Why I'm Quitting Coffee
And You Should Consider It Too
“The things you own end up owning you, it’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club
To simplify our lives, we create routines or rituals to ease the burden of our decision making. Despite its advantages, these routines become so embedded that we stop questioning its components. Over time, as much as these routines help us, they can cause more damage when they are not followed.
This pain makes us reliant on the routine, which begs the question: “Do we control the routine or does the routine control us?”
This is why on August 16th 2024, I decided to stop drinking coffee for the next month.
As an avid coffee drinker, this will be a challenge but in today’s article I will explain why this is necessary.
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The First 48
I’m two days in and currently a shell of a man. As I write this on a Saturday afternoon, I am without the 1-3 shots of espresso I would have normally consumed by now. I managed to get through the morning well enough; I walked the dog, did some work, finished the Count of Monte Cristo and got to the gym without any difficulty. It was when I had my first bite of food for the day at around noon, when the trouble started. Without the caffeine stimulant support, the insulin spike from a few empanadas almost put me to sleep.
This was a clear message from my body; “Hey idiot! If you keep eating this, there will be trouble!”. With a post lunch coffee, I would normally not have noticed the fatigue. Like any stimulant, we are temporarily changing our brains default state, which is why we are missing important cues that are body is trying to send us. Instead of acknowledging that we are low on energy, we take coffee. Can’t sleep at night? take melatonin or sleeping pills. Instead of listening to our bodies and trying to solve the problem, we are relying on an external substance to get us by. Ironically, these same substances then make it impossible to listen to our bodies, so we never fix the problem. While this is not the motivation behind my break from coffee, this is an immediate observation that explains why coffee is great but also not.
My Experience with Coffee
I have been drinking coffee for the taste and energy boost as a part of my daily routine since high school. As I started university, my consumption quickly climbed from a single morning coffee, into 2 or 3 coffees before noon, up to as many as 8 daily cups during exam time. It was not until my second or third year of university where I noticed that one or two cups of coffee no longer seemed to give me any kind of energy boost. Anything less than 350 ML (11.8 OZ) was useless.
This is when I started taking two week coffee pauses at the end of each school semester. There was nothing scientific about this; my rational was that two weeks seemed like a fair enough amount of time without caffeine in the system that it would regain its effectiveness when I started drinking it again. This largely worked but by the end of each semester I would find myself in the same position.
It was not until years later that I more closely scrutinized this practice of drinking coffee and realized that without it, I was pretty useless. In those days I was only sleeping 4-6 hours per night, while working and going to school. The reason I was low on energy and needed help was because I wasn’t sleeping enough and probably overloading my energy capacity. While I would not have described myself as an addict, I had become dependent on coffee to get through my hectic schedule. When you become dependent on something, you lose control. I had lost control.
In the years following this realization, due to work, social and educational demands my sleep schedule did not improve and although I drink less coffee, my routine has not changed much1. This would naturally prompt the question, I’ve known about this for years, why quit now? Great question intrepid reader.
Free Will and The Illusion of Choice
If you have seen the Matrix, you are undoubtedly familiar with Neo deciding between the red and blue pill. The scene presents the choice as fairly straightforward. Remain in a state of blissful ignorance (blue) or accept a painful reality (red). Neo chooses to accept reality (otherwise it would have been a very boring film).
The 3 Matrix films explore questions of free will, fate and determinism. The conclusion is open to debate but I am not alone in interpreting the Wachowskis do not believe that humans have free will. If they are correct, than our choices are meaningless, since the outcome is predetermined. I may as well just drink the coffee and let you get back on with your day…
But wait a minute! I listened to Jocko Willinik, he told me to get after it. I am now motivated and disciplined, so who cares what the Wachowski’s believed over 2 decades ago? By accepting the premise, we don’t have free will and that the outcome is decided, we make this our reality. If we at least try to exercise control, we create new potential outcomes. If you succumb to every urge or desire, then you have no free will. If you can exercise even short-term restraint or mastery of these impulses, you have agency. The more you practice resisting these urges, the easier it becomes. Don’t take my word for it, ask Andrew Huberman.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about why Discipline is Overrated. I advocated for systems. Whether you want to adhere to a system or not, beyond discipline what you need is the ability to handle discomfort and find purpose.
Comfort & Missing Purpose
“We have become so obsessed with eliminating friction, we have lost our edge.” Ben Saltiel, August 17th 2024.
Drinking coffee and giving in to temptation is really about our inability to handle discomfort. Instead of battling through the days when we feel tired, we tell ourselves we can’t be tired today, so we need this coffee, that doughnut, that sugar filled snack. Ironically the two are linked, the less you sleep, the higher the cortisol you have, the harder it will be to resist giving in to temptation. Without sounding too much like Jocko, this is why you need to build up restraint. If you are never uncomfortable, you will live your life in fear of discomfort. If you regularly challenge yourself, you will no longer fear discomfort.
Eliminating moments of discomfort also restricts our world view. I’m confident you know people who can’t live without air conditioning. They need to keep their homes at a specific temperature, they enter their cars in their indoor garages, drive to their air conditioned offices etc. They will refuse to go places that do not have AC. Whether that’s restaurants, different cities/countries. This reliance on air conditioning meaningfully shapes the way they live their lives.
Coffee can have this same effect. Tim Ferris and Kevin Rose shared a story where a friend skipped a day of skiing he was looking forward to because he didn’t have his morning coffee. This served as his wake-up call about his consumption habits2.
If you are motivated, you don’t need coffee. If you are doing something you love, you can believe your full attention is on it. Did Allen need coffee to count cards in The Hangover? How about Frodo in Lord of the Rings? Was he whining about the lack of coffee on his way to Mordor? The truth is, if we can motivate ourselves, we don’t need any additional stimulants. The issue is that we have trouble motivating ourselves, so we need to rely on every external substance available to us. Instead of an energy boost, we need an injection of purpose. If you are 100% locked in and feel like whatever task ahead of you, is fun or consequential you won’t need additional stimuli. The trick is finding out how to do this every day3.
Beyond the other reasons I listed, there are countless shirtless bros on Youtube who will explain the potential health benefits of not drinking coffee. I am sure there are also many shirtless or shit wearing bros and ladies who will also argue why coffee is actually good for your health. In all honesty, I don’t really care.
I am quitting coffee for the next month to receive the unfiltered signals my body is trying to tell me. When I do eventually start drinking coffee again, I expect it will be much more effective again. By being able to resist having coffee for the next month, I can prove to myself that I have the will power to exercise free will. Sometimes you need to be uncomfortable or else you will need to severely limit your world to stay in a constant state of comfort. Coffee is great but if you are fully engrossed in what you are doing, you won’t need or rely on it.
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I have maintained the tradition of stopping for at least 2 weeks each year.
Enjoyable read - there's something to be said here about the common use of surface-level solutions to patch up a systemic problem. We often need to get to the root cause to rectify the issue. Caffeine it seems was a band-aid to patch over your chronic fatigue. I'm also on a caffeine holiday myself since last week. Been hard initially - you feel like an unsharpened pencil in the mornings - but eventually you start becoming more like yourself again! Good luck with the rest of the journey.
It’s just delicious. End of story.