I quit coffee in 2025.

So far I’ve kept the commitment, this second day of the new year. Yesterday I was out with friends, before I’d even made this commitment, and they ordered decaffeinated coffee. I followed suit. That 5pm cafe solo tasted great and I slept well last night.

This is going to be easy.

I’m also no rookie in this matter. In 2023 I embarked on a decaf-only experiment that went on for 12 days. I was sober from the mind-enhancing, heart-pounding drug and looking back, I think I felt like I had more free will. Thankfully I recorded a video on day 13 of myself drinking my first cup of normal coffee again, because I can see differences in that version of myself. Unfortunately, I drank on day 13 and almost every single day after that.

Coffee is a drug. There’s no debate around that, even among coffee drinkers. You know you’re an addict when you start worrying about running low on beans or capsules or granules or whatever choice form you consume this stuff in at home.

But nobody quits coffee just because it’s a drug, right? That’s just the cover story, the one that makes you look like a hero who recognised a hazard and eliminated it.

Why am I quitting coffee in 2025? Here, wait a minute, I’ll fetch my journal and quote from it:

The default state of mind should be nothingness, not scheming or problem-finding or dreaming. Nothingness in the mind is bliss, because you can go in any direction of your choosing.

I’m convinced that what I wrote is true. I’m fairly confident someone somewhere, maybe a guru, has coined a term for this nothingness. A state of no-mind or something. I like nothingness better. Nothingness in the mind is the prerequisite for presence.

Coffee contains caffeine and caffeine robs us of the chance of having nothing in the mind. We don’t stand a chance to be at peace with that stuff in our pulse.

So, for 2025, I’m officially committing to not drinking regular coffee. I will allow decaf as a crutch (even though I know that possibly no decaf beans taste like their pre-decaf selves). This is a bit of a bummer because on the last day of 2024 I’d spent 4.50 euros in a supermarket on a pack of 18 Pocket Coffee and got quit excited to try them for the first time. Guess I’ll give it away.

If I manage to go through the year without coffee, I will worship myself as a god, a fixer, someone who makes his own destiny. Somehow I already know I’m going to do it.