How coffee became a modern necessity
wsj.com
wsj.com
About 13 years later I’ve quit cold turkey after having some anxiety problems and headaches. I did some research and read a book which is from the nineties and a bit outdated but holds up pretty good. It basically cured both problems (but withdrawal symptoms the first days were tough, I admit).
For many people it’s ok to drink coffee I guess, but consider that it can affect you and almost no doctor will look into coffee consumption when you pay them a visit to see what could be the reason of some of those ailments. Also I saved a good chunk of money.
So no, you don’t need coffee. You need to give your brain a break (sleep properly) if it asks for it, and you don’t need to drug yourself with substances to “focus” and go on with your life. If life isn’t exciting then you may want to change it.
I recommend reading r/decaf for some interesting testimonies.
I, like many people, need to exchange my time for a paycheck. During this time I often have to pay close attention to minute details in a text document, and think through implications of design proposals. As much as I enjoy it and feel very fortunate to have such a comfortable and mentally stimulating job, the fact is that it just isn't always going to be exciting. I imagine that dedicating myself to any worthwhile effort over a long period of time would result in many periods during which optimal excitement levels are not achieved.
I'm in the position to already know exactly what my life would be like without coffee, as I grew up Mormon and believed I was personally commanded to not drink coffee or tea by the creator and sustainer of the universe. The result was: I was sleepy at inopportune times. It didn't matter how much sleep I got, or how interested I was in the subject matter. I just got sleepy when I needed to sit still and pay close attention to things. It wasn't ever a huge deal, and I was able to work around it, but that's just how it was. I don't think my sleepiness was particularly unusual or extreme. I just think that humans aren't optimally evolved to sit in math lectures or review intricate documents on a daily schedule.
As soon as I started drinking coffee, there was noticeable improvement. No more than 2 cups per workday. One in the morning, another in the afternoon. My sleepiness all but went away entirely. Ever since then I've been slightly more productive. Like I said, it's not a huge thing, but it's an obvious improvement. If I gave it up as part of some righteous attempt to remove my excitement crutches or whatever, the long term result would simply be: I'd be sleepy more often.
Anecdotally, I can concentrate and focus a LOT better when I get a plenty of sleep and exercise and don’t drink any coffee at all for at least a few days beforehand.
I do love the flavour of coffee though so I still drink it, but I try to keep my intake low.
> The result was: I was sleepy at inopportune times.
I’m certainly no expert and definitely don’t know your specific circumstances, but on the surface this looks like a sleep hygiene or even diet issue.
> One in the morning, another in the afternoon.
I don’t know what age you are but I used to do this in my twenties and never had any problems sleeping, but in my thirties a coffee in the afternoon really messed with my sleep, although it took a few visits to the doctor to realise. I now very rarely drink coffee after about 1300 and I sleep a lot better. Basically, if you’re young, you can get away with it but be careful. If you’re not young then... maybe your body handles it differently, lucky.
Confirmed. I've been off for a few months now. Getting a good night's sleep is the key.
I’d totally use other nootropics in managed doses if I could do so long term with no serious side effects.
Note: I don't drink coffee "drinks" like mochas, lattes, frappachinos, etc. just drink black coffee, without sugar and milk .
Well, we can probably bring in foxes or something.
There are people, like me, who are sleepy at times, despite not skimping on their sleep.
I will note though, that for the last 6 weeks I did not drink any coffee, with all the work-from-home thing. I drink only tea nowadays.
Curious, do you prefer the CTC tea [0] or whole-leaf / fannings?
It's irrational for me. I simply don't associate tea with "wrong". I also know that tea has much less caffeine than coffee.
The experience so far was good. The only unpleasant thing is that I get nausea from simple tea, so I need to use cream and a sweetener, and sometimes even with that I still get nausea.
Long term I would like to be able to ditch caffeine completely. But it's not really on my top 10 todo list.
I'd suggest that the reason so many people drink so much coffee is that giving their brain a break by getting plenty of sleep and R&R is just not feasible.
Take people with small children, for one. Unless you're very lucky, you won't be getting regular quality sleep for 5+ years after having your first child. If you have more than one, then extend this period as necessary.
People don't drink 3+ cups of coffee a day to be their best self living their best life. They drink that much coffee to function at all when they have no other option.
This constant drive to be some sort of scientific Puritan, to the exclusion of anything else, is really tiresome.
