Cutting out coffee

Every summer, I try to cut back on my caffeine. When I don't have to work at 7 in the morning, suddenly going without coffee seems like a much less onerous task. I can enjoy a cup of tea, or just have water or orange juice in the morning, and I can still get through my much simpler day. I have never set it a goal to give up coffee entirely, as it is something I really enjoy, but I don't make a pot of coffee every morning and guzzle it by 9. I maybe make a cup in the afternoon and sit on the porch and enjoy it while reading a good book (a perfect afternoon if you ask me). I might go out with friends to a coffee shop at night and get a cup of coffee (definitely worth the price for the time out - I just try to avoid the fruity mocha-latte-double-espresso nonsense that racks up the cost and the calories).

Doing this allows me to kind of give my body a rest from the stress put on it by drinking so much caffeine and helps me to really get a feel for what my body needs in terms of food and sleep. It does save me money, I've noticed, as I glance at the can of coffee in my cabinet which is still almost full, and when I do drink coffee I can drink higher quality coffee and really appreciate it because I don't drink it often enought for the cost to be prohibitive. It also helps me to readujust to the effects of caffeine; by the end of the school year, I'm slurping 4-5 cups of coffee a day just to ward off exhaustion, and hardly feeling the results. After a light summer, when I start again in the fall, a cup of coffee really does the trick.

But this summer I've had the hardest time cutting out coffee. I don't know if it was because I had such a difficult end of the year, because I'm getting older, or simply because I had tipped my caffeine levels over the top, but I had the worst headaches and cravings. Because of this and the health worries it brought up for me, for the first time, I really felt the need to completely cut out caffeinated coffee, for at least short detox periods, instead of just to cut back.

Here are some of the strategies I've been enacting:

1. Drink more water. A lot of times my exhaustion is caused by dehydration, and when I try to fix the exhaustion with dehydrating coffee, I make it worse. The key here is to fix the problem while replacing the coffee habit with a water habit.

2. Switch to tea, then to herbal tea. I can assuage some of my caffeine cravings with a cup of green tea. If the inclination is not as strong then I have a cup of herbal tea, enjoying the experience of tea without the buzz.

3. Decaf coffee. For the first time, I've started getting decaf coffee when I go out with my friends at night. I really do like it almost as much as coffee, and there's no reason for me to be drinking caffeine at night. I'm trying to get my sleep schedule back on kilter here and rest up for the coming year.

4. Indulge. While I am consciously letting my body go through periods of detox, I am still enjoying a good cup of high quality coffee from time to time. When I simply forbid the coffee, I find myself stopping at coffee shops on my way places because I so desperately need the buzz - this definitely does NOT save me money, nor does it help my health. Rather, I keep some quality ground coffee in the apartment and every so often (not so often now), I brew up a cup in the afternoon and enjoy that perfect afternoon on the porch. Coffee should be something I associate with that one, relaxing cup that I enjoy as a treat, not with a giant paper cup that I am slurping down because I need it to survive.

How to Oversleep

If I am expert at any one thing, I would have to say it is how to oversleep.

Oversleeping can take many forms. During the school year, when I have to be up for work at a given time every morning, I perfect the art of the snooze and dash. While it may be difficult to master, it is in essence a very simple thing. It involves setting an alarm clock then –here’s the delicate part – when the morning comes, hitting the snooze button. Repeatedly. You must hit the snooze button every five minutes (or seven, or whatever interval your particular alarm clock designates) until finally you hit the exact last moment you could possibly wake up and still get to work. You then must sit bolt upright in bed, hop out of bed, and move with the speed of a comic book hero through your entire morning routine, in an sort of unconscious flurry which provides a frightening fluidity, until you find yourself in your car.

My record was 10 minutes, from bed to door, fully dressed with book bag and full coffee cup in hand.

In the summer, oversleeping takes a different form for me. In the summer, you see, there is no moment of panic. There’s no dash. It’s just a slow realization that, even though I once again set an alarm for 9 in the hopes of having a full and productive day, it’s 10:45 and I should probably get up.

So how do I accomplish these overwhelming feats of oversleeping? Here are some simple tips to help you accomplish it every time.

1. Stay up as late as possible. When I have to wake up at 6, 12 will do the trick. 1 is better. If you have trouble staying up this late, consider the use of caffeine at night or intense aerobic exercise after dinner.

2. Make your bed as comfortable as possible and the rest of your home as uncomfortable as possible. There’s nothing like waking up in a frigid room to make you want to stay in bed for just a few more minutes.

3. Cultivate a snooze habit. This is the big one. If you start by letting yourself snooze the alarm (just once . . okay, maybe once more), then you will absolutely find yourself snoozing again the next day. Pretty soon you will be able to hit snooze without even knowing you’re doing it, and then you will guarantee that you will oversleep.

4. Set your alarm much much earlier than you really need to get up. If you have to get out the door by 6:30, and know that it takes you about half an hour to eat breakfast and get ready for work, then set your alarm no later than 5:15. It will give you that extra urge to hit snooze the first few times, and once you get past those first few, it’s a breeze to keep doing it.

5. Do something you dislike or dread first thing in the morning. Avoid anything pleasant or worth looking forward to at least until after lunch.

6. Keep all light out of your bedroom. Make sure that when you wake up at 8 in the morning, your room looks exactly like what it would look like if you accidentally woke up at 4 in the morning.

7. Make sure your spouse is a comrade in arms on this one. Nothing will keep you from enjoying a good oversleeping than a significant other forcibly pushing you out of bed and saying “no really, get up!” You should instead advise the party in question to encourage you to cuddle when your alarm goes off.

I suppose if, for some reason, you didn’t want to oversleep in the morning, you could reverse these tips, but why would anyone want to do that?