Life without caffeine
It is now about a year since I became caffeine free, so this is all about how I am one year on.
It’s a pain in the neck, at times.
I wish I could say that it has been plain sailing all the time but it hasn’t. Here’s why:
Every now and again I’ll end up drinking a tea or coffee WITH caffeine in. Sometimes this is to be polite and not to offend someone who has kindly brought a lovely cup of tea for me. Sometimes it’s been through no alternative or just a plain mistake. Then I am aware of the caffeine’s effect on me and my urge to use the toilet, almost as if I have become super-sensitive.
Second reason is that there seems such a limited amount of decent decaffeinated tea and coffee around. This surprised me. For every ten different kinds of coffees or teas, you might have just one which is decaffeinated. There are a few coffees around which are okay and by that I’m talking ground coffee, not any kind of instant coffee (which I have avoided like the plague for many years now).
Having tried every kind of easily available decaffeinated tea, the one I HATE the most is Tetley. It is cheap, nasty and barely tastes of tea. The one I like the best is Marks & Spencer Everyday Decaffeinated Tea, sold as tea bags, which is fine. It’s not too expensive at all and rates alongside any other nice cuppa very well. Perhaps I ought to do some proper reviews? I could even ask for a few samples!
Costa okay, Table Table very poor
The third area of difficulty is when I go into a cafe and ask for a decaffeinated coffee. Some, like Costa, say “Sure, no problem” and open an individual sachet of ground coffee and run it through their machine as normal. I take it as an Americano, with or without milk.
Other places such as Table Table (like Costa it’s owned by the Whitbread Group here in Dunstable) can only supply decaf made from Kenco instant coffee. Not only is this foul coffee but they charge normal ground coffee prices. This means almost three quid for a cup of inferior instant coffee. Table Table you have this seriously wrong and, quite frankly, you should take a good look at your practice and that of your staff who couldn’t care less.
Health
Well at least I can take some comfort that I’m doing the healthy thing through avoiding caffeine, despite the occasional difficulty. My blood pressure remains normal and I’m avoiding a drug which has emerged as being more potent than I realised. Avoiding caffeine isn’t going to do me any harm, it is probably going to benefit me in the long run.
I actually don’t miss the caffeine kick at all. A nice tea or coffee which is caffeine-free tastes just as good and I couldn’t tell the difference as I drunk it.
In terms of withdrawing from caffeine, there is no doubt it is a drug which most people are addicted to. As mentioned, it is actually a surprisingly powerful drug and the caffeine effect lasts for, I reckon, around 9 hours. However, it was only a few days of feeling a bit of a headache and the feeling of something “missing”. It soon passed.
Some all in all, not too bad but not plain sailing. Still worth giving up caffeine though.
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