Otherwise, to me it’s tiresome when any sort of substance is critiqued because it doesn’t fit the standard sober societal narrative, especially because it’s assumed that people are incapable of making decisions for themselves. It is a sort of creeping, subtle Puritanism and is usually totally arbitrary; you’ll see the same people gleefully talk about marijuana yet call tobacco users dumb. These things have costs and benefits and a mature society should be able to rationally discuss them, rather than act like a heavy-handed nanny. As an American living in Europe, this seems to be less of a problem in somewhere like France or Italy that has a tradition of wine cultivation. America seems to always skew to the extremes of over-indulgence or prohibition.
I simply don’t agree with the idea that everything with a supposedly negative health effect is necessarily a bad thing. Intoxication and substance use has played an important role in art and culture for thousands of years. To casually dismiss it just seems really short-sighted.
I could write more about this but these are my summarized thoughts.
That sounds like some nasty health problems in the making. Over caffeinated, over stimulated and far too little sleep. It’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve seen first hand how it affected my health and I’m still dealing with consequences, although am a lot better now (stress was also a factor) and I’ve seen how drastically coffee addiction can affect people as I’ve had family members who were (past tense luckily) so addicted they were unable to function without multiple very strong cups a day. It was horrible. Be careful people, use stimulants in moderation and be careful not to become completely dependent!
For short periods when you’re super busy, sure, no problem! But every day long term? You’ll damage yourself.
They maybe something is deeply wrong with out current system.
I give up both alcohol and caffeine for one month every year. I've currently been off caffeine for 2 months. The most pronounced effect is by far the consistent energy levels throughout the day. It's an incredible feeling to wake up in the morning, before sun rise, and just be "ready to go"! You forget what that's like after years of coffee consumption.
I also found I'm much more aware of other folks who are hyped up on caffeine or needing more.
The biggest loss for me is the positive effect that caffeine had on my weightlifting capabilities (via incr blood pressure).
Ultimately I think giving up caffeine for the rest of my life would be the most logical decision; but it's not something I've ever even considered. Habits that act as crutches can have such a powerful hold on our lives.
I have, however, completely cut out alcohol so I sympathise with the bit about social situations. This was odd for me at first too. At certain evening events you are expected to have a drink at all times. I don't know why, but it's awkward if you don't have one. Water doesn't cut it. It has to be sparkling or brightly coloured or something. I discovered that I can ask for a lime soda pretty much anywhere and it's not too sweet and seems to completely satisfy the need for a drink. It's also cheap. I don't miss alcohol one bit.
As for the laxative effect of coffee, this is something I enjoy. I really hate the feeling I get when my bowels are not regular. The best times of my life are ones where I can set my watch by my bowel movements. It makes a huge difference to my life! So I'm glad if coffee helps me stay regular.
My dad drank 5+ cups per day, into the evenings. I can't attribute anything, but the guy was the biggest mess of nerves I've seen in my life.
I have completely stopped alcohol, though. That was far, far more detrimental to me health than caffeine and I would encourage others to look at that first before looking at caffeine. There are many benefits of caffeine. There are none for alcohol.
I was never dependent on either drug, though. I often go without coffee when I'm travelling and it's not practical; I don't notice it. The only drug I've had withdrawal symptoms from is cannabis.
Use no-doz pills to quit without side effects: reduce/taper/titrate the dose down from one pill per morning to, part-pills, to none over a few weeks.
I quit every few years, and just stopping is very unpleasant. Using caffeine-only No-doz pills as above is cheap and easy. I’ve also done it by using instant coffee and reducing the size of the spoonful of coffee, although it’s mentally harder to break the habit that way. Edit: I guess heavy coffee drinkers might need to start at two pills (check dosage info on package: I've always been fine starting at one). They taste nasty bitter, but OK if quickly washed down with water.
But it’s a good alternative for those who see it as an impossible task, and also yourself. In my case I had to take NSAIDs - which I very rarely take - for a couple days just to get by (since the vasoconstriction “feature” of coffee wasn’t present anymore, headache ensues) but then I was ok, just tired for some weeks.
Congrats on quitting!
source: i've quit coffee numerous times, just drink less each day, it's super easy.
Revolutions were plotted, art movements invented, and history made in places like Cafe Central in Vienna. I recommend reading literature from the 1880s-1930s to get a sense of how important they were for the time period. A Moveable Feast by Hemingway is a good start.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_culture
I would be satisfied with a re-emergence early-90's (that is 1990's) chill coffee house. But those days are gone too. I'd say it's because of two reasons: Real Estate (rent too damn high) and no time because everyone is either working or not in the right head-space.
