ScrollCure

If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.” – Bill Hicks

I realize the following will sound blasphemous to a culture that has embraced the coffee culture like a mother embraces her new born.

Let me premise with the disclaimer that if coffee works for you and doesn’t cause you any problems for you, ignore this post. Lucky you.

For myself and the vast majority of others as well, coffee has an adverse effect.

I realized at some point that there was a strong relation between consuming coffee and my day going berserk. Not many seem to be talking about this so it took a while for the light bulb in my brain to switch on & see the connection.

Whenever I drank coffee, I’d get maybe half an hour of work done before I’d be overcome with such a buzz & a state of mind where I’d want to do anything except work. Like it literally became impossible to sit & focus at one thing.

It felt like my brain switched to party mode. I’d put on music alongside work and the ratio of music:work would keep rising steadily over the hours. I’d listen to music & stroll around the house or do random stuff, everything except doing the actual work that required to be done.

My mindlessness was also that much more pronounced. My brain loved latching on to any thought or idea and being as mindless as it can while on coffee. Even when I was working, I’d open up more tabs than usual on my browser or find myself going down rabbit-hole of distractions.

It’s felt like my brain switched to a shorter, faster wavelength of functioning and sitting at one spot & doing any sort of deep work seemed impossible. No single element, app or habit came close to coffee in terms on wrecking a havoc on my digital technology usage patterns.

When the appetite suppression from coffee would reduce, I’d be ravenously hungry and would crave something greasy, deep-fried, sugary, junk. First my diet would collapse & subsequently anything in my routine that demanded a semblance of discipline, would too.

By evening my will power reserves for the day would be drained and I’d either crave more caffeine and/or sugary drinks and more digital distractions.

While it is said caffeine clears out completely from one’s system within 12 hours or so, I felt the adverse effects of coffee cumulate more & more with each passing day. Each subsequent day, the quality of my sleep was that much lower & the jitters from coffee would be that much higher. My mind craved that much more stimulation & was more prone to distraction with each passing day.

Over the course of weeks and months, my coffee intake increased steadily because my body started developing a resistance to the same dosage. This further compounded the issues & symptoms attached to it. What started with a teaspoon of coffee turned into two teaspoons, then two tablespoons, two cups and eventually half a liter or more of coffee each day.

I am writing this post in the hope that it would help a few anomalous cases like myself (which I believe are not so anomalous & more common than we’d think) for whom coffee just wrecks their routine & discipline because after junk food, alcohol & sugary drinks, the next most common hazardous item which is packed as innocuous but I see permeating the human culture everywhere is coffee.