This is an essay about coffee. And nothing else.
Oh Coffee… How I Loved You So…
Nearly every morning for years, I would dedicate my first waking minutes to making you — in French press form, no less. I savored your delectable bitter taste and delighted upon the warmth as you slid down my throat. I needed the energy boost you promised me.
But I’m afraid, dearest bean of mine, that we can go no further. I think… I think we’re done.
Farewell, O glorious bean
Done as a daily thing at least. Maybe every now and then we can dance the arabica waltz, but for now… well, I’ve come to realize some things about you.
It’s time we broke up.
The break-up began unceremoniously
With a bout of unrelated indigestion.
I’ll spare you the details, but the state of my guts when I woke up this particular morning made me realize adding coffee to the mix was a bad idea. So I didn’t have any. Didn’t the next day either just to be safe. And then I just kept not having coffee. I didn’t plan on taking a break. It was a total whim to extend myself the denial of the bitter juice. I decided on a month. Just to detox. Just to see.
Admittedly, the first few days were horrible
The caffeine withdrawals slugged me hard on days two and three. I was barely able to focus at work, I was so distant in social situations I may as well have been a solar system away, and I wanted to do nothing at all, not even watch YouTube videos or play video games. I just wanted to lay there and do nothing until the yuckiness and headache went away.
Stage 2: back to regular ol’ Drew
After pushing through the miserable withdrawals, things pretty much went back to normal. I don’t have an egregiously early wake-up time for work — and moreover, I was able to sleep in that weekend — so I wasn’t missing the caffeine energy boost. I was missing my little morning ritual and that taste of good good scalding devil’s tincture, but I was myself.
And by “I was myself” I mean: I was in the middle of a months-long depressive episode that I hadn’t been able to get out of.
Hold on a second, this is about depression or something, isn’t it?
Yep, got you! You thought you could read a silly little essay about giving up coffee without me whining about my brain for a good several paragraphs, didn’t you?
Here’s the thing.
My brain has been very mean to me. It always has been, but it’s been particularly bad for I’d say… about half the year. I’ve been seeing a therapist for about two years, but have never been to a psychiatrist to get a proper diagnosis of anything. I suspect I have a low-grade depression and/or anxiety that’s been with me for most of my life, but I’ve never done anything about it as I’ve always been more or less functional.
Folks, I have been barely functional. Let me show you something:
COULD A DEPRESSED PERSON DO THIS?!?!?!
I would like to point out I only picked games for this collage that had no hours of playtime on them as of April 2021. I also didn’t include games that have only a handful of hours on them like Mini Metro.
Now, I love video games. I’ve been known to obsess when I get my hands on a new one. These past several months have gone well beyond the realm of being merely enthralled in the early flirty periods of starting a new game. I’ve barely been able to bring myself to write over this time period. I’ve been so easily distracted. I sit down for my allotted two hours a day and blow through most of it by scrolling Twitter.
I go to work. I pretend to write. I get my work out in (most of the time). I play games for too many hours. I sleep.
Or at least, that’s the way it’s been. And that’s the way it was again when the withdrawals stopped. I was back to barely-functional me.
And then… a weight was lifted
A little over a week into my liquid crack abstinence, I noticed something:
I was feeling good.
Like, really good.
I still feel really good. In fact, I’d almost say I’m doing great.
That thick fog of misery feels like it’s been lifted. I actually feel lighter now. My focus is still an issue, but I’m not getting ground up in horrible cycles of self-sabotage over it anymore. I’m reading again. I’m still playing a lot of video games, but at a much more healthy level.
Holy shit! Coffee has been keeping me back this whole time! Coffee has been ruining my life and I didn’t know it! You bastard of a bean, how could y—?!
Okay there are probably other reasons
I’d like for there to be an easy villain to blame. This demon, Coffee, who I thought was my friend, was in fact poisoning me this whole time! But no.
The fact is, going off of coffee coincides with several changes in my life. Correlation is not causation, but boy am I surrounded by a whirlwind of correlations. Within two weeks of stopping my buzzy bean extract intake, I:
had to start eating better thanks to my high cholesterol.
made the decision to sign up for a technical writing course so I can leave my current day job.
began having edibles every now and then.
compiled a list of grad schools to apply to.
Wait, hold on, what was that third one?
Don’t worry about it.
Ugh, okay fine, another little detour, this time to the fields of legal marijuana.
I haven’t become a stoner
I’ve never really cared for weed all that much. The feeling of being high tends to make me very anxious and that’s not my idea of a good time, given how anxious I am already.
But I was having a lot of trouble finding a psychiatrist who takes my health plan (love America), and so I embarked on some extreme self-medicating measures.
Not all that extreme. I picked up some lightweight edibles that I could pop once every couple of days when I felt the need. Because I don’t like being high, I specifically got items I would hardly be able to feel. Ideally, I’d notice the teeniest difference — maybe even nothing at all — and still be functional. I figured that even if I didn’t feel anything, those cannabinoid receptors in my noggin would still be kept happy and maybe it’d chill me out without it being a foregrounded feeling.
The point is: there are a lot of different reasons why I could be feeling good
Maybe caffeine was having more of a pronounced effect on me than I thought. Maybe keeping those cannabinoid receptors happy has eased the cruelty of my neurons. Maybe making important decisions has torn away those feelings of directionlessness that were giving me so much anguish. Maybe eating a more balanced diet has brought my body into a peaceful equilibrium.
It could be any of those, some of those, or none of those. The truth is, I don’t know why I’m feeling better, but I’m sure glad I am.
These good feelings are nice and all, but I should still probably get myself in front of a psychiatrist at some point. If I do have depression and/or anxiety, it’s not like it’s gone away. I’ve been in depressive episodes before. They leave eventually. Then they come back. It feels weird to see someone for mental health reasons when I’m not in mental agony all the time, but perhaps I’ll be able to bring more clarity to our discussions. Or maybe I’ll just wait until I’m a non-functioning mess again.
I probably shouldn’t wait.
But for right now: I am coffee-free and feel like I’m actually capable of accomplishing things and having control over myself.
Though the two are almost certainly unrelated, I’m never going to be able to separate the association between feeling light and free and no longer consuming daily caffeine.