Not An Addict

I'm pretty sure I started "stealing" my mother's coffee around the age of 8...possibly earlier but I have vivid memories of pouring milk and sugar into her extra black coffee when she went off to work. I even figured out how to turn the burner back on to heat it up. Yep...pretty young. (By the way, that warning that coffee can stunt your growth- I'm not sure I buy it since I'm a healthy 5 foot 7 and 3/4 inches tall.)

I worked at a coffee shop in college--both on campus as a volunteer for the chapel coffee shop and for pay off campus. I won several coffee makers over the course of college and grad school (no seriously, WON coffee makers...several types including a $700 espresso maker from Starbucks). In the past few months I have been sent a free Keurig Vue plus tons of Vue-packs and an additional package of coffee pods to try and review.

So yeah- my life has been intertwined with coffee for a long, long time. And every time I try to give it up it comes after me, literally...free coffee is thrown at me!

In 2009 my friend Sheree Clark of Fork in the Road told me to get off coffee. I tried a few things like Yerba Mate and Teachino but nothing seemed as indulgent as my daily cup. In 2011 my husband and I agreed to add one healthy thing or subtract one unhealthy thing from our lives each month. In January of 2012 we started green smoothies/juices every morning (that is going strong, BTW). In February we dropped our meat consumption from 4-5 times a week to purchasing no more than 3 servings of meat per week and dividing those up to fulfill meals for 7 days (breakfast, lunch and dinner). In March we dropped our cheese consumption down by half. In April we started the long and daunting task of ridding ourselves of coffee. (About 3 weeks into it, I was sent the Keurig Vue to share with my friends...and boy did they send a LOT of coffee). Here it is the second week of July and we are just finally putting this "monthly" goal to bed.

Why give up coffee? Well, originally we just wanted to cut back to a normal sized cup per day but the more negative effects we felt of going without coffee the more we realized how bad for us it was! If *not* having something makes us feel so awful- how can it actually be good for us? It just can't. I know that coffee is said to contain more antioxidants than any other "food" but.... there are plenty of people who don't drink coffee so I don't believe it is a necessity.

My head hurts. I can't keep my eyes open. I want to stab everything that makes a loud noise (and yes, that includes my children). I am a very, very ugly monster right now. I'm looking forward to the end of this bender. No matter the minor health benefits of drinking coffee....drinking it daily is NOT healthy. I don't care what expert tries to sell you otherwise. Nothing that is that healthy or good for you makes you feel like this when you stop drinking it. NOTHING!