Coffee Quit Me

The unexpected and the unthinkable happened to me. I don’t drink coffee anymore! Coffee used to be my daily gasoline, as well as a true passion of mine on which I was planning on building my future career as an entrepreneur. Besides working in  Coffee Shops while I was living in San Diego, I recently moved from Switzerland to Argentina with the plan to open a third generation coffee shop, here in Buenos Aires.

As I am writing this, I am probably done with coffee for good. Since I don’t impose strict rules upon myself, I still keep the door slightly open. Who knows, maybe one day I may get back on the coffee track, but for now I feel better without my old addiction. I am amazed how I got myself to quit coffee without even trying. I was actually planning on keeping coffee as one of my last not so healthy habits.

How did it all happen?

In April 2016 I started adopting new habits in order to have a healthier life-style. Since then, it has been an adventure of trying new approaches. I started to avoid consuming certain products. I’ve chosen starting points  such as dry-fasting, eating raw, making daily juices to introduce positive change into my life. Depending on the results I would get from a new practice, I’ll keep it in my life, modify it, or give up on it, and move on. For over a year and a half now,  it has been a fantastic adventure of quitting old and adopting new habits. If you want to know more about my entire experience, I try to write and publish much as I can on  a website named For A Better Monday that I have fully dedicated to this adventure.

How did I get to the specific point where coffee disappeared from my life?

I was brewing my own coffee daily with a V60 kit. One day I ran out of roasted beans. I decided to see how long I could keep going without purchasing new beans. Since I was dry-fasting on a regular basis, there were already plenty of days without me consuming any coffee. It took me about  three weeks to purchase beans again. During that period when I was coffee-fasting, my mental energy seemed to be more sustained. I wouldn’t get the boost and the pleasure from coffee, but my energy levels would be more constant throughout the day. Once I incorporated coffee in my routine again, I started having a hard time managing its side-effects, such as the crashing moments, and having a hard time falling asleep on certain nights.

During that period, I also happened to regularly monitor my urine to see if my kidneys were properly filtering. Each time I would be consuming coffee, my urine would be transparent. That meant my kidneys weren’t filtering much. I am not sure if there is a direct correlation between the consumption of caffeine and kidney filtration. Even to this day, how kidney filtration works is somehow still quite mysterious to me. That said,  this is when I got the idea in my head that coffee was probably not the best beverage for someone like me, who was trying to deep cleanse his body. I tried to switch from coffee to tea, but all the teas with caffeine seemed to have similar effects on my kidneys not being able to filter properly. This is when I geared my hot beverage consumption towards infusions.

Since coffee is out of my life, everything seem to work better for me. I haven’t been missing it much, except for its wonderful taste and the wide range of aromas that it can have.  As far as my life project goes, I decided to not open a coffee shop anymore. Quitting coffee wasn’t the only reason for me to change my plans, but I’m glad that the timing had worked out that way. It would have been impossible for me to sell something that I don’t personally enjoy and consume on a daily basis.

My Background as a Caffeine Addict

I started to consume coffee around the year 2000, soon after I moved to San Diego in 1999. I got a job as a barista at a coffee shop called The Mission that was right on Pacific Beach. It was the beginning of the third wave coffee movement, and we were getting excellent quality beans from Café Motto. I didn’t have any particular passion for coffee back then, but I could recognize the high quality of the coffee beverages we were serving. I got into the habit of consuming coffee on the job, and since then I had very few days in my life without drinking coffee, until very recently. For many years, I had been drinking between five to eight cups of coffee a day. I used to be the kind of person who’s brain wouldn’t function properly until having the first cup of coffee of the day.

Although I started to consume coffee in my mid 20s, I do have an anterior past in relationship to caffeine. Being a child during the 80s, I got into the bad habit of consuming a lot of Coca Cola. During summer days, I would drink up to 10 to 12 bottles of Coca Cola. My Coca Cola habit started in Türkiye, and followed me when my family and I migrated to Switzerland. In addition to Coca Cola, as a child I loved eating at McDonald’s and at Wendy’s. In the the late 80s Turkish Kebab shops started to open in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I switched from burgers to kebabs, but kept the habit of accompanying my meals with some coke.

When I review my history in relationship to caffeine, I can easily come to the conclusion that I got addicted to caffeine at an early age. I consumed caffeine on a daily basis for over 30 years. Knowing that I can now function without it, is very impressive to me. Not only I can function without it, but I actually function way better without it. If there is any correlation between kidney filtration and consumption of caffeine. And if for the past 30 years my kidney filtration was negatively affected by my excessive consumption of caffeine, I think this is  a terrible news for my overall health. My history in regard to caffeine, and the knowledge I was able to acquire since I started my healthier living attempt, make me believe that having a complete break from coffee and caffeinated beverages, can only have a positive influence my overall health.

Alternatives to coffee I’ve been enjoying a lot.

• At Buenos Aires Verde here in Belgrano they have this ginger, curcuma infusion with some shredded orange peel and honey, which almost made me forget that coffee even ever existed. Not in terms of the complexity in taste of course, but in terms of the comforting factor and the boost in energy it’s a great alternative.
• There is also this red juice that I often make at home that includes some beets, carrots, apples, oranges, garlic, ginger and curcuma. It works extremely well to to boost my energy and warm me up.
• Freshly squeezed pomegranate juice is also one of my favorites. I like mine with some garlic and ginger.
• The fake mango juice: It’s made of apples, oranges, ginger, curcuma,  and vanilla stem. (I like to pass the vanilla stem several times through my slow juicer to get the most essence out of it). I got this recipe from Thierry Casasnovas, he makes his with mandarins instead of oranges.