Confessions of a coffee addict who survived four days without espresso
I have a confession to make: I’m a coffee addict. Granted, it’s not a scandalous confession, and all of my friends and even vague acquaintances know this about me, so how secret can it be? But for me, coffee is a food group. It’s what makes mornings bearable, and it’s what makes Monday mornings rank only second on my list of “Awful Things That Happen on a Regular Basis” (5,000-word essays take the prized spot of number one.) Like all obsessed hipster-wannabes, my Instagram account is littered with pictures of coffees I’ve bought across the world.
Paris:
Cairo:
Dubai:
Becoming a college student has not slowed down my coffee consumption — it raised the addiction a couple (hundred) notches. Suddenly, 8:00 a.m. classes and pulling all-nighters to write the essay I procrastinated for two weeks were impossible without a Grande or two.
So, what happens when a coffee addict has to go (almost) a week without coffee? Mayhem, pain and general suffering, perhaps.
Day 1: Caffeine withdrawal is like that one family friend with fake nails who always pinches your cheeks really hard.
I chose to start this experiment on Tuesday because there was no way I was going to make it through Monday without caffeine in my system. I drank two extra coffees on Monday, which I think was a sort of goodbye before the hiatus. However, the extra caffeine was not my friend that night, and I could only manage about three hours of sleep.
Tuesday morning dawned bright and early with a mandatory online lab I was only half awake for. My first real class of the day was at 12:30 p.m., by which time I was already feeling the onset of a headache. Though I don’t normally have time for breakfast, I had a bowl of Cheerios that morning for a much needed jolt of energy. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.
Day 2: Withdrawal sets in.
Wednesdays are generally light days in terms of workload. Today, however, I just could not focus in either of my classes. My head ached, and I wished it was acceptable to wear sunglasses indoors because the bright lights utilized in classrooms stabbed at my eyes. I felt spacey and slow, unable to keep up with conversation as my head pounded. After my last class, I dragged myself to my dorm room, washed down an Advil with water and tried to sleep off the withdrawal headache.
Day 3: There’s an unexpected silver lining.
Thursdays are brutal only because I have a four-hour shift that starts at 8 a.m. sharp, and involves ambushing people with a microphone to interview them for Annenberg Radio News. Normally, I’m a few minutes late to my shift because there’s a line at The Cafe, no matter the time. But since I couldn’t have any coffee, I gave the lined-up students waiting for their daily fix of caffeine a wistful look as I trudged to the media center. My student manager beamed at me when I signed in for my shift five minutes early, a first for me.
The caffeine withdrawal headache, though not as painful as yesterday, was still present. It hummed in the back of my head like a trigger-happy hornet’s nest, waiting for a loud sound or flash of sunlight to make its presence known.
Day 4: The last stretch is (finally) here!
Fridays, as a rule, are magical days. They signify the weekend, relaxation and fun. This particular Friday is more magical than most because with its end comes the end of my self-imposed coffee hiatus — suffering for my art has never been so literal.
Thankfully, the withdrawal headache is mild, even laughable compared to Wednesday. I feel almost like Wonder Woman as the day winds down, strong and happy. That’s not to say I don’t go back to drinking coffee the very next day — because, of course, without coffee … I can’t function.
Except you are not a coffee addict. If you were an addict, you would need to consume more and more coffee to produce the same physiological effects due to building up tolerance. Your bladder would have exploded by now.
No, rather than an addict, you are just someone with a poor ability to self-moderate who classifies themselves as an “addict” in a way that privileged white people like to seem relevant by sharing the great cross they must bear in society.
It’s a post about coffee…