- I have a caffeine problem.
And I bet you do too if you're watching this.
So in this video,
I'm gonna figure out what happened to us,
and see what life is like without it.
I need some coffee, or just something, delicious.
Man, this is hard.
I might regret this.
Thank you to Brilliant
for sponsoring a portion of this video.
So I drink a lot of coffee, so much so,
that sometimes it replaces important things
like drinking water, eating breakfast,
remember that video that I made,
where my one job was literally just to drink water.
Went a little something like this.
I've been drinking my soda water
and coffee together. (sigh)
1:00 PM, I have not had any water yet.
I have not had any water today.
I've only had coffee.
Oops. I know this behavior is quite unhealthy,
but I keep doing it.
So today in this video,
we're gonna figure out
where my coffee problem came from,
and hopefully how to fix it.
Do I want to fix it?
Coffee's just so good.
Anyways, cue the montage.
So it turns out that coffee has a really long,
and complex history.
Luckily, I came across this book
called Coffeeland by Augustine Sedgewick.
Their research focuses on the global history of food,
work, and capitalism.
This book, in particular,
explores how this humble bean swept across the globe.
(Melissa inhaling)
(Melissa exhaling)
Yes, this is research, okay.
But actually, I can't drink this,
sadly, because alongside researching
how we got addicted to coffee,
I'm actually going to be giving up, not just coffee,
but all caffeine for the next 30 days.
I can't believe I actually have to do this.
I gotta throw this down the drain.
(coffee splashing)
Okay, listen, reading about coffee
is significantly harder without being able to drink it.
Man, this is hard.
Why am I doing this again?
I don't know.
I felt it a lot more difficult to get through my to-do list,
as fatigue crept in.
My morning routines were completely interrupted.
When I would usually drink coffee in the morning,
I simply-- (inhaling) It smells so good.
did not. Just gonna drink my water.
As the week went on,
I felt my productivity slipping
as I tried to push through my to-do list, without caffeine.
And by day four,
I really started to feel the effects of caffeine withdrawal.
I'm pretty sure this is
what caffeine withdrawal feels like. (laughs)
I didn't think that I had a caffeine dependency,
I'll tell you that.
It was not a fun time.
When suddenly stopping all caffeine,
withdrawal symptoms often include the following,
such as irritability, headache, agitation,
depressed mood, and fatigue.
Yep.
Good morning. It doesn't look like morning,
I know, it's fall.
On the bright side,
I think that I figured out my problem.
This whole caffeine addiction for me,
started with coffee.
I know that there's other sources of caffeine,
but for me it was coffee
that kind of started this whole thing.
When I was a kid,
my older cousin used to work at a coffee shop,
and I remember her bringing home hot chocolate for me
on the way home from work.
I always noticed that the adults were having lattes,
and other things, coffee.
So I wanted to have coffee.
And then she started bringing me these, like,
half caffeinated caramel macchiatos,
and that's kind of where the whole thing started.
So in short,
I started drinking coffee because everyone around me was,
and I just wanted to be like the big kids, you know?
And once I started to participate in that culture,
it kind of led to my current dependency.
So to answer the question of why I got hooked on coffee,
I need to know how coffee became part of the common culture.
And that is a story in three parts.
Part one, why we started drinking coffee.
So while coffee was first harvested in Ethiopia,
in the 15th century.
War on trade spread the bean through the west,
during the 1500's.
That was when many Europeans started
to notice coffee's unique abilities.
It could alter people's moods,
with less consequences than alcohol,
and could help with stomach issues and indigestion.
Coffee became a European cure all,
and people latched on.
So we in the west, got really into coffee,
because of its effects.
Effects that I really started missing,
going into week two.
Now in hopes of trying to get over my caffeine dependency,
I've tried to find ways to cope
with my new caffeine free lifestyle.
I tried caffeine-free tea,
other drinks, delicious,
stretching regularly, and even chewing gum to distract me.
- You are truly behaving
like an addict in withdrawal.
That is so much gum.
- (laughing) I know.
And after a few days,
my craving for caffeine was actually getting weaker.
I thought I was breaking free from my habit,
until it was time to produce our show
with the History Channel.
I'm ordering coffee for the crew, right now,
and I can't have any.
