Cacao Buzz
Just over a month ago, I gave up coffee and all forms of caffeine. This is something I'm accustomed to doing on the regular. Caffeine is a socially acceptable and pervasive psychoactive substance, but every few months I dry myself out for a week or two, just to recalibrate to the baseline mental state, before I start having my two or three cups of strong brew per day.
I had a lot going on in my life for close to a year prior to pandemic, so there really wasn't a "good" time to face the detox symptoms. Once shelter-in-place hit all of us, I was at a point where coffee was my only vice, and in many ways the only guilty pleasure I was allowing myself. In the face of social isolation, it wasn't the right time to face the Great Withdrawal.
So giving it up, and facing the headaches and lethargy, were a long time coming. It was a fairly brutal and unproductive week, by first-world standards, but it's been a monkey that I'm happy to have off of my back. The behaviorists believe that old behaviors can be removed from your life if you come up with replacement behaviors. You can't just go cold turkey on what you used to do; you have to find something else that fills the same need as the old action.
Someone turned me on to a coffee alternative called Rasa early last year, which is a brewed drink of herbs that frames itself as part of an Ayurveda regimen. Ayurveda, which I do not know much about or understand, is similar to Yoga in that it originates from the East, but is meant to work on your digestive system or mood, instead of your muscles.
I found Rasa to be a great complement to coffee, instead of a replacement. I would still have my daily cup o' joe, and then chase it with the herbal steepings of Rasa. Over the course of the past year, however, I have slowly lost the taste for it, which might or might not have something to do with the fact that the price of a bag had nearly doubled since I started drinking it.
For a time, I tried mixing 100% Cacao powder into hot water, which is something of a hot cocoa that doesn't contain any sugar. (Sugar, especially refined, is something that I try to keep entirely out of my diet for mood and health reasons.) I found that I enjoyed this drink tremendously; I wound down in the evenings with a mug or two of it. Despite this, it wasn't something that would kickstart my day in quite the same way as coffee.
I ventured to try something called "Crio Bru", which is essentially roasted and ground cacao beans that come with various flavorings. (This is not a sponsored post, so no affiliate links; Google it if you're curious. Apropos of nothing, the company happens to be based in Santa Barbara, a community with which I have a long and storied history.) I brew this like coffee in a French press, and it has hit the spot for a replacement behavior perfectly. It satiates the morning coffee ritual that I have to do in the morning to properly start my day, mentally speaking, and it's something I look forward to drinking throughout the day.
I brew it a lot weaker than the instructions say, and it ends up tasting like sugarless, watery hot chocolate. This is perfect to my taste and is less dehydrating than coffee. It also contains theobromine, which is the neurotoxic compound that is widely known for being toxic to cats and dogs. I'm currently trying to see what happens first: will I hit the lethal dose of theobromine for human beings or will my kidneys shut down due to overhydration? It's a fun pandemic experiment that animates my workdays.
I had a lot going on in my life for close to a year prior to pandemic, so there really wasn't a "good" time to face the detox symptoms. Once shelter-in-place hit all of us, I was at a point where coffee was my only vice, and in many ways the only guilty pleasure I was allowing myself. In the face of social isolation, it wasn't the right time to face the Great Withdrawal.
So giving it up, and facing the headaches and lethargy, were a long time coming. It was a fairly brutal and unproductive week, by first-world standards, but it's been a monkey that I'm happy to have off of my back. The behaviorists believe that old behaviors can be removed from your life if you come up with replacement behaviors. You can't just go cold turkey on what you used to do; you have to find something else that fills the same need as the old action.
Someone turned me on to a coffee alternative called Rasa early last year, which is a brewed drink of herbs that frames itself as part of an Ayurveda regimen. Ayurveda, which I do not know much about or understand, is similar to Yoga in that it originates from the East, but is meant to work on your digestive system or mood, instead of your muscles.
I found Rasa to be a great complement to coffee, instead of a replacement. I would still have my daily cup o' joe, and then chase it with the herbal steepings of Rasa. Over the course of the past year, however, I have slowly lost the taste for it, which might or might not have something to do with the fact that the price of a bag had nearly doubled since I started drinking it.
For a time, I tried mixing 100% Cacao powder into hot water, which is something of a hot cocoa that doesn't contain any sugar. (Sugar, especially refined, is something that I try to keep entirely out of my diet for mood and health reasons.) I found that I enjoyed this drink tremendously; I wound down in the evenings with a mug or two of it. Despite this, it wasn't something that would kickstart my day in quite the same way as coffee.
I ventured to try something called "Crio Bru", which is essentially roasted and ground cacao beans that come with various flavorings. (This is not a sponsored post, so no affiliate links; Google it if you're curious. Apropos of nothing, the company happens to be based in Santa Barbara, a community with which I have a long and storied history.) I brew this like coffee in a French press, and it has hit the spot for a replacement behavior perfectly. It satiates the morning coffee ritual that I have to do in the morning to properly start my day, mentally speaking, and it's something I look forward to drinking throughout the day.
I brew it a lot weaker than the instructions say, and it ends up tasting like sugarless, watery hot chocolate. This is perfect to my taste and is less dehydrating than coffee. It also contains theobromine, which is the neurotoxic compound that is widely known for being toxic to cats and dogs. I'm currently trying to see what happens first: will I hit the lethal dose of theobromine for human beings or will my kidneys shut down due to overhydration? It's a fun pandemic experiment that animates my workdays.