There was a time in 1990's where one could read about 19th-century flaneurs and actually think they were also a flaneur, spending all afternoon in a coffee house hanging out with random people, talking about cool stuff. I did it, for a very short while then -poof-, it was gone.
I hung out there on a daily basis for a year or so, and it was like I'd finally found the social environment designed for me: I could go in and just read, or work on whatever I was working on—and typically before long I'd be joined by someone from a fairly large ring of folks who knew each other to varying degrees. There was a kernel of us who all knew each other very well (many had known each other for years or decades even), and then a larger outer circle who would sometimes join in or not but were always around.
Occasionally you'd strike up conversation with someone new just because you both had been showing up regularly for a while, and associating with some common people, "Hi, I'm XXX—I see you've been talking with YYY recently. What are those books you have there?" (If you were showing up regularly enough, then you were becoming a "Med Head," which meant you probably had enough in common with any other Med Head that an interesting / amicable conversation would likely result.)
There was a rhythm through the week and month when traffic patterns changed or periodic events were held (e.g. Tango night once a month). We knew all the staff and the owner, and at least bits about the life stories and work of a group of regulars numbering somewhere around... 30 maybe? As much as our conversations might be about philosophy, literature, linguistics, mathematics, etc.—they were as often just gossip related to the community there or around town.
If you were talking about something that sounded interesting, it was not uncommon for people at nearby tables to chime in, and if that was going well we might join our tables together and continue. It was open until midnight and we'd almost always stay until then, often chatting more rather than working as the time got later. At some point people would pick up instruments or someone would hop on the piano and improvise something while the rest of us continued talking. Maybe a couple times a month a couple of us would order a beer from behind the counter as the night was ending. Several nights a week a group of us would go on a walk around town after closing.
Since then, I've considered the existence of a place like that to be the biggest draw to living somewhere—but I haven't had much luck finding it. I was optimistic that Cambridge (MA) would have something, but I never found it.
See: http://gapersblock.com/drivethru/2009/11/17/nostalgia_urbis_...
See also: https://electronpencil.com/category/urbus-orbis/
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-last-drop/Content?...
I think it's because people have relatively less purchasing power and buying in to the productivity craze.
People don't value leisure as much anymore.
My gf works from time to time on her laptop while enjoying our coffee but I myself haven't had a "modern" laptop for quite some time (my last laptop is a Mac from 2009) and as such I never bring work with me to the coffee house. I agree that not having kids yet helps with this lifestyle.
People don't go to a cafe expecting to socialise with whoever is there, you go to see a friend that you've planned ahead to see, rather than socialise with others. Cafes have become a vehicle for social interaction, rather than a destination or activity in themselves.
As a culture (Anglo-Western), ad hoc gatherings and meetings have sort of died off. Everything is always planned ahead and booked in. It used to be common if you were passing through the neighbourhood to knock on your friend's door and pop in for a chat, but these days you'd probably be considered a bit odd if you did that, especially without ringing or texting ahead.
Maybe it's smartphones and being always connected. Maybe it's because people are time-poor and are unable to do this kind of thing any more. Maybe people don't like socialising with strangers any more. Maybe people are less social and would rather sit at home watching Netflix. It's probably all of the above.
The core idea is to take the best of the Internet discussion format and combine it with the strengths of an in-person community.
I’m certainly open to any suggestions or thoughts on the idea.
The key is that they are a commercial coffee house last of all, in direct opposition of the business strategies of most high end gentrified cafes. The priority is the place as a gathering or event space for the local neighborhood or community. Look for board games in shelves, look for open mic events, look for booze on the menu, look for american spirit or clove cig butts in the ash tray outside. These are the telltale signs.
people have no time to sit about chatting, because you have to work all the time for the right to exist.
I'm not sure it can ever come back. That was a different era. Perhaps "the cafe" is not the right setting anymore?
What makes you think people aren't doing this on their laptops? The person you think is doing corporate work on their MacBook could be changing the world.
Go to the cafeteria of any large business or university and you'll probably find more highly educated people than you found in all of Vienna 150 years ago.
I think what you're yearning for is really the bourgeois culture of high-minded intellectuals participating in exclusive clubs rather than facilitating good discourse between intelligent people. Access to the latter nowadays is thankfully much easier than it was in the past.
