I gave up caffeine for Lent.
It’s been, counterintuitively, rather eye-opening.
Before I get into this, let me say: Coffee is awesome. Tea is awesome. Cola is awesome. I love all these things, and I don’t mean to say people shouldn’t drink them. Also, if you’re going to drink coffee? Drink Cameron’s Coffee. It’s my favorite, and this is not an ad (it might be a peace offering, though).
I expected to sleep a lot more than I have. I expected to need naps regularly. But while that’s happened at times—this past week, I crashed, needing a nap one day and probably needing one another a different day when I kept nearly dozing off at my desk—I’ve actually felt more energetic on less sleep. The crashes aren’t there in the afternoon. I wake up ready to start the day just fine.
It isn’t just the energy piece that’s caught my attention. Every impulse feels more under my control. I’m not as hungry. It’s easier to have just one beer if I have a drink. My emotions are calmer, my irritability subdued. Everything that feels like an itch, internally, demands far less scratching.
When I do have caffeine, on Sundays—feast days—it’s jarring how powerful it is. One cup of Starbucks hot chocolate this past weekend had me feeling like the typist equivalent of Usain Bolt. Which, along with the previous point, leads me to this:
I don’t think we give caffeine enough respect.
What I mean by this is not that we should think more highly about caffeine, and not that we think *too* highly of it, either. What I mean is that caffeine is a powerful drug, but that it’s become strangely commonplace. It’s as natural as water for a lot of people. It’s more natural than water for a few. Caffeine is a powerful stimulant, and we just drop it all over the place, like an ineffective imitation of Huxley’s soma.
I’ll return to regular caffeine consumption when Lent is over. The point of the Lenten fast involves giving something up for a finite period of time, not making some New Year’s Resolution or broader change (though admittedly, I was curious what effect this would have, and had been wanting to cut back on caffeine for nearly a year). But when I return, I think I’ll treat caffeine with more respect. I think it’ll be less of a crutch, and more of a treat. That’s the hope, anyway. That’s the aim. I want to enjoy it more richly, and not use it out of compulsion. I don’t like answering to an itch.
