What Happens When You Quit Coffee

The role coffee plays in a Min-Max Life

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For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” By T.S. Eliot

One of the few memories I have of my grandmother was of her giving me plain cookies dunked in coffee mixed with milk and sugar. I must’ve been about 4 or 5 years old.

I’m not quite sure why that memory stuck with me all these years, but I can still taste that sweet, creamy caffeine-infused treat.

And maybe that’s where my love affair with coffee started.

It wasn’t until about 2010 when I started to get serious about my caffeine habit. A coworker at the time introduced me to the fine art of the pour-over coffee.

Goodbye, K-Cups and Starbucks. They were now ranked inferior to my beautiful ChemEx.

Who cares if it took far longer to brew? Or that it required special tools like a burr grinder (NOT a spice grinder, heaven forbid) and a goose-necked kettle; one to dial in the grind, the other to regulate the flow of water.

I had bought it as a Mother’s Day present for my wife. It probably wasn’t the best gift I could’ve gotten her. I can count on one hand the number of times she’s actually brewed coffee.

But she has benefited from a fresh ground, piping hot cup o’ Joe just about every morning since.

My ChemEx and my (then) favorite coffee mug, circa 2021.

At one point, I even had a mail order subscription for small batch, single origin coffee beans.

I was THAT guy.

But in November 2024, I quit coffee cold turkey (which bee-tee-dubs, is not the most pleasant way to give something up).

Say It Ain’t So

There hadn’t been anything earth-shattering that caused me to stop drinking coffee. At the time, I had been introducing some changes to my lifestyle as part of my perpetual journey to improve my health. I had (re-)started an exercise regimen having been inspired by my wife. I also switched to a (mostly) vegan diet.

In the process of cutting out processed foods, animal products, sugar, and salt, I thought to myself, “Why not coffee too?”

WebMD provides the following benefits of giving up caffeine.

• Lowered Anxiety

• Better Sleep

• Fewer Bathroom Breaks

• Slower Skin Aging

• Dodging Dependence

• Better Nutrient Absorption

• Stronger, Whiter Teeth

• Lower Blood Pressure

I wouldn’t consider myself a person who becomes easily addicted. Occasionally, I like to test this theory and abstain from various addictive substances. In this case, I wanted to remove my dependence on coffee.

It had become a daily ritual. Wake up, heat water, grind beans, brew, drink a couple of cups of coffee, repeat the next day.

By giving up coffee, I cut down on the amount of time I needed to prep for my workday, which meant I could invest more of my time hurkle-durkling in bed.

(Look that up — hurkle-durkle. A fun, Scottish word to say with a fun meaning.)

I also found that coffee didn’t make me any more alert or focused. After getting past about a week of withdrawal symptoms, I was just as sharp without the caffeine coursing through my body.

The Not So Great

There was one major downside, however, to giving up caffeine.

What I discovered was that many of my social interactions depended on the black bean juice.

What do you say to someone who effectively only drinks water?

“Hey, wanna go out and grab a Dasani?”

And that’s why I have slowly re-incorporated coffee into my life.

When my wife and I went away for a couple of days in New York City, we went to a few coffee shops to sip the mornings away.

We also resumed our weekend coffee dates.

Yours truly with a large black coffee at Paris Baguette.

My enjoyment of the quality time spent with my wife outweighs the (slight) dependence I have on coffee.

Addiction or not, I’ll continue to drink coffee, but maybe not as much as I did before.

Hey, at least now I know I can stop whenever I want.

And in the end, it’s up to you to decide if coffee should be part of your Min-Max life.

Let me know what your experience has been. Are you more of a tea drinker? Or do you need a continuous IV drip of coffee to function on the daily?

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Here’s my most engaged 𝕏 post of the week.