You say its the entire empires brightest minds in that cafe, I see an echo chamber composed of a small subset of whoever was the socially favorable class of people of the day, regurgitating the same already accepted ideas, failing to innovate for fear of being ostracized by each other in a world where high school level petty politics decided whether or not you kept your head attached to your body.
Even a parisian cafe with a drunken hemingway pales in comparison to a ted talk, in terms of sharing and improving ideas and introducing them to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Not just who could get into a parisian cafe.
Imagine Osama Bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Satoshi Nakamoto, Putin, Xi Jinping, Jeff Bezos, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk and Geoff Hinton sitting in the same cafe in the early 2000s.
I recall thinking exactly this at the time of the Bush administration. Those two were both all about ordering violence from afar. Get them in a room together and what are they gonna do? I thought maybe they'd not be such tough guys after all. Maybe a controversial opinion...
A whole industry born in a coffee shop.
You come here to find many of those conversations now.
Private chat groups/slacks for more intimidate revolution plotty stuff
That was simply out of necessity. Revolutions are plotted, art movements invented, and history is made on the internet now. If these things are your metric, cafe's will never again return to the glory days.
It was a wonderfully urbane and civilised way to live. (although we may now consider smoking barbaric).
In Australia, there are thousands of cafes where you can buy quality coffee, have free WiFi, aesthetic seating area, lounges, music you can still hear yourself think over, usually has pretty good food too. Now sure, you're paying $4 for a coffee, but the environment is like no other in the world. Even the coffee is fairly unique in terms of quality and style compared to American and continental European (french, even Italian).
Not only is American coffee gross
There are great sourcers and roasters here. If you couldn't find any, that's on you.
I would guess you wouldn't expect to walk into a random Vienna coffee shop in the late 19th century and plot the future, either.
The Upstart Crow (bookstore and cafe) was in the Pruneyard shopping center in the 1980s. I had my first espresso drinks there. In 1990 or so, Coffee Society opened in Cupertino, just a few doors down from A Clean, Well Lighted Place for books.
This all was before Starbucks hit the area.
Interesting. Books aside, what specifically, you think, about Starbucks that killed the social aspect of it all-- Free WiFi?
To make it concrete - my great great grandma was born in shtetl, in the pale. She was illiterate, and her village was pogromed often. The revolution allowed her daughter to get some education, and her granddaughter to become a leading civil engineer. For this I am grateful. That being said, I also understand the futile impossibility of even attempting to "what if" history.
great piece on this exactly: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/what-cafes-did...
For the short period (20 years or so) in the early 1900s Vienna was where the history happened and modern ideas were born. Then everybody scattered around the world and executed those ideas with varying results. Philosophy, math, psychology, physics, economics, politics (left and right) you name it.
In 1913 Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin lived within the same square kilometer.
And this is why it'll never come back. Governments will push for social distancing to be permanent (to 'protect' us from future pandemics), they'll hold on to all the power they amass during the pandemic, they'll keep tracking people and do everything they can to prevent social change which threatens their power.
"Perhaps the North's access to caffeine gave its soldiers a strategic advantage. At least that's what one Union officer, Gen. Benjamin Butler, thought. He ordered his men to carry coffee in their canteens and planned attacks based on when his men would be most wired. His advice to other generals was: 'If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold.'" [1]
"In 1859 Sharps Rifle Co. began to manufacture a carbine with a hand-cranked grinder built into the butt stock — or handle — of the rifle. Union soldiers would fill the stock with beans, grind them up, dump them out and use the grounds to cook the coffee. As the morning began, one Civil War diarist described a scene of 'little campfires rapidly increasing to hundreds in numbers that would shoot up along the hills and plains.' The encampment would buzz with the sound of thousands of grinders simultaneously crushing beans. Soon, tens of thousands of muckets (coffee pots) gurgled with fresh brew." [2]
[1][2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/25/485227943/if...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_culture_of_substit...
... which was the exact wording used to sell Oxycontin.
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Germany-Norman-Ohler/dp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigt_stille,_plaudert_nich...
Just like anything, a little bit can be good for you, but don't take too much - and stay hydrated! Preferably with plenty of sleep but I understand thats not always realistic for some.
> Though the caffeine in coffee may have a diuretic effect, it’s unlikely to dehydrate you.
> For caffeine to have a significant diuretic effect, studies show that you need to consume more than 500 mg per day — or the equivalent of 5 cups (40 ounces or 1.2 liters) of brewed coffee (12, 13, 14).
