Accidental coffee hiatus
I've been regularly consuming coffee for years. Typically, I have two to three cups of filter coffee and a cup of decaf cappuccino a day, mostly in the morning. I deliberately try to limit my caffeine intake, as I start feeling unwell after the fourth or fifth cup.
For the last year or year and a half, at home, with rare exceptions, I've been drinking coffee that I order from the same local coffee roaster here in Amsterdam. They deliver it fresh, often within the same week of roasting. So, typically, I order a new batch in advance to allow it to rest a bit and to ensure that I won't run out of beans.
However, this time things went awry. A week before Easter, I noticed that we were almost out of coffee. So, I rushed to place an order, hoping to receive it before the weekend.
Unfortunately, DHL gods had other plans for me and by mistake rerouted my order so it spend all Easter traveling around Netherlands. Thus, by accident, I had a almost five-day coffee hiatus that I hadn't planned for.
You've probably come across articles describing people's experiences of giving up coffee and caffeine consumption, and how it positively affected their lives. Improved sleep, reduced anxiety, and normalized blood pressure are just a few examples of such effects.
In my case, however, I felt no difference — not even a bit.
It's not that I don't experience any of those problems. Certainly, my sleep could be better, and I'd like to be less anxious. But removing a single substance from my diet didn't make any significant difference to my well-being. As with anything else, I guess, the dose makes the poison.
What did make a noticeable difference in my case is regular exercise. I spend most of my day sitting at a desk, staring at a monitor. Consequently, before I started running regularly, I often felt like a vegetable, both mentally and physically, especially in the morning.
Am I glad that I had this little experiment? Yes. Will I continue to enjoy coffee? Definitely.