What a monumental effort, an amazing journey of self-discovery to go with no coffee for twelve days. The title says twelve days, but by the time of writing this, fourteen days was the real duration. There has been suffering and addiction in my life; talk about understatements! After twelve years or so of two packs a day smoking, the fear of death jolted me into a cold turkey effort to quit smoking and I did. And drastically up went my weight, quickly.
With panic attacks conceived of erroneously as having a heart attack, I found quitting smoking not so difficult. Fear, rather terror, is a great motivator to quitting something, though perhaps not without consequence. Alcoholism. After fifteen years of heavy-duty alcoholism, with years of psychotherapy from a patient-therapist, I found the strength to quit drinking. With that avenue of sedation withdrawn from my arsenal of sedative choices.
Now coffee, my daily, mostly un-noticed craved addiction has been with me for I don’t even know how many decades. I am in my sixties now and started coffee when I was, what, sixteen? So, around forty-five years hooked on coffee, and not considering it an addiction, yet it truly is or can be. Everything soothing can be an ‘addiction’ to one with an addictive personality and an anxiety monster to soothe. Caffeine can be addictive, and I know coffee is a strong, and relied upon stimulant, a crutch. There was an enormous effort required in putting down the cup along with needing to tell myself it was the ‘source’ of high levels of psychic pain and dysfunction.
I have periodic panic attacks and am subject to bouts of major depression of varying durations along with other problems and ‘traits’ that have today come to be known as symptoms of the condition called C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), or DTD (Developmental Trauma Disorder).
Four decades on a drug and you lose perspective of what is causing what and/or what is helping what
The problem is, after twelve days of no coffee, it became clear to me that my anxiety problems were not caused by the coffee but were a part and parcel of my condition, C-PTSD. So long have I been on coffee that I truly wasn’t sure of this, or at least needed to re-verify to me the out-of-control nature of this psycho-emotional and dissociative condition.
Four decades on a drug and you lose perspective of what is causing what and/or what is helping what. After two weeks now without the drug of caffeine so horribly and unknowingly depended upon, my state of consciousness is a more intense ‘pureness’ of symptom experience that left me longing for, no, actually ‘needing’ the coffee to find an equilibrium. I was just too miserable without it. Like an alcoholic experiencing the pain of detoxing from alcohol cessation? No, but a psychological addiction can be enormously powerful in its clutches on your behavior… clearly, I wasn’t ready to let go of that crutch, well, not completely.
As one who suffers from depression, coffee seems to bolster my body’s ability to tolerate the un-soothed psychic reactions to the disease I suffer. Without the coffee, the last ingested defense against anxiety is food, and I am already nearing seventy pounds overweight. “See the correlation between anxiety and obesity?” Perhaps this paper should have been titled “An Addictive Personality.” But it is not my fault, certainly not something I can just decide at any moment to stop obsessively indulging in sedating activities, like sex, food, coffee, drugs, alcohol, smoking… the list is endless. If it soothes and is available, it is used. Is sex addiction real? It is an activity that is soothing, ritualistic, and “distracting” from the moment, and like anything soothing to the spirit it can be used obsessively.
So, for an addictive personality, yes it can be ‘used’ as a method of soothing, addictively. Just thought I would put my two cents in on that controversy. As for sex having a chemical substance that leaves a person physiologically hooked, where you must have more and cannot control the chemistry involved, no. But sex addiction certainly does show the power of a psychological addiction. So, I guess yes, and no, is the answer from me.
For me, at this moment in time, to quit comfort-eating to soothe C-PTSD symptoms would be intolerable, and so it was with ‘complete’ cessation of coffee. Caffeine seems a drug that if ‘needed’ to be stopped, needs to be something one is weaned off. For one who tends to indulge ‘obsessively’ in all things that soothe the unbearable beast of anxiety, the act of bringing some control over an out-of-control indulgence… is a victory. “In all things, moderation,” was the statement and conclusion of the Buddha. Since coffee is a stimulant, it only makes sense that taken in too large a quantity it can exacerbate anxiety, but curiously, I found that coffee also soothes the edges of depression… in moderation.
So, that is my experience of the Twelve Days Without Coffee. It sure beats the hell out of using opiates or other soothing disastrous ingestions one could take. One cannot stop abruptly a source of needed comfort without replacing it with ‘something’ else that helps calm the beast. “The beast just can’t be handled, man.” So, says ‘The Dude.’ All hail the dude. Well, excellent, funny movie anyway, “The Big Lebowski.”
Above was to be the end of this experiment, and my thoughts on going without coffee. Having talked of an obsessive-compulsive character trait of ‘overindulgence’ of soothing, distracting substances, coffee. My second cup of the day after finishing the writing above, the first cup had relieved the distress of feeling so very out of sorts without coffee, and yes, the twelve days later. But simply starting into that hungered-for-second cup, I just don’t know what is up with me. It feels almost as if a reaction now to a brain injury I have, being activated, the remembrance of which is now dawning upon me. (Too much chronic binge drinking… seriously. Be aware and warned: long-term daily binge drinking can permanently damage your brain.) One of the reasons I had thought and experimented with quitting coffee was to see if the brain damage was being activated by the caffeine. Such a toxic sense of cloudy-headedness and distress at times. Nah, it is probably just Complex PTSD symptoms.
This is such a conflicting situation. No coffee and I am so out of sorts with craving it, I did not want to endure any longer without it. And now with too much, I feel like I have awoken a ‘different’ sleeping giant from the extreme dysregulated symptoms of C-PTSD. A cloudy-headedness that begs me to stop the coffee, which is in distinct contrast to my overriding addiction telling me to keep imbibing and you will conquer the moment with an ingested distraction, in the moment. It is always about the moment in life, isn’t it? There is no other time which we live in, only the present moment. The goal it seems, to the beast soother, is to bring comfort to the moment, ignoring the long-term goal of extinguishing ‘another’ crutch. At some points, I strive to walk without any crutches. Somewhere in there is a choice hiding, but I don’t see it at the moment… yet, at least with regards to coffee. Just keeping it honest.
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My name is Jesse Donahue. In 2015, at the age of 58, I took up writing, and since then I’ve written two novels, poems, and essays about my journey struggling with CPTSD. The essays, 50+, were an adjunct to journaling in therapy to amplify my learning and self-understanding.
My writings, which include therapy notes, poems, novels, and essays, are a part of my ongoing personal therapy. Many of my essays are in a stream-of-consciousness style, unleashing, sharing, and delving into energies that continuously process in my subconscious. My writings were initially geared for me and my therapist’s eyes only. I began by exposing my thoughts and feelings on paper. Then, via personal choice, shared them here with the readers. My essays develop from my weekly therapy notes. My intent and desire are to encourage readers to recognize traits in themselves and see a therapist. If you are in therapy, ask your therapist to read them and discuss what pertains to you. It can be a long and difficult process over extensive periods to awaken the unconscious issues that have us acting out in life. Our behavior can seem like dancing to a buried energy that we are not able to directly confront. Hopefully, my insights will assist the reader in a faster process toward reaching a deeper self-understanding. Bringing the unconscious out into the light of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance fosters self-love and the process of change.
My published writings with the CPTSD foundation: *The Hidden Bugaboo. The Beganning. Twelve Days Without Coffee. Learned Helplessness. Cast Out of Eden by Toxic Shame. The Crumbs and The Banquet. What an Outside Appearance may Not Show. Obedience to the Light – Bombs or Love. Stepping Into the Shoes of Who You Are. Personal Honor, Integrity, Dignity, Honesty. Inspirational Tugging – Teachers. Codependency – Overriding the Monster of Self Hate.
