Made-Up Bits

a personal blog, by Sven Seebeck -

Coffee Withdrawal

As you rightly guessed by the title of this blog (note: Then ‘Too Much Latte’), I really like coffee. Like a lot. I used to drink all day long. Day in, day out. The first one in the morning always was the most important one as it has been major part of my morning routine: coffee and my news feeds. Whether I was browsing the web, processing images, writing arrangements at 4am or writing some posts for this blog the cup of coffee, or even better, the mug of Latte was always right next to me.

Over time it has become even so, that without this one mug, or even better the two or three, of a nice pint-sized Cafe Lattes in the morning, I could not really function. I had a hard time getting anything done.

My coffee-snobbishness also made my everyday life more complicated. I like my coffee a certain way, but the coffee that I have access to during the course of day say at work or when traveling, is, say, most of the time not to my taste. Think gas-station coffee at 3am: mostly burned to the bottom of the can kind of stuff, which is not really to enjoyed.

I hardly noticed myself, but over time my coffee started to become stronger and more sugarized, ending in coffee-flavoured-sugar. I started to have the feeling that something has to change and in the beginning of the year I decided to quit coffee.

This was on January the 2nd. I went cold turkey and haven’t had a single cup since then. After I got through the first few days of painful headaches, my overall well being improved and I haven’t felt that relaxed and surprisingly awake in quite some time.

Some Observations

In the beginning I was in a permanent state of headaches. To compensate I tried to drink tea, which helped a bit. Up to this day, now a month in, I’m still not used to drink tea. It’s getting there though and I found one brand that I actually can enjoy.

The headaches lasted about three to four days, but once I got passed that point, my physical condition and well being improved constantly. I am by no means a health guy but I have noticed quite a few improvements.

Over the course of the last month I for example noticed:

  • Better sleep quality: I sleep faster and better. Even when sleeping only a few hours during the night (which, due to a bunch of deadlines was common theme) I feel rather rested
  • I wake up a lot better and faster
  • I feel much more awake and less tired during the day therefore find it a lot easier to focus and to get into work mode. I don’t have had the feeling that I have to force myself to do stuff and can mostly start working right away.
  • I am generally much more relaxed. At least so I believe.
  • My skin appears to look a lot healthier. This is very subjective and could also be due to cold at the moment.

Another positive side-effect I noticed is, that due to preparing tea at work and at home, I have a much more consistent experience. No more surprises with burned coffee or even worse, some that came out of an automat. I know what I am getting.

After a month it is surely too early to see if I manage to stick to this, but from what I have seen so far it looks rather promising, but I daresay I am mildly optimistic. Hopefully I don’t jinx it.

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