Decaffeinated: experiencing the effects of caffeine by its abstinence

“I don’t believe in caffeine!” I found myself repeating that sentence more than once, while hearing colleagues or friends talking and debating about the effects that caffeine has on them.

It is said that caffeine gives addiction, that, in a moderate dosage, it can help the humor and increase the alertness; people drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages when they feel drowsy or when they need to stay up, many affirm that they cannot work or study if they don’t have coffee.

Many coffee or tea drinkers have a, more or less, strict drinking schedule: there is who drinks no more than three cups per day, who cannot have a coffee after six p.m. or he won’t sleep for the whole night (then I ask what is the difference between 5.55 and 6 …) and there are the more rigorous they have a coffee at nine a.m. and one at three p.m., and there are those that fear caffeine more than a plague. That is real addiction!

Conspiracy theorists are sure that companies that produce food or drinks sneak caffeine in their products to leverage the addictive effect and increase their sales.

I drink coffee every day from twenty years or more, I don’t have any regular drinking pattern, I may drink one coffee a day and ten the day next or maybe none. As far I remember I never experienced the effect of assuming caffeine or of the abstinence from it.  I drink coffee because I like it (this really sounds like a catch phrase of any drug addicted), for its flavor and taste, not for the caffeine: I tried other caffeinated beverages (soda or energy drink) while not having coffee, I found all of them simply disgusting.

Is it true? Or it is a so deep addiction that I don’t see reality? I want to discover it, so I’m trying this simple experiment: I won’t have any coffee or other aliment containing caffeine, including anything with cocoa or chocolate, for two weeks; every day I will write take a note on my status, including the humor, the level of concentration or any other symptoms of the abstinence such as headache. Since “a picture speaks a thousand words” I will take a picture of me every day to see if there is any visible difference.

I will write a full report at the end of the experiment, I may also publish some updates every once in a while.

Stay tuned for any further update. No song is more appropriate that the following: