I Quit Caffeine for Two Weeks. Here's What Happened.

I want to be clear: I did not do this because I wanted to. I did it because my sleep had gotten bad enough that I was willing to try anything, and caffeine was the obvious suspect.

Days three and four were genuinely unpleasant. I'm not going to romanticize it. I had a headache that lived behind my left eye and a mood that I would describe as 'technically functional.'

By day seven, something interesting happened. I woke up before my alarm and felt — awake. Not caffeinated-awake. Actually awake. It was disorienting.

I didn't stay off caffeine forever. I'm not a monk. But I came back to it differently — one cup, in the morning, made well, tasted slowly. Not a crutch. A pleasure.

That distinction — crutch versus pleasure — is something I think about a lot now. It applies to more than coffee.