Mine is coffee. As of today, my coffee drinking days are over. I’ve had been drinking coffee for what feels like 14 some odd years. I used to have, on average, 2 ~ 4 mugs and on some days where I just pushed myself, 6 mugs. I would always have my coffee coupled with powdered creamer because I can never drink coffee straight.
However and for the past 4 years now, I’ve been noticing some health issues with it both mentally and physically. Mentally, I’ve noticed my anxiety is driven up the wall after having had coffee. Physically, I could not stop going to the bathroom to piss, for coffee accelerates your need to go to the bathroom since it is also a laxative.
And also in turn, kept interrupting my naps and times where I had a nice string of hours to sleep to. A few weeks back, I had thought that it was maybe the usual caffeine-based coffee grounds that was causing it. So I discarded them. I went to Decaf because I felt I wasn’t just ready to discard coffee entirely. But since the same stuff is happening again with even Decaf, even when trying to be more moderate about my intake, I’ve officially tapped out.
I’m going to miss it, all the times where when I was in a place of solitude and a nice warm mug of joe added to the feeling, helped make things feel right. And all the times when coffee actually did help me, but I guess I just over-indulged and spoiled badly what was.
I’ve been on a similar coffee journey. I used to drink it nonstop throughout the day, like 5-6 cups of black coffee most days. Then one day I was physically assaulted and chased by a drugged out guy at a train station (never take transit in Denver, it’s a total fucking shitshow). I thought I was going to get stabbed or killed that day and I guess that event caused some trauma because I started getting panic attacks shortly after. I realized that my panic attacks were more frequent and lasted longer on the days that I drank more coffee, so I quickly cut all caffeine out of my life. Now I’ve been without caffeinated coffee for over a year and don’t miss it at all, although I still enjoy a decaf espresso most days.
Same thing happened with weed. I used to love weed and smoked/vaped it pretty frequently, but started getting panic attacks from it around the same time so I cut it almost entirely out of my life. Every few months I’ll buy a pack of pre-rolls to enjoy, but it literally takes me like five days to finish a single joint because I smoke one tiny puff at a time to avoid panic attacks.
Honestly though, even if I didn’t deal with panic attacks, I’m probably better off having no caffeine and only a tiny amount of weed.
