I’ve been a big coffee fan for many years. In reasonable doses like everything in life is not bad. But I was not doing any reasonable doses. So, I thought one day I’d be brave enough to give up coffee for a while. Patience is a form of wisdom. The day has come.

We need to understand that some things must unfold in their own time. This was coffee for me. It was time for my challenge and of course the quarantine accelerated it. I strongly believe that coffee in moderation is not bad. Feel free to google the research around it. However, I was a bad boy with coffee. For example, I’d easily have 3 cups a day: morning, after lunch and afternoon. Sometimes even after dinner a little espresso. I mentioned cups but some cups had 2-3 shots each. You can do your math. What I want to share is the three changes I’ve noticed for myself.

Sleep

This is the obvious one. I must confess my sleeping habits haven’t been something I’ve been proud of for a long time. I’d say that in the past few years I changed. I made some small adjustments that helped me sleep slightly better and longer. Still far from being perfect. Quitting coffee had a direct impact on my sleep. I felt “cleaner” and more ready to rest. It was clear that less caffeine was circulating throughout my brain tissue. As Matthew Walker mentioned in “Why We Sleep” caffeine blocks receptors, acting as a masking agent. In fact, this is one of my favourite books of all time. You should check it out if you can. Falling asleep became more natural without the need of reading for an extra hour. Going to bed truly meant something. Of course, I struggle few nights, this was not a perfect process but clearly my internal light switched off faster.

Anxiety

Caffeine stimulates a lot of sensations. Would somebody disagree? In my case I’d say that heart beating faster is directly correlated with my anxiety levels.  You might say it’s not just coffee and you’re right. It’s chocolate, cola, some medication, energy drinks, snacks and so on. There’s a lot of stuff with caffeine and I should have probably mentioned it at the beginning but my experiment was about coffee. And I noticed that my heart beating became more normal. At least 10% lower bpm than before. I need to be honest and also mention that COVID-19 generated some spikes of anxiety on me as mentioned in my post about mindfulness. That is to say, some external factors had an impact. On the other hand, before I was developing a dependency cycle. I enjoyed some coffee and was looking forward to having some more. It was a coffee cycle. So, let’s say early in the morning I had a cup of coffee, worked for couple of hours and already thinking of the next cup. This was my way to reduce some stress but on the other hand this was creating some sort of “hidden” anxiety. Needless to say that stopping coffee sent off this dependency and gave me some inner strength to go the extra mile on my days.

Finance

Is this one more obvious than the previous one? It depends. In my case, I liked to have coffee outdoors. I used to buy 2-3 cups in coffee shops. This was around £7-10 (US$9-13) on a daily basis. Let’s say at least 20 business days a month: £140-200 (US$175-250). If we roughly agree on a minimum of 240 business days this means £1680-2400 (US$ 2100-2500) per year. Crazy huh? All my coffee savings I sent them to the British Red Cross in the UK and the Fondazione La Stampa in Italy to be allocated in the Coronavirus Emergency Funds. Heroes are fighting for us right now and this denotes how coffee and many other things are unimportant. Please stay at home, stay safe.