Michael Pollan is awesome.
Guy
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Yurp
Pollanās long Guardian piece, that I assume is an except from the book:
And an NPR-Fresh Air interview:
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Iām the same as you. A few years ago I went without coffee for maybe a little over 24 hours - not deliberately, but rather because I spent the day on the bus from Penang to KL, arrived late, then had to rush to the airport the next morning to fly back to Thailand, and didnāt have the chance to drink any.
At the time I couldnāt figure out why I had such a massive headache the second day, until it vanished shortly after Iād arrived in Chiang Mai and drank my first coffee in over 24 hours. I was quite surprised at the time. I guess I hadnāt gone without coffee that long before (nor really since - maybe once).
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Looks like it. He says something like 90% of humans use caffeine daily. Really incredible.
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One of the points heās made is that the Big Threeātea, coffee, and chocolateāall arrived in Europe within a decade some time in the 1600s. Productivity shot up as before then Europeans were basically drunken louts drinking alcohol all the timeāperhaps some parts of Europe are still like this. Anyways, with the addition of coffee and tea Europe jumped forward, in the ways that the Arab world had done (this is where coffee houses started) to invent mathematicsāand (Pollan doesnāt talk about this, but I thought of it) how East Asian philosophies based on Buddhist scriptures were enabled by tea drinking, allowing these guys to focus while (as mentioned before) Europeans were still basically drunken louts.
Itās interesting stuff!
Guy
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Did it a few times and trying once more. Always got back to coffee after a long Friday night, waking up tired and shit on Saturday.
Best way is to ease yourself up into that, gradually reducing the amount of daily intake. Donāt really remember the benefits on sleep, tho Iād like to think it did improve my sleep and especially feeling well-rested in the morning. One striking difference I noticed though is, after a few weeks the yellow coffee stains on your teeth start going away.
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I quit coffee about 10 years ago. I remember it was extremely difficult for about three weeks, but then I suddenly found myself sleeping better and having more energy.
When I was trying to kick the habit, I found decaf coffee a poor substitute that tasted somewhat similar to the real thing but was way too weak, so I stopped drinking it as soon as I no longer needed it psychologically. However, about a week ago, I had my first decaf coffee since then and, because Iām not used to drinking coffee anymore, I thought it was AMAZING and I now drink it every day. 
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Interesting. I quit coffee for over a year, and overall, I found the drop in my āenjoyment of lifeā, (especially breakfast) to be intolerable - I just really enjoyed the actual act of drinking coffee. So I started drinking it again. I donāt drink a ton (1-2 cups in the morning only), so as long as I donāt drink any caffeine containing beverages after noon, I sleep just fine. Just my 2 cents.
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The headache thing I find quite similar to withdrawal from smoking cigarettes. Itās almost like the coffee is fighting to not let you go, and if you start doing it again, itās more about getting rid of the unpleasantness than the other benefits (if any) you get from doing it.
Addicts are often confused by that. The drug is getting rid of the withdrawal symptoms, which is good. But the withdrawal symptoms are caused by the drug in the first place. In the end itās a never ending circle of taking the drug, regretting it, trying to stop, then succumbing to the pain and taking the drug again, and this while the quality of life diminishes with each round.
Not saying that coffee is as bad as cigarettes or other drugs. But I see a similar pattern. Same goes for things like sugar, certain types of medicines, or even gambling and gaming. Addiction in general.
Life without coffee is no life at all. Plus it has health benefits. I do my morning yoga before I drink it because it does interfere with breathing, but I make sure to be full of caffeine when I lift in the evening. I usually sleep well as long as I quit coffee at 6.
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I canāt imagine my morning without that sweet, comforting aroma of a seductive coffee. I drank it black for years, but recently have taken to adding a drop of milk as my stomach was finding it hard to tolerate itās harshness so early in the day.
Most Iāll ever have is two cups a day. I fall asleep in general in 5 minutes of putting my head on my pillow. Get on average between 6 and half to 7 hours sleep a night. Wonder could I get 8 if I dropped it entirely.
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I have a pretty balanced system, which involves drinking too much coffee in the morning and too much liquor in the afternoon and evening. I very much enjoy my life and sleep like a baby for 8 hours a night, despite being at the age where men usually get up 3 times a night for nocturnal potty runs.
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Iāve been that way my whole life. Every night I get up to pee at least once. I lived in an old farm house in my youth. The upstairs wasnāt heated (you could always see your breath in winter) and had no bathroom, so making those trips downstairs wasnāt fun. My dad had a friend in West Virginia who had a toilet right in the middle of his bedroom. He could even sit on it and shoot deer on the mountainside through the window. Man, Iām starting to miss the country now.
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I drink 2 mokaās a day. A friend who stayed over was shocked, according to her, my two cups of coffee is actually 12~16 cups equivalent.
Coffeeās great, no plans to quit.
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So youāre saying you just pee your sheets and deal with it in the morning? 
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I just spit toothpaste all over my bed.
Which size moka pot are you talking? I have several sizes but use the 6-cup almost exclusively and typically drink 3ā4 of those per day, plus sometimes some drip bag or canned UCC coffee when the situation requires it (usually in the evening or early hours ā I tend to stay away from the moka pot after midnight or so unless Iām really desperate).
Anyway, I think you can safely ignore your friend ā she sounds easily shocked haha.
I quit coffee for a month recently. The first two weeks were entirely without caffeine, then I reintroduced tea for the remainder of the coffee free month. I slept deeply for the first week, probably on average half an hour to an hour more sleep a night. Then after some sort of rebalancing in my system occurred, sleep seemed to shift back to a similar duration to when I drank coffee. One of these days I will kick coffee and just stick to tea. I will never stop drinking tea though.
This is regrettable. Iāll miss the coffee recommendations you post. 
Guy
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