I’m not a woman with many vices.
I don’t eat much sugar, I stay away from alcohol, and I’m not big into drugs (until I can get my hands on some psychedelics someday). You could say I’m boring…and you would be correct. I’m pretty basic with basic needs. I want comforting episodes of the office, extremely fluffy blankets, I want my daily workout, and I want clear skin. So when I started the Bean Protocol back in May in hopes of fixing my gut issues and forever killing my acne, one of the hardest parts of the protocol was finding out that I would have to give up caffeine. Caffeine isn’t just a comforting cup of liquid, but it’s the ONE “vice” that I was able to enjoy every single day without feeling like it was a vice.
Our American society is now filled with coffee shops on every corner. Our days REVOLVE around coffee. It’s the first thing we drink in the morning, we meet friends for coffee, we work from coffee shops, we have coffee runs to break up our days, we drink coffee for an afternoon boost of energy. As Dani Rojas from Ted Lasso would say, “Coffee (football, as he puts it) is LIFE.” We work our asses off every day, all day, and I would say that it’s partly due to the boost of caffeine we consume at all hours of the day. And since it’s so widely accepted as part of our culture, kids are drinking coffee in high school these days. I remember tasting my mother’s coffee in high school and immediately vomiting in my mouth. But these days you can get double whipped, 6 pumps, upside down, blended, sugar free, extra sugar, whipped cream on top…coffee…so middle school kids will soon be drinking it, too. Maybe they already are? Man, middle school sucks ass, coffee would have probably made it a little better.
But fuck, when I cut out coffee cold turkey on a Saturday, I thought my life was over by Sunday. I had ZERO idea how addicted I was to coffee. Zero. I normally drank 1-2 coffees a day and sometimes I would only drink 1/2 a cup, so I thought dropping caffeine would be no problem. But it was one hell of a problem. I immediately had a massive headache 24 hours after cutting it out and this headache lasted for days. And since I’m a person who rarely ever gets headaches, this was quite mind-boggling. Plus, I was doing a liver detox at the same time with the Bean Protocol, so I was experiencing FULL BODY ACHES along with my headache.
