Three Eye-opening Lessons from a Year Without Coffee

Number three may disappoint you

I stopped being hooked on coffee last year. My last sip of joe was the one I had during the blockchain conference in Singapore, September 2023, testing out a crypto payment method using free tokens. Read my crypto payment review here.

My last coffee for a year.

After that, I didn’t touch it anymore, especially not the impostor tinned chilled coffee that’s 1% coffee and 99% other things, such as sugar, flavouring, and whatnot.

November 2024 marks my journey without coffee for more than a year. Do I plan to continue going coffee-less for the rest of my life? I’m not quite sure yet. This is my default answer to any question of a plan beyond a one-year estimate. Since life has continuously thrown me for a loop, I stopped being meticulous with my target—trusting God’s plan instead and allowing myself to be surprised by Him.

What are the lessons from this experience?

Mind, I ditched coffee out of curiosity for a shorter target duration. But a month stretched to a quarter, and in the blink of an eye, it’d turned into a year.

I was not hard-pressed to do it, unlike my experience with going pescatarian (and more plant-based) for over four years—from the entire 2020 to almost half of 2024, which you can read here.

It wasn’t out of trauma. However, I still managed to extend this.

I believe this has something to do with my underlying asceticism practice as someone with the double whammy of ESFJ and enneagram type 1 personality. ESFJs tend to stick to traditions, which to some extent, idealists to a moral standard, whereas enneagram type 1 worships rules observance and orderliness.

Thus, when I have imposed a set of rules upon myself—no red meat in the past, or no coffee in the context of this post—my mind readily turned the restriction into the code of conduct that determines my self-worth.

Aka.: if I fail to uphold this standard, I’m less worthy.

The idea didn’t take long to take off. Before I knew it, avoiding coffee had been my second nature.

Habits may grow into obsessions, and obsessions, compulsive behaviour. This is at the very least scientific explanation of my long history of eating disorders—being restrictive and unable to grow out of a particular rule once set.

Anyway, I perceived that the coffee one wouldn’t portend the same dwindling path leading to ED as it’s just coffee. People can do many other flavoured drinks when socialising even without coffee, and it’s not a problematic food group that once eliminated can topple your balance, such as carbs or animal proteins.

It’s just an accessory, the same as going without alcohol that I’ve been practising.

So, what have I learned?

1. A habit can be switched on and off if you know the tricks

If you also want to kick a habit to the curb, regardless of what it is, I recommend a few tips from habit-building books, such as Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit. Although I have read neither of them, I stole the key information from various infographics shared on Pinterest.

The tips that I did to live gracefully without coffee are making it more difficult to access coffee, such as emphasising the value, habit replacement, and elimination.

Value emphasis — Diderot effect

Financial freedom is a good motivation for me. It’s partly why I sway towards digital minimalism, or minimalism in general, truthfully, because it means fewer items to steward. From clothes to excessive digital consumption, all may impact your nervous system by placing unnecessary clutter.

Since coffee is not an absolute thing I must live with, making coffee at home that requires a coffee maker and its paraphernalia is a thing I can go without. Remember the Diderot effect.

Moreover, I’m not keen on letting my money down the drain by buying coffee at takeouts. I can use the money elsewhere, particularly the organic foods I must provide for myself.

Oma Nobuko—you can read my story of reuniting with her here —asked me, as we waited for the bus back to Oxford from Woodstock, the bus stop was opposite a cafe, why people would want to drive or walk to a cafe, buy their coffee, and drive back home, instead of making coffee at home.

Well, Oma, time’s changed. Now, buying coffee outside is the lifestyle.

Habit replacement

I realised that I would only need a warm flask or mug to hold when it’s chilly, so even hot water with some drops of lemon water could do the job. Lately, I’ve been going more and more sparsely with tea as I figured that my body didn’t do well with too much caffeine from black tea, my favourite.

The human brain is wired to go through the path of the least resistance. If a neural pathway has been created, the next response just takes whatever is “prescribed” in that link rather than spending effort to think about the next step. This has something to do with the available brain power to compute reflexes in a life-threatening situation. So, rather than white-knuckling through the destruction of your old habit, just replace it with something similar.

My dad’s case: snacking instead of smoking.

Not saying it’s good, no, as it opens another can of worms of metabolic diseases.

Habit replacement, thus, can leverage almost anything which is not necessarily a healthy compromise. I scroll social media, write on my apps, read library books, and so on. I’m typing this draft with a steaming mug of hot water next to me.

Elimination

If you were addicted to coffee to begin with, the first and second points above may be futile. Well, just remove anything coffee from your sight, then.

Repeat after me: caffeine is not essential.

(I guess why it’s easy for me to ditch UPFs and sugary treats is because I kept hammering down in my head that they were not essential and easy to get eliminated from the pantry)

I don’t have a problem removing coffee from my inventory. I still have a couple of coffee bags because I’m a good host. I’d like to have friends over, and having the options to offer from coffee, tea, or chocolate is handy.

