How I stopped coffee

Why i decided to stop drinking coffee

25 years of drinking coffee everyday. 25 years of having difficulties to sleep correctly. 25 years of feeling irritable. It was time to do something. Here is my little story about why I decided to stop drinking coffee.

At my parents

As a teenager, I could always find a coffee at any time of the day in the kitchen. My mother was making sure the coffee machine was full all day long. At that time two things were important for her a full packet of cigarettes and a full cup of coffee. She liked black coffee. No sugar, no milk, just a dark one. I never got hooked to smoking but the coffee rapidly became a part of me. My breakfast and after lunch coffee were the most important.

I was a student in an engineer school close to Paris and my studies were the priority number one. The only thing that mattered was my diploma. And coffee was here to give me this boost of energy I needed to succeed. It was my best ally.

This beverage was something positive for me. It was a real help for the student I was and I really liked the drink. The smell of it was captivating. I liked to train myself to be able to differentiate arabica and robusta coffees. I was playing the coffee connoisseur.

At my apartment

When I got my first apartment, my coffee habits changed a little bit. I didn’t have an electrical coffee machine. To honore my italian roots, I’ve chosen an italian one.

These machines are used in my family on sundays when the whole family is gathering. Special day so special coffee machine. We were not crazy about coffee, it’s just part of the culture we have.

At work

One thing I didn’t tell is I work in the IT, more precisely in startups. In these companies two things are important a powerful apple laptop and a nice cup of coffee laying on the side. It was part of the startup way of life.

At some point, I realized I wasn’t drinking water anymore. Coffee was there to hydrate my body. And during long work days, coffee was a great help.
In fact, I thought it was but I was just blind.

I even worked in a company having it’s own coffee machine to create cappuccinos like in coffee shops. A must! First their was the coffee addiction and also the challenge of making a good cappuccino. Total addiction loop…

The challenge

At that time, I started to have sleeping problems. I thought it was mainly because of my environment, the noise of the street for example.

Making a complete night from start to end was clearly not me. When I was able to read 4:00 AM on the clock, I knew that the night would be long. And boring. Watch the ceiling is ok the five first minutes but after that it’s annoying.

Another thing that annoyed me was that I had a tendency to be too emotional. Others would say I was on the nerves. I was irritable and had a negative view of the world.

That’s when I decided to do a coffee break. That was the beginning of a difficult journey. This path was a real pain.

The first days the strong headaches I had demonstrated me how I was dependent of this beverage. M brain was craving for caffeine. In fact, my brain was not able to work without its dose of caffeine. I was a coffee junky!

On my way to work, in the metro, I was feeling dizzy and my body couldn’t bear this lack of caffeine.

The worst was at the office. It seemed my brain was not awaken. When you’re watching television it’s ok to feel sleepy but when you have to deal with technic problems it’s another story. Furthermore when you work with colleagues drinking coffee and feeling energized. You feel like everyone will notice that you’re slow like a snail.

This is a hard moment cause it’s when you start thinking that a sip of the beverage will give you the boost you need to clear your thoughts. After all, a small cup is not that harmful. But if you start with one cup, you will finish the day with three empty cup of coffee on your desk. And you will be an the drinking bandwagon with nothing to stop you. The first times, I tried to stop I generally ended by doing this kind of mistake.

One interesting thing when you are not drinking coffee is that you are more conscious of the amount of cups your colleagues drink. And that’s a lot. It makes more conscious of fact that in general we drink to much of this dark beverage. They drink it like water. Like I was doing before.

It’s now 3 weeks since I’ve stopped and I’m not sure it’s completely alright. I’ve overcome the feeling bad period now I have to succeed on the long run. It’s the forth or fifth time I’m trying to stop and I always end up with a cup in my hand again. Will this be the good one? I hope. I’ll tell you this in few weeks.