I stopped by Starbucks this morning for a treat. Sometimes I can go without a coffee for three weeks. I never drank much coffee when I was in college. I remember only a handful of times when I had some mochas to help with the all-nighters. I usually wake up happy and energized even with just five hours of sleep. When I started my first job after college, I spent most of the day just reading technical material. Technical reading is not like leisure reading. It is boring work. There is no magic in it, no living happily ever after, and definitely no dragons.

At first it was just a Starbucks here and there. Then it was Starbucks every morning. Once I started calculating how much this was costing me, I switched to regular coffee with the creamer and the flavored shots. I started worrying about my new habit when I started drinking plain black coffee a few times a day. I would feeling sluggish the entire day without it. At first I just thought it was because I was not getting enough sleep. Nine hours each night and three weeks later, my lethargic mornings still would not disappear without my morning coffee.

Trying to substitute tea resulted in drinking at least 4 teabags within a two hour period, which probably gave me the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. So I started this cycle of on again and off again coffee drinking habit for the next two years. The withdrawal symptoms each time I try to quit were so agonizing that within a few days I would reach for that coffee pot again. Such an insignificant thing, yet I obsessed over when I will finally be able to throw out that coffee pot. While some women start a new diet every Monday morning, I start a new plan to quit my coffee.

When I had a two month break from work while I was in the process of switching jobs, I was able to quit for good. But it was a miserable two months, waking up with a headache and lethargic all day. No matter how much sleep I was getting, I was still tired and cranky. Then one day (the 56th day to be exact), the symptoms disappeared. I am my former energetic self again in the morning. People talk about drugs, drinking, and smoking with their kids. But caffeine is also an addiction, though acceptable, that should not be encouraged by the numerous coffee shops everywhere. It really saddens me to hear about my co-worker’s teenage daughter loading up on coffee and energy drinks throughout the day to get through all her activities. Sometimes I just think we are better off slowing down and getting more sleep. Do we really need to fit everything in?