40 Days without caffeine: here’s what happened
It’s not at ALL what you think.
Caffeine is touted to be the crutch of many a great humans. If we give up caffeine, apparently we all achieve nirvana (the state, not the band) and begin to puke greatness. This was not my experience.
For the uninitiated, giving up caffeine is insane. It’s sacrilege. How dare I give up caffeine? What, do I think I’m better than everyone? No, I just tried to give it up for Lent, which is a common Catholic tradition, designed to show us that we can better ourselves through sacrificing the extraneous material things of life.
I wanted to try a pseudo-scientific experiment (pseudo because I was the only test subject, so my results are probably anecdotal at best). I tried my best to keep all other variables of my life equivalent. I decided I wasn’t going to change anything other than remove caffeine products from my diet. This included teas from leaves (herbal teas were generally okay because they usually are non-caffeinated), coffee (*le gasp*), and chocolate. It also included any and all pre-workout shakes.
My normal day is pretty busy. I wake up at 6 AM, shower, get dressed, and take the train to be at work by 8:30 AM. Caffeine normally helps me transition from home to work mode (9 AM cup of coffee), and then from work to gym mode (4:45 PM cup of coffee). I do my hour workout, take the train home, eat dinner, and usually have an evening pick-me-up (most favorite snack: square of chocolate) while watching my evening television show at 9 PM and talking to my girlfriend on the phone until 11 PM or 12 AM. Then I’ll play a quick game of League of Legends with my buddies and this usually brings me to about 1:30 AM or 2 AM.
With my two cups of coffee, I have enough time in the day to do everything I need and want to get done, without crashing and feeling awful. I can stay chipper and enjoyable throughout the day, keeping a pep in my step, so to speak. People consider me outgoing, friendly, loquacious and in general, an extravert.
This all went to shit when I stopped drinking coffee. Don’t get me wrong, my mornings were largely unaffected. The body’s natural wake-up abilities are more than enough to power through the average morning. The only problem is that my body considers lunchtime to be the end of the morning, leaving me (no matter what or when I ate) in an afternoon slump. With coffee, afternoons were my speed period. After lunch I’d double down on my productivity and pull work projects out of my rainbow-shooting ass. Without coffee, staying awake at my job was a project all on its own. Multiple times my boss would ask me if I was following what he was saying, implying that my glazed-over eyes didn’t seem to be doing the mental gymnastics required to understand that the business needed more sales.
My gym performance dropped. Although I hit a new personal record with deadlifts, my recovery time per muscle group jumped from about 2 days to 4 to 5 days. This was regardless if I worked with a trainer or by myself. Also, either I could excercises at my normal weights but at fewer repetitions, or I did my normal number of reps at a lower weight. I didn’t have the energy for both and even simple bicep curls would leave me feeling tired. I was also way less motivated to push myself, which is extremely unlike me.
That leads me to the most alarming point: my personality changed. I started hating people for interrupting me doing anything. People I thought of as friends annoyed me with their incessant need to talk. Didn’t they know they were just wasting my time on shit I couldn’t care less about? I even started contemplating leaving my job because nothing was worth my mental effort to focus on. This wasn’t even medical school, where studying and focusing were actually difficult. This was just work, that I could normally do while mentally planning out my leisure activities for that evening.
Before you start talking about how this isn’t representative of everyone, or how this can’t possibly be true, let me assure you, it is. The important thing to note here, is that with caffeine, I was able to support my sleep and activities schedule. Without caffeine, I was falling asleep at the gym and nodding off during shows that I normally would wait all week to watch (and not really caring, either). Without caffeine, my life became a daily grind to get through without any real enjoyment factor.
Remember, this was for 40 days. The first day of no caffeine (cold-turkey), I had a massive headache. The second day, the headache was slightly less. By the third day, I had basically gone through the caffeine withdrawal and was done with it.
How is it, then, that there are so many people devoted to giving up caffeine and they experience euphoric bouts of life-changing productivity? Easy. They accommodate their handicap of giving up caffeine by also giving up their time for activities and are forced to prioritize their wants against their needs. They need to go to work. They don’t need to be social or catch up with friends. They need sleep, and a certain amount of it; they don’t need to watch television. They need to do chores and take care of their kids, so they think they don’t need to exercise. Now, these are just examples and speculations. I’m not actually sure what they give up, but what I do know is that in order to give up caffeine, you also have to completely live according to your sleep schedule, because you’ll have nothing else to keep you going (unless you start taking amphetamines, in which case, maybe just switch back to coffee?).
Caffeine isn’t an evil drug. It’s addictive, yes, and it has withdrawal symptoms, yes. It’s also more of a productivity tool than anything. If you want to give it up and try to achieve the same focus and wakefulness with yoga, or maybe meditation, go for it. I don’t think I want to waste 20 minutes of my time doing those mindfulness activities, when I can get the same zen from actions I enjoy more, like the state of flow I get from video games or weightlifting. With coffee, I can work and my mind is calm and laser accurate. Without it, I’m a foggy mess and hate life, and it only got worse the longer I didn’t drink any. So please, spare me the soul transcendence of a caffeine-free life. I enjoy living on this plane the way I want to, and getting shit done while doing it.
tldr: Giving up caffeine without changing any other variables sucked so hard and gave me absolutely no benefit. Don’t do it unless you’re also committing to getting more sleep and giving up all of the extraneous activities you enjoy having time for. 0/10, would not do again.