> A study in 10 casual coffee drinkers reviewed the impact of drinking 6.8 ounces (200 ml) of water, lower caffeine coffee (269 mg of caffeine), and high caffeine coffee (537 mg of caffeine) on signs of dehydration.
> Researchers observed that drinking the higher caffeine coffee had a short-term diuretic effect, whereas the lower caffeine coffee and water were both hydrating (15).
> In addition, other studies show that moderate coffee intake is as hydrating as drinking water (16).
> For example, a study in 50 heavy coffee drinkers noted that drinking 26.5 ounces (800 ml) of coffee daily for 3 days was equally as hydrating as drinking the same amount of water (16).
> Also, an analysis of 16 studies discovered that taking 300 mg of caffeine in a single sitting — equivalent to 3 cups (710 ml) of brewed coffee — increased urine production by only 3.7 ounces (109 ml), compared with drinking the same amount of non-caffeinated beverages (17).
> So, even when coffee makes you urinate more, it shouldn’t dehydrate you — as you don’t lose as much fluid as you originally drank.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-coffee-dehydrate-y...
I always keep a few in my pocket in case I start dosing off in meetings. A few live in the car to deal with drowsiness while driving, which was the issue that kick started my caffeine addiction when I was 15 and learning to drive. Nothing seems to put me asleep quite like driving on the freeway :(
I don't know man, I really like the coffee poop breaks.
Having to get up the chair every now and then and take my mind off work for a couple of minutes in silence followed by the sweet post poop satisfaction.
Nothing like it.
> About a hundred sixty years after Dr. Salter’s book was published, a review of studies was performed to see if coffee had any true impact on lung function and asthma. The authors wrote:
> “Caffeine is found in coffee, tea, cola drinks and cocoa. Caffeine is a drug that is very similar to theophylline. Theophylline is a bronchodilator drug that is taken to open up the airways in the lungs and therefore relieve the symptoms of asthma, such as wheezing, coughing and breathlessness. Scientists are interested in finding out whether caffeine has the same effect on the lungs as theophylline.”2
> And they concluded:
> “This review found that even small amounts of caffeine can improve lung function for up to four hours.”2
> Caffeine is a methylxanthine. It falls into the same family of medicine as theophylline, a strong bronchodilator that was a top-line asthma remedy during the 1970’s through the 1990’s. I was chronically dependent on theophylline from the mid 1970’s until 2007.
Who knew? And it’s from 1990.
Spending $5 on a blended pseudo coffee drink at Starbucks is not the only option.
The price per ounce of coffee on those drinks has got to be astronomical!
I didn't drink coffee when I first moved to New Mexico, but after trying to local piñon coffee I'm a convert--luckily, I can get a 5 lb bag of the beans at Costco for about $30!
I've been debating picking up some Piñon from Costco sometime soon to save a few bucks, but have a question about that - do you find that whatever they add to the beans can gum up your grinder?
And, some people drink Folgers.
> some people drink Folgers.
Sure, but this discussion is about coffee.
I think this is generally true of most hobbies (jokingly it's what I use to define a hobby, something that you can, but don't have spend at least 1000 USD on).
To pick one I recently started on you can get started brewing beer for under 100 dollars. You can get perfectly acceptable, even excellent beer using basic equipment. Then, if you want you can go out and spend thousands of dollars on pressure transfer equipment, kegging tools, stainless steel fermenters and etc.
But you don't have to.
That's only a fashion statement, which, like all other fashion statements, don't go for any quality or smart/educated choice but pure social signaling.
Nobody with any functional taste buds in places like Italy goes to Starbucks. Only those desperately lost and having herd mentality, similar to folks in France eating in McDonald (and there are tons of those).
/rant
Btw if kitchen hob is available, I consider Italian press (aka Moka pot) superior to French press, and more efficient in extracting flavors and potency (so also more economical in long run). Prices tend to be similar.
I used to be a non-coffee drinker-- and I applaud coffee-teetotalers--but in my 2nd year of grad school I discovered that a small dose of coffee (1/2 cup) made so much more productive. Because I dosed it according to my body weight, I was able to get the benefits of coffee without its downsides. There were higher order benefits too. My moods improved because I felt productive, which helped me progress academically, and it all became a virtuous cycle.
My rule today is: drink coffee, but not too much, free is better.
