Narrated
- I have high blood pressure and caffeine is not good for that.
- I’m not a good sleeper and caffeine is bad for sleep.
- I don’t have anxiety problems, but tend to be anxious which caffeine can aggravate too.
First Coffee in 54 Days
This morning I had my first cup of coffee since April 1st — 54 days without the Black Gold in my cup. I was curious to see what the experience would be like. I’ve not had any coffee during this period. I have had tea three or four times that did have caffeine in it and I noted that I felt the caffeine in that tea much more than I ever did before. But coffee? The real deal? Hadn’t had any.
I had some great beans from Fika Coffee. The smell of the beans tickled my memories. My first reaction was that the feel of the warm cup, the smell of the brew all was very familiar but not as revelatory as I thought it might have been. The sky did not open, the clouds did not part. There were no trumpets. It was a delightful sip of coffee but that was about it. Good, but not an out-of-body experience.
I finished the cup outside on the deck and it was nice. I was a bit confused because I didn’t seem to be feeling the caffeine. That didn’t make any sense to me, but we continued with our morning and headed into Faribault to visit Crack of Dawn. When I started to drive off I felt like I was on a rocket blasting into the stratosphere. The caffeine had arrived and it was serious! Nothing like I would have felt before, this was actually a bit disconcerting. I can’t say I enjoyed it. Imagine a squirrel in a wheel running very fast and going nowhere.
Eventually that blast off ebbed. I was shocked at how profound that felt. As I thought when I stopped drinking my 12 oz of coffee a day and the withdrawal was significant — this caffeine stuff is serious. And this less than 12 oz that I had this morning was serious too!
All that in that little mug of Black Gold.
Reflections on No Coffee
I haven’t had any coffee since April 1st. I’ve abstained from coffee and caffeine because of three different factors.
Going into this I had reduced my coffee intake. A few months ago I dropped my coffee consumption from 24oz a day to 12oz a day. When I did that I noticed no material changes and figured less was probably better. So when I decided to drop it entirely I figured it wouldn’t be that hard since I didn’t think I was having that much coffee.
I sure was wrong. Stopping coffee and caffeine was much harder than I expected. The first day was fine, but the second day I had a persistent headache. I felt like I was in slow-motion all day, kind of in a fog. And I was so tired in the afternoon and evening that it was all I could do to stay awake. The third day was the same. It wasn’t until the fourth and fifth days that I started to feel more normal.
I didn’t think the caffeine I was consuming was having any real impact on me — but the impact that the removal had tells a different story.
How about the three areas I was focusing on?
So far I haven’t seen any material change in blood pressure. That is disappointing to me but I think speaks to other factors being more impactful to that metric. The physiology still suggests that combining high blood pressure and caffeine is a bad idea. So abstaining from caffeine is still a good idea even if I’m not seeing it on the blood pressure sensor.
The thing that I have had the most profound improvement in is sleep. Removing caffeine entirely had a more profound impact on my sleep than I could have imagined. Both qualitative and quantitative with the data from the 8Sleep. I’m falling asleep much faster and earlier than I was before. I’m getting about 30 to 45 minutes more sleep a night, mostly by getting to sleep earlier at night and less waking time in the middle of the night. I’m waking up at 6am and feel rested. Something I genuinely have never experienced.
The last factor of anxiety doesn’t have any way for me to quantify. I don’t know of any clear differentiator that I can point to for this. My best indicator would be ease of achieving a peaceful mind when I meditate, but my meditation practice has been very sporadic this month.
I find the sleep improvements to be great. I also do like the lack of dependence on getting coffee in the morning. I do miss the ritual of coffee, particularly on the weekends. I’ve sourced some high quality caffeine free tea to give that a try for when I would like that experience.
I’m not ready to say that I’m not a coffee drinker. We’ll see where the future goes. I’ll just take it one day at a time. 😊