Oh yeah, by the way,
we have a show with the History Channel,
where Sabrina builds old stuff from history.
You should go watch that after this.
- It's called History Remade with Sabrina, that's me.
- Link in bio.
But anyways, thank you, Sabrina, for this.
Yeah - Content.
- It was pretty rough.
Sometimes days are just long,
and you need some coffee.
So we know that coffee has all these fun,
physical effects that we love.
Now there's other things with fun,
physical effects that aren't as mainstream as coffee.
I'm not going to name those things,
because I don't want to get demonetized,
but how was it that coffee got so normalized.
To figure it out, let's go to part two,
how coffee went mainstream.
In its early days,
coffee was seen as a strategic tool.
After conquering a new city,
Ottoman Emperors built coffee houses,
as a way to show citizens they were civilized.
So while Europeans were appreciating the physical effects
of coffee, they also copied the social component.
This is most notable in London,
with hundreds of coffee houses opening within a century.
These coffee houses became a staple
in people's lives,
acting as this space to gather
with friends and discuss the news,
all over a warm cup of coffee.
And before long, this coffee craze expanded
to North America.
So coffee entered the mainstream
through social events, institutions,
like cafes and coffee houses.
So coffee and social are kind of like this.
And so when I lost coffee,
I actually lost a lot more than coffee.
And that became really obvious in week three.
So while I was becoming physically less dependent
on caffeine, I still felt like I was missing
out on the social side of it.
I was hanging out with some friends,
and I felt a little weird that I wasn't having coffee.
You know what I'm sad about?
I'm in this really nice coffee shop,
and it smells so good,
but I'm being strong and not having any.
So yeah, I was feeling still a little sad at this point.
However, there were some good things
that came about.
The best one being, that I started to eat breakfast
in the morning.
Well, I'm having breakfast without coffee.
Do I miss it?
Maybe a little bit, but if anything,
I learned just, listen, eat breakfast in the morning.
Turns out, intentionally putting real food in my body
for energy is a good thing.
Also, I started sleeping better.
I should probably go to sleep right now.
It started to seem like the gaps coffee left behind,
were being filled with healthier hobbies.
But despite all that, I do kind of just miss the act
of making coffee.
So let's brew some decaf,
while we thank Brilliant for sponsoring
this portion of today's video.
(bag plopping) (pot dragging)
Coffee. Brilliant is an online learning platform
for STEM, that replaces lecture videos
with hands-on, and interactive lessons.
She's brewing. Fun fact, Sabrina and I
actually met in math class in high school,
and I'm not gonna lie, it was a little rough.
Our teacher tried his best,
but when he got to the higher level stuff,
things got so non-tangible and theoretical,
that I kinda checked out.
But that's why I appreciate Brilliant,
because it teaches you how to think and problem solve,
by doing, which is kind of what we try to do here
at Answer in Progress.
The courses have storytelling,
interactive challenges, and problems to solve.
And you can find courses in math, science,
computer science, for all skill levels,
that will take you from curiosity to mastery.
Just watching my coffees drip.
Honestly, I do kind of regret checking
out of math class in high school,
because it would be pretty empowering
to pick it up again today.
But now I can with Brilliant, and you can too.
You wanna take a little peek?
The first 200 to click the link below,
and sign up for Brilliant,
get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
Okay, now back to the video. (clicks tongue)
So we know why we started drinking coffee,
physical effects, and when they go missing, pain.
We also know how coffee got normalized
through our social lives.
And losing it can lead to some
bad, but also good things.
But did you know that coffee
hasn't always been that easy to get?
That's the final step in this saga.
How did coffee become an everyday staple?
Well, that is answered in part three,
how coffee stayed mainstream.
In the U.S., a reliance on pricey imports,
made coffee a pretty expensive beverage.
However, key economic changes,
like Latin American independence,
increased bean production,
and duty-free import policies shifted coffee
from a luxury to an everyday staple,
just in time for the Great Depression.
The low cost, meant people could still afford
those mood altering effects
that made coffee appealing long ago.
And, well, we've been hooked on it ever since.
So in short, the reason coffee became
part of mainstream culture in North America is,
one, because it's a fun drink,
two, it came with social opportunities,
and three, it was affordable when people were broke.