I have an espresso machine and grinder at home, about 1000€ worth. My everyday coffee is at ~15€ per kg, I dose 14g per cup (espresso double), and drink about 4 cups a day, about 1€ per day. Let's amortize the equipment for 5 years, add a bit for electricity, water, cleaning supplies, ... That's 2 € per day, for maybe Starbucks-level coffee.
For 3-4€ per day, you can buy gourmet coffee and a high end grinder and machine. The result will be better than in 99% of coffee shops.
If you just want caffeine, you can buy cheap coffee for half the price, and spend 10x less on equipment bringing the price down to less than 1 € per day.
Sure, it adds up, but is is far from crazy. On par with drinking store-bought soda or fancy water, and definitely cheaper than smoking.
In a seller's market for labor, free coffee makes a useful pons asinorum for potential employers, whether or not you drink it at work. (I don't.) Even in overpriced packaging methods like K-cups, it's so inexpensive in bulk that a company that cheaps out there will cheap out on more important things too. Similarly, because caffeine is a performance-enhancing drug for cognitive workers, one may reasonably question the good sense of leadership which refuses to provide it free of charge.
On reflection, "table stakes" is closer.
But when I am working from home, I will _always_ go to a coffee house to work. It is difficult to state how important that the "third place" is. I focus far better there than at home. Try it out. Even if you don't drink coffee. Get a nice peppermint tea or something.
There are some people who are spending unhealthy amount of money, true, but they chose to do so. There are various options and if someone wants to spend 10x money to get 10% better taste (and even that is subjective), that's his choice, not something unavoidable.
Roasting at home doesn't require expensive equipment either. A manual grinder is like 20 bucks, same goes for the brewing thingy that you put on the stovetop.
A hot cup of coffee at home is an affordable and delightful treat.
For me the quitting symptoms come in four phases:
1) very slight uncomfortableness (nothing severe) [~3 days]
2) more vivdness, alertness, euphoria, calmness [1 to 2 weeks]
3) weird chest / heart issues (nothing too severe but very unpleasant and first time was quite worrying) [2 to 3 weeks]
4) I'm feeling down, unmotivated, dull [starting at about week 4 or 5]
---
stage 4 is what I never survived so far. it's just taking too much of a toll. then again it's an up and down so I once managed to stop for 4 months. but it brings me to a pre-depressive state where I just don't see much point in working. otoh I very much enjoy just relaxing, chilling - if I can do that I'm happy. if not it's a chore - no productiveness at all. very slow mental processing.
---
I started drinking coffee during puberty. So, I guess my brain is not just chemically hooked on it but actually neurologically developed around it.
---
then the first cup - what a bliss.
Going several months without a rest leads to intense withdrawal headaches when I finally take a break - comparable to allergy induced sinus pain.
This comic summarizes my experience with caffeine withdrawal exactly https://www.stickycomics.com/inside-caffeine-withdrawal/
While I didn't pick up coffee until a little later, I started on caffeinated drinks (soda, tea) well before puberty. I've had this same thought—that I'm more than just habituated to it—but I haven't seen others making the same claim before. The last time I quit caffeine, I had standard withdrawal symptoms for a few days (as expected), then a week or two of catching up/rebalancing sleep, and then? I started routinely getting hit with what I can only describe as depressive episodes. It took a while to connect them with being off caffeine, but a little bit of (non-blind obviously) experimentation strongly suggested that they were due precisely to my brain-body chemistry being out of whack due to lack of caffeine. I resumed caffeine, of course. I never suffered from depression before nor since.
Anyway, so, I don't ever completely quit caffeine anymore.
Through all my years of university I drank at least one cup of coffee every single day until the last year. And that last year I picked up vaping, ramping up to 50mg nicotine cartridges vaping in the morning and evening every day.
To summarize, I've quit coffee since August 2019 (not a single cup) and vaping since two months ago.
Surprisingly, both were not a huge issue to quit physiologically. Lack of caffeine resulted in a hazy brain feeling for the first week or so. No perceived physiological effects from nicotine withdrawal.
The real challenge is habits you form from these addictions. I still drink some kind of hot liquid in the mornings. For vaping, I first threw out all my high nicotine liquids and continued to vape with something like a 5mg until it ran out. Due to the COVID lock-down, going out to purchase juice luckily takes effort. It's still an on-going mental battle of recognizing when I'm feeling a nicotine craving and dealing with that feeling (ex. re-affirming why I quit, not getting angry with myself for craving but just moving on).
