It was this past Saturday; my wife and I finally had a weekend to ourselves, and so we took that day to clean our apartment. After her brother spent a couple of weeks here until he settled into college, we didn’t have the time to give the place a good scrubbing. The first thing I do in the morning is brew myself a cup of coffee and drink it as we get to our checklist. Once I finished my first cup, I went ahead and popped in another K-cup (Donut Shop Coffee, the best brand) and brewed my second cup. Usually, my wife will comment on how I shouldn’t have another one. I brush it off and say, “Yeah, yeah,” while the cup fills up.

Since we were cleaning up the place, one of the things I keep up to date with cleaning is my Keurig coffee machine. I removed the pieces and scrubbed them to let air dry for the rest of the day. Normally, I would have a third cup; I go for my daily quota of cups before I finish drinking coffee for the day. But since I cleaned the Keurig and the pieces were still drying, I decided to stop at two and drink something else. I boiled some water and poured it into a cup of herbal tea throughout the day and became the start of me drinking less coffee per day. Just out of the blue.

For as long as I can remember, three cups of coffee was how much I would drink daily. During periods of my life, how much coffee I drank depended on how many fluid ounces of coffee I drank per cup. More recently, it would be 12 ounces per cup, totaling about 36 ounces per day. I used to drink as much as 16 ounces per cup, and some days, I would consider spoiling myself and making it a fourth cup, bringing it up to 64 ounces. If you thought that was too much, back in 2016 to 2017 (maybe even 2018), I would drink an entire pot of coffee in the morning (when I woke up early enough to play games before work), have a cup or two at work, and then if it was a Friday and I wanted to game late, I’d brew another pot for the night. Coffee was flowing through my system, so it’s weird to sit down and think of how much I have slowed down as I got older, where it’s not my personality anymore.

I don’t find it weird that I reminisce about those times when I could relax for the evening with a cup of coffee. I find it weird as to how I could’ve done that with no problems sleeping. Back then, I could fall asleep shortly after finishing a cup. But now, if I had some after 3:00/15:00 PM, I’d be up in the late hours, cursing at myself for having one so late.

There are side effects I’ve been feeling over the last few days since lowering my intake of coffee. As I write this at 7:00/19:00 PM, I am ready to crawl into bed and call it a night. This tiredness may also be because my wife woke me up early today and did a long run yesterday after work. But suffice it to say, I now go to bed at an earlier time and can fall asleep a little easier now. Today was the first time the caffeine withdrawal has been mild with the daily headaches. When I gave up coffee for lent a few years back, the headaches early on were brutal. Since I’m still drinking some caffeine, just not as much, they’re bearable. At least I haven’t been miserable enough from it that I come off as snippy or a grump.

What’s next for me is to keep lowering the caffeine intake till I’m on a one-cup-per-day limit and fill that void with tea. I only drink herbal tea; some bags taste great and have the lowest amount of caffeine. Practically zero. With this, I would save money in the long run. I would spend about $40 monthly on K-cups and about $10-20 weekly on creamers when I drink three cups daily. Lowering that to one per day would mean that the $40 K-cup package would be three months in, and creamer maybe once per three weeks. My wife would love not to see that on our grocery bill.

It’s a slow process right now; I don’t want to go cold turkey and risk throwing it away because I couldn’t handle it. Weening myself little by little until I’m going throughout the day with one cup or none.

I hope to follow up on how I do it in a future post.