfast because I felt like I was missing something. And I was starving. I actually felt pretty good about that, and was even hungry again by lunch time. At any rate, my afternoon cravings disappeared completely as of today, which is good. This morning I finally felt a calm instead of a sadness, like I mentioned before. But it was a sad calm. It was a ‘giving in’ calm. It was like here’s my head, put it on the chopping block, I don’t care. I was miserable, but I wasn’t dying like I was previous days. Tomorrow is my very last day without coffee. I think I’ll celebrate by doing everything the exact same as I have been for the past 6 days.

 

DAY 7: Wednesday

7AM: Just felt sad.
10AM: Had some hot chocolate. Overall didn’t feel any heart racing or anxiety.
3PM: Really wanted some kind of pick-me-up. My sister asked if I wanted anything from the store. I said no and didn’t feel too horrible about it. But I DID have a pudding cup shortly after that. Suffice to say I think replacing coffee with junk food is still instinctual.

 

Final Final Notes–Experiment Ended

Vices are fucking strange. I know I love to drink coffee, but this idea of going insane without a particular thing is really interesting. It really creeps up on you, and it’s a bit scary. You don’t realize you’ve developed a habit until you quit it and feel absolutely miserable.

 

It’s because we are not children. We are not given fun things for a limited amount of time. When we do bad things, Netflix doesn’t get taken away from us, or alcohol. We have complete free will to do whatever we want, whenever we want, and this is sometimes a dangerous thing.

 

But this whole experiment really opened up my eyes to something though, this idea of zen-ness, of wanting nothing.

 

You see, I literally had to pull out my inner zen in order to not kill everything that moved. I had to tell myself that emptiness was a wholeness, and that I wanted absolutely nothing. Wanting nothing is actually pretty awesome and alleviates tension in my shoulders every time I imagine a world where I ask nothing of it. It’s the wants and the cravings and the aching-fors that kill us a little bit all the time. To always be wanting, is to never be at peace. And for me, giving up coffee was like tapping into an inner peace and strength I didn’t know I had. And to think, I lived half my life like this! (Started drinking coffee in high school at some point I think).

 

Overall, habit is a scary place. When something so small, like coffee, was removed from the equation, I became a completely different person. I couldn’t smile my way out of it. I had to replace it with something. I felt alone. I felt sad. But towards the end of the week I wasn’t sad because I didn’t have coffee, I was sad because I had developed an addiction to something that made me sad without it, and I didn’t like that one bit. Even giving up alcohol is not so bad after about 3-4 days.

 

With the anxiety thing though, I think there was a little something to that. I think I may do decaf during the week, and full caffeination on the weekends :)

Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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  • Deanna

    I loved this blog post! Such honesty! :) btw I’m pretty sure hot chocolate and tea have caffeine in them. I gave up coffee several times for different reasons. I was a hard core coffee addict! Usually in the morning AND the afternoon. Then one day, about 4-5 years ago it just gave ME up. I woke up feeling like I had a cold and I was congested. I drank my coffee with cream and didn’t want the cream to add to the congestion (is that true?) so I didn’t have any. The next morning coffee didn’t sound good so I didn’t drink it again. I didn’t have any craving and no withdrawal symptoms like the other times. This went on for several days-maybe weeks. Then one morning, after a late night, I NEEDED coffee. But I couldn’t get through a half a cup. It tasted awful. Then, after only a half a cup I could feel the caffeine coursing through my veins and I FELT awful! I’ve never really wanted or drank it since. Same thing happened to me with cigarettes, they just kind of gave me up.
    How is it going now? :)

    • Monique Muro

      Thanks for sharing Deanna! I totally agree that once something you love doesn’t sit right with you, that’s it! That’s actually how I gave up smoking too! (I was mostly a social smoker though, so nothing heavy duty). One night it just made me ill and that was it, I was done forever. I’m feeling much better now that I’m drinking coffee again, and actually it’s made me appreciate it more. Now when I drink it, amazingly, my heart doesn’t race like it used to. It’s almost like my body is enjoying it more, and is more grateful to have it, and it makes the effects more enjoyable! :)