For anyone reading this: I definitely recommend quitting anything you are doing that you feel you are addicted to (that you can live without, or is harming you). For me personally, the entire experience was kind of like starting a homework assignment/project. Just starting it feels dreadful but somehow when you finally take the plunge it's not too bad. Not the case for everyone, but it might motivate you to go for it!
Cheers
PS. AMA
"Must you drink coffee? Why not cocoa, tea, cola tea, mate, yoco infusion, or guarana? Why caffeine? Why not theobromine or theophylline? I have had an occasional square of chocolate. It is the cause of uncontrolled ecstasy, but, afterward, you sink into Promethean despair.
"Note," I demanded, "that caffeine was introduced to Europe in the seventeenth century, post-Renaissance. Why is it, do you think, that the art of the Renaissance and the classical period has never been surpassed? The great heights were reached on angels' wings, not via a filthy corruption brewed from a bean that poisons its own tree."
From Memoir From Antproof Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir_From_Antproof_Case
as for serving coffee to children, my son can have some when he is able to go a minute without excitedly trying to kill himself in a new and innovative way - so about when he is 30.
on edit: added a closing quotation mark I forgot before, haven't had my morning cup yet.
on edit: my son, however, is a menace, and giving him a mild stimulant would make him a nuclear level threat to the surrounding environment.
Addiction does not feel like an addiction. That's the problem with addiction.
Said that, some addiction is be life-enriching, from the impact on mind, body and social. (I love my coffee, I am so addicted to it that I stop drinking it for 2 months a year.)
The only coffee rules I really follow are 1) don't drink it if I'm tired - for whatever reason I feel nauseous if I drink it when I am actually tired, and 2) don't drink any after 3PM or else I probably won't go to sleep until 1-2AM.
Just had my first "normal" day and it was far more productive than any other day in 2020. I will try to stay off the coffee indefinitely.
You can set your clock to my comedown. Usually I'll need another dose at lunch, especially if I'm to be engaging with other people. If I'm doing something after work I'll need another dose at four, then however late the day runs I'll be needing to take a caffeine pill every four hours or else I'll enter a pretty thick mental fog or start sleeping sitting upright.
That mental fog and falling asleep still happens since I'm not taking the afternoon pills, I've just been leaning into napping like a toddler while working from home. Sometimes I'll doze off with a line half written in terminal, wake up and just go right back to typing the rest of the command.
My wife hates coffee, but my ritual of bean grinding, water boiling and pouring with all the associated smells has also become part of her mourning routine.
Worth watching a few vids on youtube to get the technique right.
That said, I drink specialty coffee only, have my own espresso machine, use only high quality freshly roasted beans, etc.
I also don't drink more than 2 cups a day, and rarely drink coffee after noon. Sometimes I do a 3rd one later in the day, but will often go decaf for it.
With the principal cost of the espresso machine and equipment, the maintainance cost, the price of grass fed whole milk and top quality beans, it comes to about 1$ per cup for me. Since I have 1 to 2 cups a day, that averages around 600$ a year I spend on coffee. Which for the pleasure I get from it is well well worth the price in my opinion.
Eureka Mignon Specialita grinder.
I'd highly recommend both, they each exceeded my expectations.
> "No one knows exactly how or when coffee was discovered, though there are many legends about its origin"
And interestingly: > "After crude oil, coffee is the most sought commodity in the world"
https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Forces+of+Habit+Courtwright...
Some of the effects I have noticed:
- Less anxiety throughout the day.
- Fewer "highs" and "lows" throughout the day. My energy level is pretty constant.
- Easier to wake up. I rarely snooze my alarm more than once.
- Easier to focus. My level of focus (over time) is more consistent.
- Better hydration. This means less headaches, etc.
- More energy. I generally have the energy I need to do what I want basically up until I go to sleep.
- I can burn sleep. It's very easy for me now to go 2-3 days with very limited sleep, and then sleep 12 hours to recover.
- Coffee "works." The one or two times I needed coffee, it actually worked to keep me awake and energized.
Furthermore, coffee impacts your body's natural processes that it uses to wake up. Your body produces cortisol in order to wake up in the morning, which is a "stress" hormone, which is also induced by drinking coffee (which overall impacts the endocrine system). Hacking this system to overproduce hormones everyday isn't great for when your body actually needs this system to wake you up.
For people considering quitting coffee I have the following advice:
- You will get a headache 24-36 hours after you quit. Take ibuprofen. (By the way, this should give you a hint to how long coffee actually meaningfully stays in your system.)
