(slowly escalating music)
(somber music)
(Matt gulping)
(somber music continues)
- I'm gonna quit caffeine for 30 days.
Yeah.
(rock music)
Coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the world
and it's how millions of people start their days.
And that's true for myself as well.
I love the ritual of making a cup every morning.
It grounds me, no pun intended.
It fuels my work and it just tastes really good.
So why on earth would I give it up?
That's a good question.
While I don't think caffeine is inherently dangerous,
I do suspect that after years of consuming it every day,
I may have built up a strong dependency.
By quitting coffee and all caffeine
including energy, drinks, soda, and even chocolate,
yes, there are about 70 milligrams
of caffeine in a chocolate bar,
I wanted to see if there would be any impact
on my sleep, anxiety, overall mood, and most important,
on my energy levels.
Will this 30 day caffeine detox destroy my productivity
completely and turn me into a bumbling idiot
if I wasn't a bumbling idiot already?
We will find out in this video.
Oh, and since misery loves company
I've got a friend to join me.
(rock music)
This is my friend, Chris Baca.
He's a coffee roaster, co-owner of Cat and Cloud Coffee,
and makes a living sipping coffee.
(Chris slurping)
(relaxing music)
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so why are you doing this with me?
- I just wanna see if I could.
I've had at least one cup of coffee every day
for the past 20 years.
I haven't gone without coffee.
- You haven't missed a day?
- I haven't missed a day.
- Are you kidding?
- No, I swear.
- This is gonna be rough.
- I know.
(peaceful music)
- So this is our ceremonious last cup of coffee.
- Last cup.
- For the next 30 days.
Cheers.
- Cheers.
(peaceful music)
- One of the biggest lessons I've learned this year
about habit change is how important it is
to control your environment.
Whether you're tracking progress on a calendar
or you place your vitamins on the counter,
these things can act as triggers to kickstart your habit
and remind you to do them.
And on the reverse side of things,
if you're quitting caffeine, sugar, alcohol,
or anything else,
the first step is to clear it from your home.
Before my brain completely fails me,
this video is brought to you by Skillshare.
As you guys know,
I'm super passionate about self-development
as well as building practical skills for everyday life.
And Skillshare is a great resource for both of those things.
They've got tons of classes on productivity, creativity,
as well as entrepreneurial skills.
Stick around at the end of this video,
as I drink my first cup of coffee in 30 days,
and talk about a class that I recently took
that helped me out a lot.
My head might explode from the rush of caffeine,
so you might wanna stick around for that.
So the first 31 hours of my caffeine fast
went by without incident.
I braced for the pain that was headed my way.
And it didn't happen,
until hour 32.
I struggled through my work for three hours.
It was impossible to concentrate.
My head was pulsing.
I felt my veins in my head throbbing.
I gave up on trying to work and went to bed at 5:00 PM,
hoping I'd feel better the next day.
Most of the day, I had a light headache.
I got a little bit of nausea in the morning
and for whatever reason,
my headache just came screaming back.
And it's hard to even talk right now
because it hurts so bad.
It took me a few days to get through the worst of it.
And five days until all the symptoms completely went away.
I wondered how Chris was holding up.
- My headache just kicked in pretty hard.
And I've got about a 30-second to one minute attention span.
After that, my brain just kind of clicks off
and I find myself staring at the computer screen,
staring at the blank.
(light jazz music)
See what I'm saying?
It's just this perpetual emotion of stuck, low energy,
no focus.
It's the end of day six,
and I feel really good.
The more physical activity I do, the better I feel.
I didn't have any headaches today.
I haven't really had any grogginess.
My energy levels are starting to even out.
- As the physical symptoms disappeared, it was apparent
that there was still something missing from our lives.
Do you think coffee is even about the caffeine
for most people?
I mean, you do see it a lot.
Like especially people are like,
"Don't talk to me until I had my first cup."
- Right.
I think coffee is this amazing
choose-your-own-adventure book.
There's a certain amount of people who love it
for the caffeine, but for a lot of people,
it's a different kind of social lubricant.
(upbeat music)
And the aspect of going to a cafe.
It's a place where you can go that's the great equalizer.
You've got people from all walks of life,
all different kinds of jobs.
You've got people that make millions of dollars.
You've got people that make hardly any money at all.
And you come to the coffee shop and everyone's together.
And that's one of the most beautiful things to me
about coffee.
- Is it true that America runs on Dunkin'?
- America does not run on Dunkin'.
America runs on coffee, for sure.
Coffee is one of the most heavily traded commodities
on earth and the sliver of the market that we operate,
what we would call specialty coffee,
some people call it third wave coffee
is really, really, really small.
So you might see more fancy lattes in your neighborhood.
You might see more pour overs in your neighborhood.
But the reality is that that sector of the market is tiny.
- So what you're saying is that America runs on Dunkin'.
(Matt laughing) - Yeah.
- [Matt] The weeks went on into this experiment
and I continued to miss coffee.
Traveling home to visit family and friends,
it seemed that coffee was everywhere I turned.
At that point I wasn't above anything,
whether it was Dunkin', Starbucks, that whore Keurig,
I just needed a taste.
- Matt, do you want a cup of coffee?
- And while I did start drinking peppermint tea
to curb my cravings and keep my brain preoccupied,
the social aspect of having coffee with family or friends,
just wasn't the same.
- The thing that was like really the most stressful
was not being able to partake
in the social aspects of coffee.
I just felt kind of alone.
I felt like I wasn't part of the crowd.
I felt like I really wasn't plugged in socially.
- In terms of sleep and anxiety.
I didn't notice any changes for me personally
but even later in the month
I did have a few long days that I really
could've used a pick-me-up.
I'm under what you would call a deadline.
And I have a lot of work to do.
I realize how helpful it is when you really need it.
To keep myself going, I moved around a lot.
I got outside.
I went to the gym for some cardio,
ate fruits for a little hit of natural sugar.
Think you're gonna have to blur this out.
This is not appropriate for YouTube.
The fact you guys are watching me a banana right now,
like seriously, what?
That's so gross.
Overall, it wasn't the end of the world
but it would've been nice to have a little bit of caffeine.
As this 30 day experiment comes to a close,
would I do it again?
Absolutely not.
Definitely not.
While I learned that I don't need coffee,
I learned that I really want it.
I love it.
As a part of my day, as a part of my routine.
Though, I will say that doing this 30 day detox
did allow me to gain a greater appreciation
for the beverage that we love so much.
- Matt, thank you for ruining the past month of my life.
It's been a beautiful, amazing experience
and I hope your month was as equally terrible as mine.
(laid-back music)
- I've been thinking about this moment for the past 30 days.
(Matt sipping)
Oh my God, stop.
Stop!
It's too good.
It's so good.
- So you guys might know my friend
and fellow YouTuber, Thomas Frank.
Well, he just released a really great masterclass
on productivity, on Skillshare.
If you've ever felt disorganized or unproductive,
this class will change your life.
This isn't just about tips and tricks.
It's about creating a system that will make your life
more effective and more productive.
I am very interested to see
how the caffeine interacts with my body.
I'm already, yeah, it's already there.
It already hit me.
Skillshare is super affordable,
with an annual subscription it costs less than $10 a month.
But if you sign up right now, you can get two months free.
So use the link in the description.
You gotta use that down there and it's gonna allow
you to get access to Thomas Frank's productivity class.
You're gonna regret it if you don't do it.
And you'll also regret it if you quit coffee.
I'm not joking, this stuff is amazing.