Let me preface this by saying that I have no idea how this happened. In my early 20s, I could drink five or more cups of coffee a day, no problem. I scoffed at the idea of decaf (“What’s the point if there’s no caffeine?”) and the best coffee alternatives were nowhere near my radar.
However, I soon noticed that each cup seemed to make me more anxious and less energetic, simultaneously. My nutritionist friend said it was probably “adrenal fatigue” (and that was vague enough for me to overlook — for a while) but if I was being honest with myself, there were tons of other reasons coffee didn’t sit well with me: rapid heart rate, digestive issues, this annoying twinge of back pain every time I had a sip…
So last year, I decided to finally make a change. To decaf. It worked for a bit, but after a few months, the symptoms were back — not as bad, but still enough to disrupt my day. That’s when I realized I had to cut out caffeine altogether, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
