Quitters never win
A cautionary tale of trying to kick the caffeine habit
Like any true-blooded, deep-to-the-bone addict, I took my first sip of coffee when I was young and I haven’t really stopped since. There is no need to explain why, or how I can’t stop drinking coffee, but there is a reason to ask why I’d want to. Which is exactly what my friends asked when I told them I was quitting caffeine this week. Again.
I say “again,” because this is probably the third time I’ve unofficially quit drinking coffee in my short life; mostly for health reasons, but I also think it would be nice to wake up early and not have to be late everywhere I go because I have to complete my full coffee routine. Or, it would be nice to go on overnights in the backcountry without having to be “that person” who has to sit outside in the cold morning to boil water for a bitter cup of instant coffee while everyone else sleeps or packs up camp. Yes, it all would be nice.
As nice as drinking coffee? No. Of course not. Drinking coffee is amazing, but I somehow decide to quit caffeine every quarter of a decade for reasons that hold more weight than my love for the beverage, and every time I quit, I have to lie to force myself to take that last and final sip.
That last sip – the cold turkey first step to quitting – is a total sham. If you’re thinking about quitting caffeine, let me tell you that the first moments seem fun and exciting because you are proud that you are doing something difficult that is, hopefully, good for you. Withdrawals schmidrawals. That first moment of quitting, the symptoms have yet to set in, so you think it will all be a piece of cake (not coffee cake though), and you think you are strong and brave and you can’t wait for your bright new future sans caffeine.
The internet warns that withdrawals start to set in after about 12 hours. My younger self would agree to this fact. However, my older self took note of a two-hour onset. Before I knew it, it was early afternoon and I was staring blankly at the wall. I was starting tasks and immediately abandoning them because I remembered another task I needed to do, and then I’d abandon that task as well, forgetting where I was going to begin with. Within four hours of going caffeine-less this week, I was walking around my house with two different shoes on and a half-eaten pop tart in my hand, while a timer was buzzing, and my phone was sitting in my hand with a half-written text message to my friend whom I was supposed to somehow meet in an hour. My head hurt, and I felt lost, so I sat down on my bed, in the middle of half-folded laundry and I Googled, “How do long symom…” Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.
“When does cafene adict…” Backspace. Backspace.
“When will this fucking end???” Search.
Google had a lot of opinions about the Ultimate Ending, including concern for me, but the answers weren’t what I was looking for.
When I finally succeeded in my internet search, I discovered that caffeine withdrawals last anywhere from two to nine days, with a warning asterisk about symptoms lasting longer than two months. I was barely five hours in, I had friends to meet, things to do, and it was already Sunday. I had two important meetings on Monday and a full week’s worth of work ahead of me, so I Googled ways to speed up the process. Which you can’t. The internet told me to suck it up, take some painkillers and, like a bad hangover, drink a lot of water, pray I don’t puke (or maybe that would help?), and wait it out.
Wait out the list of caffeine withdrawal side effects which, coming from The National Library of Medicine is: “headache, fatigue, decreased energy/activeness, decreased alertness, drowsiness, decreased contentedness, depressed mood, difficulty concentrating, irritability and feeling foggy/not clear headed.” Included in other lists were nausea, questioning your sense of self, and some unspoken digestive issues. Which all sounded like things I didn’t want to do on a Sunday, so I started to second guess my decision. I was in the denial and bargaining stages, starting to think that my numerous cups of coffee a day wasn’t actually the source of my ailments, and that maybe if I just immersed myself with lavender and meditation every evening, my day full of caffeine wouldn’t harm me. I was second guessing my decision to quit, so I reached for informational backup again from Google.
“Why should you quit caffeine?” I typed in my phone, sitting on my bed, still wearing different shoes. And Harvard School of Health’s website responded with their freaking chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard saying that “‘The overall evidence has been pretty convincing that coffee has been more healthful than harmful in terms of health outcomes,’” and that “2–5 cups a day … is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease and depression. It’s even possible that people who drink coffee can reduce their risk of early death.”
I was, by quitting coffee, in a roundabout way, opting in for disease and an early death.
I tried a different link, and a different search, and over and over the seemingly trustworthy articles listed all the good things that coffee does for us, followed up by a small list of the bad: jitters, anxiety, sleepless nights and pregnancy complications. None of these things really applied to me (perhaps a touch of anxiety, but who doesn’t it apply to?) so I got sad about my decision to quit (because depression is a withdrawal symptom), and then went to bed and slept for 10 hours.
The next morning I woke up and did nothing because I no longer had a coffee routine. I sat on my couch like I usually do with a french press of joe, but without the french press or joe, and I looked out the window at birds. The birds were cute and bouncy and they were flying around while I was floating in fog for an hour and then I took 30 minutes to dress myself for a professional Zoom meeting that I could barely log into.
“I don’t feel very well.” I felt forced to tell my Zoom team. I told them I was feeling sick, which wasn’t a lie, just in case they asked me a question I couldn’t respond to. Or I asked them a question they just answered, or I said something really dumb and confusing about something we weren’t even talking about. However, I floated along the meeting surprisingly well, and logged out feeling pretty good about myself until I got a follow-up email that took me 45 minutes to respond to.
I was just past 24 hours into a hell of my own making when I buckled down at my computer to work. I braced the edges of my desk, took a deep breath and told myself I could do this. I could focus and be productive. I could be analytical with the projects I was tasked to do, except that I couldn’t. Everything felt painful, literally because my head hurt, and because I could not get my brain to do what it needed to do. Why was I doing this to myself? I had to keep going. I had to follow through. It might suck now, but it could really help me in the long run. Only time would tell.
I felt cold and confused and the clock was ticking while I zoned out on the sky outside my window. Deadlines were imminent, emails were stacking up and going unresponded to. My dog kept pawing at me and when I’d stand up to let him outside, I’d get distracted by a misplaced dish in the kitchen or a jacket that needed to be hung up. Then I’d sit back down at my computer with a half-written email …to whom? I couldn’t remember, and I don’t even know what I was trying to say, and when I saw all the confusion, sadness and unproductivity in my life, I folded. I had to. There were things that needed to be done, so I made myself a small cup of coffee, took one final foggy-headed gaze at the bouncy birds outside, took a sip and happily got back to work. ?