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By request: here is the story of how I went from a 4 cup of coffee a day, home roasting person, to a no coffee most days person.
THREAD:
THREAD:
I loved coffee. I still love coffee. But once I loved it so much that I roasted it myself, had a storage inventory of green beans. Major coffee-geek.
Also, my stomach hurt all the time and I could never sleep right.
Also, my stomach hurt all the time and I could never sleep right.
One thing about me: I could never hold it to one cup or two cups a day. I would get myself down for a while and slowly creep up, as my system grew levels of tolerance. And the older I got the more it screwed with my sleeping.
When pregnant with our first kid, my spouse suddenly found coffee nauseating and stopped drinking it. So out of solidarity - and taking it as an opportunity - I quit too. Withdrawal lasted one bad week, and one OK week.
And then something really weird happened: I could think in the morning. Instead of the confused groggy stumble and slow caffeinating towards humanity, I could get up and just, like, do stuff. And work.
(One buddy mocked me: “See if this lasts once the kid comes”. But now we have two kids and I would certainly not go back - like I can get up and be instantly functional to deal with kid stuff instead of a coffee zombie.)
Results: my stomach got better, and my insomnia went away. (As far as I can tell, for me at least, the two things required to banish insomnia are no-coffee and intense exercise - climbing or lifting.)
Instead I mostly drink tea - mostly oolongs - in the gong fu style. First of all, oolongs are like a tenth the caffeine of coffee, and they don’t seem to trigger the zombie/addiction cycle.
Second, since gong-fu style involves resteeping, and caffeine level slowly diminishes in a lead batch, you can learn to micro-adjust, instinctively, your caffeine dose over the day. A day long gentle lift, instead of the highs and crashes often coffee.
(I once wrote up a quick guide to starting with gong fu style tea brewing: https://objectionable.net/2016/09/05/time-slices-of-tea-how-to-brew-gong-fu-style-part-i-oolong-baby/
Anyway: now that I’m off coffee on most days, when I really need it - oh my god does it work. Like: kids destroyed my sleep and I need to give a Zoom talk at 8 AM? A cup of coffee is now such an insane dose of energy and woah.
One isolated cup is safe. But if I do it two days in a row, I have to go through a micro-withdrawal, and if I do it three days in a row, I definitely flirt with getting back on the coffee-addiction bandwagon.
I’ve also found that an oolong/green tea only diet keeps me off any addiction cycle, but if I take one step up the caffeine cycle towards black and white teas, I start getting a bit of morning zombie/tolerance/I want more.
The danger zone is definitely anything that has enough caffeine to give me the sensation of “mmmm.... energy....”
Anyway that was way more than you asked for but that’s my story
Anyway I’m not trying to push this on anybody - I think my reasons for this have to do with my own body and soul and needs - but since some folks asked for this story, here it is. And my spouse and a few friends report similar paths.
