I was surprised at how easy it turned out to be to not think of drinking on my high caffeine days. Not to say this never happened, but being committed to no booz or other drugs made it incredibly easy to push those thoughts out of my mind when they arose, making them far and few between. ← Which goes to reinforce my thoughts about how at least half the battle in overcoming addiction is the resolve to do so. It’s one thing to say to yourself “I really ought to get off the drugs but I just don’t feel like it right now,” and “I really ought to get off the drugs and gosh darn it, I’m gonna do it!” Just being able to say the latter is half the battle–at least half the battle, and if you’re lucky like me, the other half will be relatively simple (i.e. in the sense that if your resolve to commit to it is set in stone, pushing thoughts to the contrary out of your mind will almost certainly shut off the urges). Not to mention the fact that one of the effects of caffeine is to increase your will power. Compare this to the urge to eat when you’re hungry. Speaking from experience, that’s an urge that doesn’t just leave your mind just because you’ve resolved to diet. If you’re hungry, you’re hungry. ← That’s the body telling you: no, you’ve got to eat. The urge to drink when I’m highly caffeinated is more like the thought of how much fun I could have if I cheated–just this once–but then if that thought is followed up by: not gonna happen, then it pretty much becomes a settled matter, and then the urge just goes away. But hunger pangs don’t just go away even if you tell them: not gonna happen. And it’s not so much that this makes the urge to eater so much harder to resist–you can exercise the thought “not gonna happen” just as easily every time the urge to eat is felt, but since it happens so frequently and doesn’t shut up, that just increases the odds that you’ll slip one of those times. Not to mention the fact that if you know you’re gonna have to keep telling those urges to STFU, you kinda lose the will to try: it all of a sudden seems to make more sense to shut them up now so that you don’t have to deal with them for hours on end.
PERKS TO BEING ON A CAFFEINE ONLY DRUG DIET:
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Get a bit more work done, but not a hell of a lot. Unless you’ve become completely tolerant to caffeine, it has a tendency to boost your energy and your will power–if you channel all that energy and will power into getting things done, you can check off a lot of items on your todo list. Pot makes you lazy, not wanting to do anything except listen to music. Alcohol too, but for subtly different reasons, and the next day, you’re definitely not getting much done for obvious reasons. Ironically, I found that I get more sleep on this caffeine only diet. Yes, I still made Fridays my caffeine days which meant I was up 'til the wee hours of the morning, but I generally felt like going to bed around 1:00AM (usually doing work or posting on ILP until then), whereas my habit on Friday nights would usually consist of getting drunk (usually between 10 and 11 PM), then stoned (usually between midnight and 1), and then I wouldn’t be going to bed until 4:00AM. But of course, that comes at the cost of being super tired the next day and having to endure a hangover. Without the booz and drugs, I’m still tired the next day but it’s not nearly as bad.
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I save money. Booz are pretty expensive, obviously, especially if you get the urge to go out (which I do).
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Generally happy. Although I try to abstain from caffeine except on Fridays or Saturdays, sometimes I’ll cheat and have half a cup or a full cup of coffee (enough to get me by). Usually, these are on days when I’m tired and falling asleep at my desk at work. During the last two months, I’ve noticed that half a cup to a full cup is generally all I need to perk up my mood and get my brain going–I can think more clearly, I can talk more fluently, I’m a bit more sociable–but all without the caffeine buzz… essentially, feeling normal.
CONS:
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I still need the caffeine to feel like this. Without it, I’m still tired and cranky. This, of course, is the result of caffeine withdrawal, and I know from experience that I can get over it by abstaining for a good week or two. But given that these two months were an experiment in what life is like if limited only to my regular caffeine routine, I had to stick to the routine. So it was generally this: either drudge through fatigue and aching muscles or cheat a little by having 1/2 to 1 cup of coffee for the day.
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No alcohol buzz, no drug high… for obvious reasons.
Take home lesson: I could get used to this–wouldn’t be that bad a life–but I know that after 1 to 2 weeks of total caffeine abstinence, life could be a lot better. I know I’m going to miss the fun nights of subjecting myself to a drunken intoxicated stupor–I’ll miss those dearly–but I also have to remind myself that these come at a high cost: hangover next day, more fatigue, less work getting done, etc.–almost enough to make the whole thing not worth it. ← This is the part that I’m going to have to give special attention to. I will never be conditioned to give up the drugs by the negative consequences–the brain doesn’t work that way, it only works according to whatever is the most immediate consequence. I get caffeinated, drink booz, get stoned, and experience an immediate pay-off. I go to bed (finally) and wake up the next morning feeling like shit. But the pay-off is experienced first, so it takes priority in conditioning me. That’s why it’s going to require an extra bit of awareness, an extra bit of resolve, to remind myself that the negative consequences, though they come later, may outweigh the positive, and therefore what’s really the best thing for me, what I really want, even just from a utilitarian point of view, is to give up the immediate gratification so as to secure for myself more long-term benefits.
I really think it’s gonna have to be all or nothing. Even though I think I could get used to a life of tiny bits of caffeine every now and then (half a cup ever odd day, maybe the occasional full cup), I know myself: it will only lead to a slippery slope–maybe not right away but eventually–I’ll end up allowing myself those total caffeine buzz Fridays or Saturdays, and it won’t take long for that to become a habit, and then it’s just a matter of time before sliding down the next slipper slope–back into drugs and alcohol.
^ So none of that. It’s all or nothing for me. Summer of 2018, baby!