A few practical thoughts on quitting caffeine

Experimenting with a different type of dry January

Society has a massive drug problem.

And I’m not talking about heroin, marijuana, or alcohol. I’m more concerned with our crippling addiction to the most popular mind altering substance in human history — caffeine.

Did you know 2.25 billion cups of coffee are gulped down by a billion people…per day? Tea is sipped by even more. The remaining folks are either chugging Red Bull or munching on a Hershey’s bar (yep, chocolate has caffeine too).

I’m a repeat offender who consumes them all.

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This got me wondering, “Is there a single soul who has managed to stay away from this socially acceptable addictive substance?”

I can only think of one, but she’s my six year old sister-in-law and both her parents drink coffee daily so she’ll be hooked soon enough.

So I decided it was going to be me for the entire month of January.

The guy who not only didn’t want to talk to a stranger before his morning Americano, but didn’t even want to make eye contact with his wife.

This wasn’t always the case.

Coffee grossed me out for my entire childhood even though both of my parents drank it daily. I can still recall my dad’s Starbucks order to perfection: venti, nonfat, no whipped mocha. Still don’t understand what half those words mean.

I couldn’t comprehend their fascination with this hot murky bean water for the life of me. The mere smell of it made the hairs stand up on my arms (not in a good way).

I wouldn’t even get within arm’s reach of coffee flavored ice cream, candy, or candles. Yuck!

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That all changed when I got a sales job fresh out of college.

The first few uncaffeinated weeks on the job were brutal as I nervously cold called strangers who didn’t want to speak to me as I tried to convince them to buy something they didn’t need.

This clearly wasn’t working. I needed help. Fast.

My savior came in the form of that nasty brown liquid I swore I’d never let my lips touch.

It was so bad that I had to drink my first few cups while ducking my head below the walls of my cubicle as I plugged my nose trying to eliminate the god awful taste.

But after a few minutes, as if by magic, I felt a tingle of excitement trickle down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I could literally feel myself transforming from an introvert to an extrovert. In fact, I couldn’t shut up.

The previously painful experience of cold calling 100 strangers per day suddenly became fun!

My sales quickly took off, I moved up the leader board, and 11 short months later I had received a promotion.

You might be thinking this was due to a combination of factors like: a world-class training program, the power of positive thinking, or because I’m devilishly handsome.

But no, none of those were the real reason. Coffee single-handedly got me that promotion.

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I can honestly say caffeine has led to most of the success I’ve had in my career, my social life, and my creative output. The punishment was well worth the reward.

For a while…

Fast forward ten years and a few thousand coffees later.

The magic had worn off.

Sure, I had become a full convert. But there was one glaring problem: I now had developed a proper addiction.

Coffee was the first thing I thought about after waking up and the last thing I thought about before going to bed. It had become a major part of my identity.

I no longer knew who I was without coffee.

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It took me years to sell myself on the idea that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t need coffee to thrive.

Finally on December 31, 2023 I’d had enough. I don’t want to be addicted to anything no matter how harmless it may seem. So on January 1st of this year I quit cold turkey.

I wanted, no, I needed to prove to myself that I could drop this addiction.

That led me to experiment a full month without any caffeine to see what would happen.

I thought, “Who am I without the crutch of caffeine?”

That’s an important question for you to ask yourself too.

So for the past thirty days I haven’t had one sip of coffee, tea, Red Bull, NO Xplode, soda, or my favorite snack of all: dark chocolate covered almonds.

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The first seven days of the experiment were worse than expected. Filled with headaches, crankiness, and little desire to live.

The rest of the month was better than I could have ever imagined.

At first, I was a cranky brat without my ritualistic brew so I tried rationalizing how stupid of an idea this was. It’s not like I needed to be clean for a drug test, so why the hell was I doing this to myself?

But I told that little voice inside my head to shut up and I forged on.

By day eight something started to shift.

It felt like a decade long fog had been lifted from my mind.

• Slept like a baby.

• I rediscovered my true baseline.

• I felt a steady level of energy throughout the day. No more highs in the AM followed by crashes in the PM.

• Most importantly, I removed the mask that caffeine allowed me to hide behind and was forced to be my true self again (someone I hadn’t been in a decade) without the help of society’s favorite drug.

It was like being reintroduced to a stranger who’d been shoved into a closet as if he didn’t belong in this over-caffeinated world.

“Well hey there buddy, nice to see you again!”

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My biggest fear of all during this experiment was that my creative output would fall off a cliff. I didn’t think I’d be able to write a single word worth reading without the crutch of coffee. But I was wrong.

It was nothing more than an elaborate trick my mind was playing on me.

The magic was this: I dropped coffee and gained my sanity.

So now what? Am I done with coffee and caffeine forever more?

Hell no!

I’m giddy for that first sip of piping hot bean water that’s waiting for me on February 1.

But I proved that it’s possible to reconnect with your true self by breaking an addiction to the most commonly consumed mind altering substance known to man.

Can you?

Your thoughts? Please leave a reply below.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash