Drinking naturally decaf coffee for 1 week straight

Ever since I was little, I watch my mom get migraines from NOT having her coffee. So it has stuck to me that caffeine is addictive, and has a drug-like effect but it somehow is not being banned by the government like an actual drug.

I never did well with it. The first time I drank it, I pulpitated.

Until now actually, but only when the beans are strong.

I somehow like the feeling because I felt I was struggling but I wasn't dying?

I just discovered coffee

Then I discovered milk tea, just like any other Asian... and bobas.

I don't like the after-taste of sugar, so eventually my milk tea with bobas became 0% sugar milk tea, which became 0% sugar plain tea with grass jelly.

Part of it wasn't the taste at all, it was that I notice I was more productive when I drink it at night. I can stay up longer than usual (it was only later on that I found out the tea had caffeine).

And I'm lucky to have not used caffeine at all when I was in college.

Who knows where I will be now? Doing actual drugs for dopamine!?

Okay, that's just my fear talking..

Anyways, about May last year I started to do the anti-candida diet, which removed all sugar, milk, gluten from my diet for about 6 weeks.

After that, my palette changed. I didn't like the taste of milk tea anymore, I was just not as excited as before.

But lo and behold, I started to like the bitterness and smell of coffee.

I tried all the types because I wasn't familiar - latte, cappucino, americano, macchiato - and settled on Iced Lattes eventually.

I still try to reduce my consumption to:

• only when I'm working,
• and, 1 cup a day max, no limit on the size

...because I can feel.. that it's worse than tea.

Just personally I think it is because of it's effects on me. I cannot find any non-biased comparisons about it on Google.

There's an epidemic of GERD (acidity)

I've met up with some friends after pandemic and a lot of them told me their health was not the same.

They were having GERD issues wherein a slight mistake of eating something wrong would result to either a week's diarrhea or stomach pains.

Some of them cannot eat bread, spicy foods or gluten anymore. And one of the common routinary things that they did before was drinking lots of coffee like to the tune of 4-6 cups a day.

They have stopped drinking coffee now, along with other types of foods.

...and yes, they took the vaccines, some even had 1-2 boosters. *wink

Bad effects of caffeine on me

Luckily, given my controlled coffee intake, I've only experienced acidity around once in 2 months. But that's still not good enough for me.

Another thing I didn't like was my constant need to pee. Just a sip would send me to the toilet after a few minutes.

So with a cup of coffee, I had to go to the toilet 4-6 times.

Sometimes I would also feel slightly annoyed at random things, more annoyed than usual. And more impatient too.. like a jittery feeling that things are not as instant as I want them to be.

I've talked to a lot of people who drink coffee and they all feel these.

But regardless of these "negative" side effects, somehow every morning when I wake up, I still feel excited about the idea of buying my cup of coffee.

I still look forward to it the whole day. Is this what addiction feels like?

I feel like I have control over my emotions, but I really don't?

Finding decaf

Sometimes I'd convince myself to try the decaf, but whenever I do, I still feel a bit jittery. So the caffeine is not entirely gone.

I read that the regular coffee is still better than decaf, health-wise because decafs undergo more processes and most often times, they need to use chemicals to get that caffeine out.

But there's this method called Mountain Water method where the caffeine is just washed away, no chemicals were used.

And luckily, people are as conscious as me in the UK.

According to an article in Telegraph about decaf, "Costa coffee uses the Mexican Mountain Water process, similar to the Swiss Water® method, while Caffè Nero uses CO2."

Luckily I have Caffe Nero near by that I go to very often so I had to try.

Decaf for a week, what happened

First time, I felt nothing ~

• didn't need to pee for 4 hours (good thing because there was no toilet)
• no irritation
• no jittery (even though other decafs led me to jitters)
• best of all, nothing annoys me

Then after a week, I noticed something..

• coffee tasted like a hot chocolate drink
• It wasn't the first thing on my mind when I wake up (the opposite of addiction!?)
• I didn't feel like I wanted to drink coffee

I think it's a good thing! With just a week of this CO2 decaf.

Now I'm thinking of buying some for my mom and see what happens.