- You will feel weird for probably 2 weeks.
- You will have coffee cravings. (I found these hit when I was tired. I felt like I needed to drink coffee to fix my tiredness. I tried to replace this impulse with drinking water or herbal tea a lot of tiredness is caused by dehydration.)
- You will be tired sometimes. You'll just have to deal with that, but it's really not that bad of a sensation, and the solution: sleep :)
I got the 24 hour headache and it was horrific. But more importantly I have been getting a headache, once a week at least, for years. I haven’t had a single headache in the two months since I quit coffee. This is remarkable!
The craziest part is waking up and going to sleep are like switches now. On:off. So crisp.
One thing I had to relearn was how to drink enough water to stay hydrated. As I was drinking a lot of my daily water in my tea and coffee cups.
Don't say "I'm giving up caffeine!" Because, you know you will start again and folks will all crow "I thought you gave that up!?!"
Instead say "I'm taking a break from caffeine." Both true and defensible when you start again.
Thanks to my buddy Tom for this advice.
I've had a hard time lately restricting my coffee intake to reasonable levels because I've had a lot of time to practice coffee brewing and some of the batches I've managed to brew have felt like drinking liquid chocolate. Even the same coffee beans will taste completely different depending on how you brew it.
I don't regret it at all though. Coffee is a luxury where a small investment goes a long way.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/what-cafes-did...
I ran out of coffee, and two days later, I had the most intensive headache.
I couldn’t seem to pinpoint what could’ve given me such a bad headache, except that I stopped drinking coffee.
I suspect a lot of people are going to have it bad, when the supply chains starts to melt down.
But if caffeine withdrawal, was what I got, then it is very real.
After I ran out of coffee, on day 1, I had a slight headache. On day 2, I had a very intensive headache, as if my brain was jello. I took some Tylenol for it, and it felt better, for a while. On day 3, I still felt uneasy, my brain still felt like it was swimming in jello. Not a good feeling.
I gave up.
On day 4, I made my coffee again, and consumed it. I was back to normal again.
It seemed as if coffee is some type of anti-inflammatory, that helps to keep your brain cells nice and tightly bound together.
If social order breaks down, then coffee is going to be short supply. People are going to have some bad days ahead.
Hopefully, Trump can order that coffee farms stay open, and Starbucks can remain open as an essential business.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Paywall complaints are off topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. There's one in this thread.
He was recently on Fresh Air discussing the book; the transcript is here: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/803394030
What? Why? It literally is one.
From wikipedia:
> Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant of the methylxanthine class.[10] It is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug.
As far as my own body goes, I have no problem working and focusing while drinking a beer. For coffee, I may have to wait until the caffeine buzz subsided before I can really focus again.
I find that stimulants in general are subtle drugs in the sense that it's not obvious to inexperienced users how affected they are by them.
My caffeine addiction has caused gastrointestinal problems and I can't stay off the drug. (This is already acknowledged scientifically)
But as long as authority figures consume caffeine, they will justify it.
- pick a number of cups you may drink each day, say four.
- brew your own coffee with a drip infuser, from ground coffee.
- get a container to hold, say, 90:10 caffeinated:decaf coffee grounds. After four days, move to 80:20. Etc.
Don't exceed your daily limit. You'll be cured in ~ a month. You can do it.
The phenomenon of returning to an addictive substance is known colloquially as “relapse”
However I also think it’s being unkind to your fellow humans, who’s metabolism may tolerate or even benefit from coffee (or whatever other substance) to extrapolate from your experience to our entire species.
And it seems maybe we’re not the only animals enjoying stimulants [0].
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drug+use+in+animals+in+the+wild
It shouldn't be surprising that some people think that. Most people still feel that way about most narcotics.
(And to avoid misinterpretation here, the original intent of flattening the curve to avoid hospital overrun I was fully behind. Now that we have more data, I find the people shrieking at their fellow citizens for going to the beach or public parks and demanding that they be prohibited from doing so to be detestable)
If you're worried about gastrointestinal problems, you can switch to tea. Much less acidic and harsh on the stomach, and some varieties have enough l-theanine to counter the negative effects of caffeine. If you're worried about the caffeine content not being concentrated enough, you can even drink matcha, which typically has more caffeine per ml than American filtered coffee.
Chewing nicotine gum or using patches can give you the focus and clarity that smoking or vaping does without filling your lungs with shit.