The tips worked with other addictive things in my life. Now a pack of UPF chocolate biscuits I got from a housewarming parcel could sit in my pantry untouched until it was given away. A bar of dark chocolate could not see the light of day for days on end without me gobbling its entirety into my piehole in one day.

And definitely, coffee. I’ve been living without it.

2. Caffeine isn’t an essential nutrient—you’re probably addicted to the sugar that comes with fancy coffee drinks

My caffeine is obtained from raw cacao powder (or dark cocoa, if I must). However, I treat hot chocolate as my leisure drink. Doing so is in a very different headspace from treating caffeine as a must.

Besides, had it been for caffeine, I would have been disappointed because the caffeine effect from cacao is completely different. I make it without sugar, sometimes with just a dot of honey. One teaspoon of cacao or cocoa powder. Cinnamon powder or stick. No jittery feeling from caffeine overshoot. No sugar rush, either. Purely optional, if not for the claimed health benefits of magnesium and others printed on the back of the bag.

I can go days without hot chocolate and still feel fine. If I drink it, it’s never out of necessity, say, like people who claim they’re sleepy and need a “boost” of energy to stay productive.

(This sounds super judgy but let’s face the truth)

The media—the power of marketing—hyperbolises the need for caffeine by showing different ads about morning coffee being a staple, that otherwise your day doesn’t go well if you forget to grab a joe in your rushed commute.

Case in point: Oma’s observation about people’s coffee takeouts.

But why? Why can’t we live without caffeine? It’s never an essential nutrient.

I don’t understand the normalisation of the coffee culture, that people need four cups of joe a day just to function.

Also, when people say they’re addicted to coffee, it’s probably the sinister sugar that lurks in the fancy drinks.

Even if it’s americano or espresso—that is without sugar—why do we need that?

There are more essential building blocks of energy, namely proper nutrition and sleep hygiene.

Have we addressed those in our lives before resorting to the quick rush of energy stimulated by caffeine?

3. Even without caffeine, I still suffer from Raynaud’s (and anxiety, my old friend)

Raynaud’s syndrome sufferers are advised to stay away from stimulants that can cause vasoconstriction, the spasm of little veins in the extremities, such as our fingers, toes, and sometimes noses and nipples (without being TMI, no, I don’t have Raynaud’s in the latter body part, thankfully).

Had I stopped taking coffee for health reasons, I would’ve been greatly disappointed. Rather, I just took this experiment to understand a habit-building system and how our brains work about a substance.

My Raynaud’s is in tandem with the vast medley of autoimmunity symptoms in my body. It must take a holistic approach, indeed, which I’m nowhere near to crack as new symptoms come and go.

People with anxiety are also suggested to keep caffeine at bay. Considering my only intake is from cacao beans, which have a different effect than black and green tea and coffee, my anxiety still doesn’t benefit from this. It’s either I’m still too sensitive that even cacao bean products still leave trace effects, or simply that I need a different approach.

All in all, my self-soothing strategy and no-screen activities have offset this effect much better.

Another Urgent Point

Now that we’ve learned about the US election result, investors among you may have noticed that certain instruments, both traditional and edgy, are “to the moon”.

It depends on your game plan, but I’m a long-term investor so I don’t do any different from my routine DCA (Dollar Cost Averaging) on several instruments. Market trends are volatile but generally upward over a long period.

Remember, don’t take any advice from those who play a different game. This is a lesson I took from The Psychology of Money I read earlier this year.

Other Info You Don’t Want to Miss

• I’m going to host a storytelling workshop to end this year (not with a bang—rather, gently). Owning our narratives is the key lesson I’ve learned in my personal healing journey of 2024. I was looking to make it in person but Aberdeen City Library hasn’t responded to my query so online it is. It’s going to be FREE! (and hopefully, fun, but I’m not the cheekiest person so please expect my awkwardness)

• Experimented with a new style for giving a punchy (yet cringe) title and subtitle set. Felt like a listicle despite being not one, but I gave it a go. My Substack evolves with me, so it’s a place to experiment.

Takeaway and Journal Prompts

Now, I pass it over to you.

• What habits have you grown out of?

• What did you do to achieve that?

• Learning from your experience of phasing out of something, what habit are you looking to kick next?

• What are the three key lessons you learned from your habit-stopping experience?

Perhaps, it’s not about food or drink, and you may have had a few tricks up your sleeve which I and other readers can benefit from.

I’d be more than happy to reply to your shared stories in the comments below.

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Before you close the tab . . .

The Gentle Roadmap is a publication centred on my reflection on a holistic healing journey. As a practising Catholic, the articles sometimes portray my layperson experience with the faith. If you like my writing and want to be notified of new posts, please subscribe (it’s always free). You’re always welcome here regardless.

Until next time,