I have to say, it's been a bit of struggle so far, but not because of the common reasons people experience. Before doing this of course, I read a bit, I wanted to know if I'm going to have crazy withdrawal or something. After all, this would not be the first big think I quit, since I used to smoke back in the day, but just like smoking, I felt like I had to quit.

img src

We love the magic beans

Coffee today is ingrained in our culture, and because of this, nobody sees it like a problem. Funnily enough, there are languages that use the phrase "drinking coffee" as replacement for breakfast, or morning snack. Without a doubt, for most of us coffee is just part of life, and I'm no exception.

I've been drinking coffee for as long as I can remember. My grandmother had always drank her coffee black, just with some sugar, and for some reason I gravitated towards the bitter flavor over and over as a kid. When I "grew" up, I simply upped the intake, instead of taking a few sips of her coffee, I had my own cups, life was good, and coffee remained magical.

The milk and the sugar

This is the main problem for most, but it's not a problem until your years start catching up with you. In other words, just like everyone in the world possibly, my twenties were filled with cappuccinos, lattes of some sort or another, and the classical "cafecito con leche".

As time went by, and the effects of caffeine were not as noticeable, I found myself drinking 3,4 and sometimes 5 cups in a day, just to feel awake. Maybe the problem was not so much the coffee itself, but the addition of creamers and sugars. You are literally overdosing on sugar everyday and wrongfully think coffee is the one keeping you up sometimes. So, I did exactly what I had to do, and trained myself to drink it black.

Make it kick you in the chest

Since I don't struggle much with bitter flavors, it did not take long for me to get used to it and love it. Yes, black coffee, no sugar, no creamer, nothing. I've been drinking it like this for a decade now and feeling quite happy about it. But lately it started to get out of hand.

In the past 3 months, I've been drinking 8 cups or more per day. Yes, it's nowhere near a lethal dose, but it had become my replacement for a cup of water and that can't be good. In the back of my mind I'm thinking; "Well, coffee has water in it... all good", but of course I do know better.

Last week my body finally issued an invoice, and I've been having some malfunctions regarding my renal system. Suffice to say, it's not been fun, and I'm not happy about it at all, so I decided to go cold turkey on this whole thing. No more coffee, 8 cups of water a day minimum.

This is precisely where I am at the moment, four days in, trying to figure out, why my head hurts so bad and being completely annoyed at the moment, but also realizing that this is good, in the long run, it's good.

I do feel, I've lost some mental agility these days, and that I need to sleep more, but it could also just be my mind playing tricks on me. Who knows? but as the cliche saying goes...

"One step at a time"