Coffee: The drink of the devil
Why I’m quitting coffee, again
I’m writing today’s article as a reminder to myself why I quit drinking coffee. While I love the taste, and even more so, the ceremony that comes with drinking coffee, it doesn’t do good things for me.
I quit drinking coffee once before, for about a year. That time quitting was brutal. I had been working in a cool new office, the super startupy kind, where there are more espresso machines than printers. Every time I wanted to take a break from writing code, I would get up and make a coffee. I don’t add sugar or milk, so it’s healthier than eating a snack, or so I thought.
I got to the point where I was drinking 4 or 5 cups a day, and it started to really affect me both physically and psychologically in subtle ways.
Coffee makes my breath smell bad. Nothing worse than a close conversation with someone who just downed a tall cup-o-joe. It also stains my teeth. I noticed that no matter how much I brush, I can’t prevent it and it continues to creep up until I get to the next dentist appointment.
From a financial standpoint, coffee is expensive. It’s not expensive as a single purchase, we all know that. But once I start drinking coffee, it becomes a habit. On the way into work I buy a cold americano. When I’m out on the weekends, I want to grab a coffee. After finishing a meal, an espresso. It’s just 3 bucks here, 5 bucks there, but it’s a purchase that I make when I really don’t need to, and it adds up. It’s another 100–200 bucks a month, when it could be 0. That’s roughly $2,000 a year!
Those are both nice reasons to stop drinking it, but to be honest, alone they probably wouldn’t be enough for me to go cold turkey. The most convincing reason is what it does to my sleep and energy level. For someone who doesn’t drink coffee regularly, a cup will give them an immediate energy boost. But when you’re addicted to coffee, it stops giving you a boost of energy, and only brings your energy back to normal levels. That means that I spend most of the day with a lot less energy then I would normally have.
This also ties in to how it affects my sleep. It’s very subtle, but I noticed that I wake up a lot more throughout the night and have a harder time falling asleep. This too creeps up on me over time and I wasn’t sure if I could actually blame it on coffee. However last time I quit drinking it, I noticed a significant improvement after just a few days.
So when I’m drinking coffee, I get trapped in this vicious cycle:
Drink coffee > Sleep poorly > Wake up with less energy > Drink more coffee
So you can see there’s a bunch of important reasons for me to remember why I quit drinking coffee. But man, I would kill for an espresso right now.
This is the 14th article in the series of my 30-day writing challenge. 14 straight articles man, that’s hard work. Throw me a bone and hit that big fat ❤ to keep me going. I’d also love to hear what you think, so shoot me a tweet.