And we kind of couldn't really stop,
because stopping is hard,
and maybe because we don't really need to.
Hello, it is the last week of this challenge.
There's been some pretty good things that have come
out of these past couple of weeks.
I feel good, but hot damn, gosh darn it, I miss coffee.
Honestly, the end of the week couldn't come soon enough,
because even though I didn't feel the need to
have coffee every day,
I also felt like I really needed it on the hard days.
I'm parked on the side of the road right now,
don't vlog and drive.
I was driving, and I was yawning,
and all I could think about was
that I really, really, really, really, really
wanted a cup of coffee.
I've been pushing myself really hard
for the past couple of days,
and I've been trying to stay energized,
without, you know, needing some coffee or tea,
but whew,
there was even a point when I caved and had caffeine.
Oh, good morning.
First of all, what are you doing in the tea cupboard?
I was not about to get some tea this morning.
Okay, no, I totally was.
It is the last week,
and I have decided that this morning,
I'm going to treat myself to some green tea.
The challenge is not over,
I'm still not having coffee,
but I will have a little bit of tea. (taps fingers)
And then, just like that, my 30 day challenge was complete.
To be honest,
I thought that that challenge
was gonna go a lot differently.
I thought that I was gonna emerge
from these four weeks, caffeine-free completely,
and not one coffee,
but that is definitely not how it went.
There were moments, as you saw,
where sometimes things just got a little hard,
and I just wanted some coffee,
or wanted some tea to get me through it.
I wish that I could say I came out caffeine-free,
but that is just not the reality. (laughs)
And I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing.
And there were many good things that came
out of this challenge, like I said,
I started to eat breakfast every morning.
I didn't feel the need to start every single day
with coffee, which was really great, you know?
I'm not gonna stop drinking coffee.
And I'm not saying that you need to.
I'm still gonna drink coffee.
Sorry to disappoint you,
if that's what you thought
that this challenge was going to be.
But I will admit
that I did have quite an unhealthy relationship with coffee.
Basically, I use coffee to tolerate my problems,
rather than fix my problems.
And I wanted to talk about it with someone.
Who better than the person who wrote the book
that made me realize all of this.
So yeah, I just emailed them,
and then they said, "yes." Pretty cool. (laughs)
- Hi Melissa, My name's Augustine Sedgewick.
I'm a historian.
I wrote a book called Coffeeland,
published in April of 2020,
the exact moment at the end of the old world.
Why do we drink coffee?
I hate to be the one to tell you this,
especially in this context,
but most of us drink coffee because our jobs are terrible.
Although, everyone is required to work to support themselves
and survive, the working day has been organized
in such a way that bores us to death,
and exhausts us.
The working day that you and I experience,
that we're in the middle of right now,
is really pretty new.
One of the ways we adapted to the immense disruption
of the modern working day, is by drinking coffee.
The idea of caffeine, or the idea of drinking coffee,
is a stimulant puts us into relationship
with the commodity itself,
but not into the people who work to produce it.
I do think at the most general level,
that is not ideal,
and the world would be a better place,
if we had a sense of that our lives
depended on the people,
rather than simply on things that those people make.
- That whole conversation was really eyeopening.
And if you want to watch the whole conversation,
there's going to be a link to it in the description.
I'm really proud of myself.
I've proven to myself that I don't need
to have coffee everyday, but if I want it, I can have it.
But I am just gonna try to have a healthier relationship
with caffeine in general.
I guess this is a reminder to me,
future me, or myself right now,
and people like me.
Take care of your body
by doing things like sleeping, taking a break,
and most importantly, not replacing meals
with the bean juice.
Okay, bye.
(jazz music)
Howdy. I'm drinking water right now.
I was just going to say, if you liked this video,
you should consider sharing it with your friends
with coffee problems.
Treat it like an intervention of sorts.
Actually, I talked to one of my friends about this,
who has never had coffee in their life, Mr. Taha.
And that full conversation is going up on our Patreon,
for our Patreon supporters,
so maybe consider supporting us on Patreon.
You know, get some exclusive content.
Thank you for watching this video.
I think that that is everything. Bye, again.
(tongue clicking)