What quitting coffee taught me about God

A brief thought as we approach Lent

I have never understood people who make drinking coffee their personality.

I only began drinking coffee regularly when I got married, so I had the perspective of an adult convert. And to an outsider, the coffee cult is a little strange.

It is the only substance that people brag about being addicted to. Ninety-one percent of adults consume caffeine daily, but everyone acts like their coffee habit is super unique and says a lot about them. Unlike alcohol, consuming large doses only increases your acuity and generally has minimal side effects, yet you will often encounter braggadocious coffee drinkers telling you, “You don’t even want to see all the Celsius in my mini fridge right now,” or “I just wish I could hook up a coffee IV.”

To the person considering an IV, I would politely inquire, “Have you heard of Vyvanse? Ritalin? Zyn?” If your entire personality is consuming stimulants, why stop at coffee?

Not only do people brag about their addiction, they blame everything on it too. Grumpy in the morning? “Don’t talk to me til I’ve had my coffee.” That 10am email riddled with typos? “Oops! Guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet!” 3pm and you waddle over to the break room after scrolling reels for the last hour? “Man, just one of those days!” you shout to no one in particular.

A bumper sticker with an EKG and a coffee cup, a license plate about coffee with a border that says “coffee” three times. This is a real photo.

Of course, the intolerable coffee drinker I’m describing above was me. I was making about five trips to the break room during my first hour in the office, and I had the internal chatter of an addict: When can I get my first cup? When will it kick in? Should I have another (just this one time)? Maybe I need a lion’s mane, nicotine, caffeine focus stack…

I didn’t realize how out of control my habit was getting, but as I was chatting with a spiritually wise friend one day, I casually mentioned my “coffee addiction.” She did not find my joke funny. Sensing this disconnect, I offered, “Maybe I should do something about it,” and she said I clearly should. So I gave myself a week of tapering before going cold turkey, and after two weeks of lethargy and brain fog, I was back.

I want to be clear that I’m not going to tell you that you need to quit coffee. Most people can enjoy coffee like a normal person, and all the holiest people I know drink coffee. Also, even the videos titled “95% OF PEOPLE MAKE THIS HUGE MISTAKE EVERY MORNING” aren’t really anti-coffee. They’re usually trying to sell you some more elaborate regimen that’ll work even better than a cup of joe.

MUD/WTR has only 45mg of caffeine but 2,250mg of mushrooms. which gives you all the zen with none of the jitters (apparently). Neutonic has a “researched-backed blend of nootropic ingredients” like Cognizin, Rhodiola Rosea, L-Theanine, Panax Ginseng, and B Vitamins, which is specially designed for people who are working on an important project and “need it to be great”—or even people whose “work is directly tied to how well you can perform on a daily basis” (if you can imagine).

The MUD/WTR progression. Spontaneous Painting is the ultimate sign your drug works.

Caffeine clearly enhances your cognitive and physical performance, and perhaps MUD/WTR or some Huberman protocol is the perfect morning routine. But clearly my friend was more worried for my soul than my productivity, and that’s what’s surprised me most about quitting.

Of course, cutting out caffeine has all the obvious youth group talking points. Instead of waking up and immediately thinking about where you’ll get your first cup, you can think about other things (like God). When you’re flagging at 10am, instead of dreaming about an emergency cup of espresso, you can lean on His strength. Rather than a coffee freak, you can be a Jesus freak.

That’s all true enough but not the whole story.

When I joined the Orthodox Church a few years ago, I was surprised that their fasting guidelines were dietary and universal. With some exceptions, the entire congregation was expected to abstain from meat and dairy during fasting seasons. At first, this struck me as horribly insufficient to my level of spiritual maturity and uniqueness.

Shouldn’t I be fasting from the Pat McAfee Show or DJ Khaled or Instagram or something?

Over time, I found that it’s nice to fast as a community, but also, it’s surprising how many of your problems can be solved obliquely. The promise of a therapy culture like ours is that every problem must be diagnosed because once it is diagnosed it can be contained and then solved. People are desperate for a label in part because it gives them control and a clear path forward.

I have OCD, so I need to start CBT to combat my intrusive thoughts.

I have Problematic Internet Use, so I need to buy a Brick to curb my screen time.

I have Emotionally Immature Parents who left me Anxiously Attached, so I need to Set Boundaries.

Abstaining from steak and eggs doesn’t fit into this paradigm. I don’t have a Huevos Rancheros complex. But taming the bodily passions works on a deeper level. Getting off caffeine had the predictable result of making me feel more even-keeled throughout the day and sleeping deeper, but it also reminded me of a conversation I had with the author Sister Anastasia last year.

After years in occult communities, Sr. Anastasia eventually became an Orthodox nun, and she writes in You Are Mine about the similarities between her past life and life online: “The structure of social media in my life was like a carbon copy of the ego bolstering, sensory simulation of the spirit world.”

Both made her feel powerful and important, and she found her restless seeking for stimulation—“too much sugar, YouTube, and mindless website scrolling”—was displacing Christ’s place as the source of her life and energy. She said those activities couldn’t help but have a spiritual dimension.

In the same way, stripping away caffeine reveals physical deficiencies you’d previously covered over—poor sleep, poor nutrition, poor recovery—and it reveals spiritual deficiencies as well. Instead of chalking my irritability up to my caffeine dose, I had to admit that I can be irritable and forgetful all by myself.

Of course, we intuitively know that our mind, body, and spirit are connected, and many churches recognize this through kneeling for communion or standing for the Gospel reading. But I for one don’t like the idea that I’ll give up coffee and yogurt and chicken and somehow that will work toward my salvation. It seems so anticlimactic, so indirect, so non-agentic.

I’d much prefer dramatic and twisted problems that require a clinical psychologist to diagnose and can only be solved with quantities of medicine typically reserved for horses. It’s embarrassing how mundane and banal my problems are and thus how mundane and banal the solutions are too.

I feel a kinship with St. Peter, who told our Lord that he would sooner die than disown him, yet that very night he denied Jesus three times. I too imagine myself capable of extreme piety, yet I find I am often defeated by rice, beans, and decaf coffee.

I thank God for St. Peter’s witness, who went on lead the church and die for the faith. I thank God for confession and repentance to set me right when I spin out embarrassingly and predictably. And I thank God that after the Lenten Fast, we will all rejoice and say, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”